UHLC Nota Bene

The American Bar Association has recently published Images with Impact: Design and use of Winning Trial Visuals by Kerri L. Ruttenberg . This title is now available in the law library ( KF8915.R88 2017 ) o n the new titles shelf across from the reference desk. This book, ideal for both the trial lawyer and law student, focuses on turning themes into visuals to communicate effectively with the jury. The author begins with a discussion of the importance of visual communication and then covers tools such as charts, maps, diagrams, graphs, tables, outlines, photos, and timelines. Those who are not familiar with the basics of graphic design will also find the chapters in Part III to be very helpful. Tips on spotting misleading visuals, practical tips for creating and using visuals at trial, and an overview of the law on demonstrative evidence are among the other topics addressed.

The legal research company Casetext has announced that it has acquired $12 million in venture capital to expand on its CARA ("Case Analysis Research Assistant") AI software, a virtual research assistant currently capable of scanning a legal brief and retrieving cases relevant to but not cited in the brief. CARA is not alone in the world of legal AIs.  When it was created last year, it joined the ranks of AIs including ROSS , an IBM Watson-based legal research AI, DoNotPay , a website founded in 2015 to automate the preparation of parking ticket appeals, and an amateur AI judge capable of predicting European Court of Human Rights decisions with 79% accuracy.  

The Center for Responsive Politics recently launched a new research tool called Foreign Lobby Watch . It provides a searchable database of organizations and individuals registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a federal law enacted in 1938 in response to German propaganda efforts in the United States. You may have read about this law in the news recently: President Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was required to register as a foreign agent for his consulting firm’s work on behalf of a company with ties to the Turkish government. The database is made up of FARA forms filed with the Department of Justice. The registration forms include information on the organization serving as a foreign agent, details of the business arrangement, and political donations made by the organization. The database also contains short forms (filed by individuals), and supplemental forms, filed every six months, that provide detailed information on work performe...

Perma.cc solves the problem of link rot for law schools, courts, and universities.  Link rot occurs when the hyperlinks cited in scholarly papers and court opinions no longer lead to the webpages they’re meant to reference. Perma.cc creates a permanent, archived version of a website and assigns a permanent URL to that version. The archived version of the cited content will then be permanently available—even if the website modifies, moves, or deletes the page’s originally cited content. Perma.cc was developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and its founding supporters included more than sixty law-school libraries, along with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Internet Archive, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, and the Digital Public Library of America.   Here at the University of Houston Law Center, our law review and journals have been creating Perma links since the summer of 2016, and all are very satisfied with the user experienc...