Welcome to AppellaTech. My goal is to make this a regular article for the newsletter about technology (mostly resources available online) that can be useful to the appellate practitioner.

To be honest, however, I would not put myself that much above average on the scale of being technologically (and internet) savvy.  To that end, I am hoping to beg, borrow, and steal as much as I can from our readership. At the end of every article, I will identify the topic for the next publication. If you have any ideas, I strenuously plead with you to share them with me. It is far better to receive twenty suggestions on an topic I already know about than to not get any emails on the topic I don’t know about.

In addition, if there is a general topic you would like to see addressed in this column, please notify me as well. I may not get to it immediately, but I will strive to address each of the areas I receive inquiries about.

To give you a better idea of the scope of this column, here are some of the areas of interest I hope to address in the articles to come.

  • Other blogs that may be of use to the appellate practitioner.
  • Other online resources
  • Smart phone apps
  • Tricks to Microsoft Word that you might not be aware of
  • eFiling and other matters relating to Texas appellate courts’ websites.

I am also more than willing to expand the scope of this column if you have other areas of interest that are reasonably related to technological resources for appellate practitioners.

This leaves, then, the matter of how to reach me. I can be contacted the same way all of the article authors for this newsletter can be reached. Please send any emails to submissions@hbaappellatelawyer.org.

I hope you find this to be a very useful column.

Derek Bauman
Staff attorney, First Court of Appeals