Understanding Harris County’s LAWPods System

Episode Notes

Transcript

Rocky Dhir (00:01)
Hi, and welcome to the State Bar of Texas podcast. Houston, we have a solution. Now if I was Andre Davison, that’s what I would have said back in 2024 when he oversaw the launching of Houston’s law pods, the legal access workspace pods. What are these? Well, in short, they’re a way to help regular folks navigate the legal system when hiring an attorney is just too expensive. I want to get real for a second. All right. So for all of you out there who are not lawyers, I want to tell you.

No law student dreams of the day when they can hear a client’s story, look them deep in the eye and say with all sincerity, you just can’t afford me. That’s not why we go to law school. Now, although I do have an annoying cousin, I would love to say that too, but that’s a story for another day. The problem is that attorneys have bills to pay. Running a law office is expensive and it’s only getting more expensive as time goes on. This means that what attorneys charge is often out of reach for many people, especially for routine matters. Navigating the legal system without an attorney, that can be daunting.

They can have real consequences if you get something wrong. This is where my man Andre came up with a brilliant idea. Andre Davison is the director of the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library. That’s right. Guys, I know you like him already. He’s not a lawyer. OK, he’s actually cool. Like he’s got a life. He is a knowledge and information specialist. That’s that’s a fancy way of saying he’s a law librarian and what he does is very important. He’s got over 30 years of experience. That experience led him to come up.

with the idea of Law Pods. It’s a program in Harris County. Now, I won’t even try to tell you about it. For once, this is uncharacteristic for lawyers, but I’m a bit short on words. I’d rather have Andre tell us about it. So Andre, welcome.

Andre Davison (01:41)
Thank you, Rocky. Thank you for having me here today on the State Bar of Texas podcast. Very excited to be with you on the day and share with you about Law Pods. So one addendum to your introduction, I actually did not come up with the idea of Law Pods. It was actually my predecessors here at the law library.

Rocky Dhir (02:01)
Well,

in that case, we need to get them on the podcast. We’re ending it right now, man. What is this? Why would you spring that on me like this?

Andre Davison (02:08)
But no, the good thing is that the idea had ideated over, I think right now, eight years ago. As we know with great ideas, it takes funding to actually implement those ideas. And we were fortunate enough in 2022 when the Texas legislator passed a bill that said all

County law libraries should get $35 from filing fees, and that actually gave us the necessary funding we needed to actually see this idea through. And so, as I said, my predecessors ideated, and I just carried that idea through and implemented it in making sure that it is serving our constituents in Harris County.

Rocky Dhir (02:54)
I guess every county has the same funding, the $35 you talked about, but Harris County put it into law pods. Other counties may have done other things with those same funds. Is that fair?

Andre Davison (03:05)
It’s fair to say, and it helps that Harris County is the largest county in Texas. And we serve a population base of over five million people. And so we were trying to figure out a way to spread our services throughout the county. We’re located here in downtown Houston, Texas. If you’ve ever been to downtown Houston, you know there’s lots of traffic. There’s not lots of parking.

and the parking is very expensive. So we were trying to meet the needs of the people. I like to use this tagline, more services without buildings. So we wanted to expand our services without building more buildings. And this was an innovative idea of how we could do that with LawBots.

Rocky Dhir (03:51)
We haven’t actually talked about what the law pods are so from what I can gather and why I understand these are like little workspaces that are dedicated to I guess legal research for non-lawyers so they can come in and kind of learn a little bit but that’s my understanding Let’s hear from the expert. So guys don’t listen to me. Let’s listen on

Andre Davison (04:10)
Right. So, law pods is exactly as you mentioned. The law and law pod stands for legal access workspace, but it’s an actual pod, a private technology enabled space that we put in locations that it’s mostly to serve what we call pro se or in Latin, means self-represented litigants, people, as you mentioned, who cannot afford a lawyer but don’t meet the economic qualifications to get legal aid.

That’s the patron base that we serve.

Rocky Dhir (04:41)
with those people in the middle, they’re stuck in that really uncomfortable middle. Right.

Andre Davison (04:45)
And so it’s a private space, sound deafening, it’s handicap accessible. So people who have disabilities, for example, we have a ramp for wheelchairs, we have a table, we have a touchscreen monitor in there as well with a camera. So you can see us. We also have what we call an L-Mode, which is a document camera that you can move around to show us your documents as well.

It has four jump seats, so it’s almost like an airplane in a box.

Rocky Dhir (05:18)
So you can take people in there with you. You can folks to help you.

Andre Davison (05:21)
Definitely.

So you could fit up to four people in a LaPOD. It has epifiltration. So, you know, we, as we learned with COVID-19, you know, with germs and things like that, we took that in that account because as I mentioned, this is kind of ideated in 2018, but we had to make adjustments post COVID as well. And in there, we have a real simple

interface, user interface that people can come in. It’s touch screen. So if they want to zoom in and talk to a law library, they touch a box that says talk to a law librarian. And it also has different boxes for resources. If you want to do your own legal research, as well, if you need to look up some of your court files, you can touch that button as well. have Google as well. And then we have our good friends at

the Texas Legal Service Center, Texas Law Help. So if you want to go and research yourself, you could touch that box as well. So we tried to make that user interface as simple as possible to give people access to information, resources. And then we also have a box for our partners if you’re looking for legal aid and if you qualify for that.

Rocky Dhir (06:29)
I wonder, think some people who may not understand what this looks like, you know, if you could walk us through what one of these pods actually looks like. Maybe there’s pictures online, but it sounds kind of cool. It sounds futuristic, but why couldn’t people just do this from home? If it’s Google and if it’s online sources, couldn’t they just sit at home and do this? Why would they need to go to a law pod?

Andre Davison (06:49)
Right. So I think the thing about the resources available is an extension of the resources. So here at the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library, we have access to resources like Westlaw and Lexis. And through those law pod, we were able to extend access to these resources. Right. gave Lexis and Westlaw access in addition to access to our NOLO self-help materials as well.

Rocky Dhir (07:08)
They get Lexus

Andre Davison (07:19)
a variety of different legal databases. And the only way we were able to extend that to our patrons was through Law Pods. So these actually serve as satellite locations. And if you go to the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth webpage, there’s a whole section dedicated to Law Pods, kind of takes you through and guides you through, tell you what everything is and how it looks. it’s like an actual box, a pod. It’s really futuristic looking and it’s pretty cool looking. You have to

actually see one in person and actually send in one and you think, wow, this is like some futuristic Jetsons stuff. That’s when I think about it.

Rocky Dhir (07:57)
Where’s Mr. Spacely when you need him?

Andre Davison (08:01)
George, but no, I think what we tried to make the space accommodating, but also make sure that it met all the needs of our patrons. So we thought about the disability part. We thought about the user interface. You could take the monitor and you can move it around to fit your comfortability as well. And then with the Zoom access, being able to tap in. So even if you needed to

We know post pandemic there were a lot of people doing zoom court. So if you needed to do a zoom court.

Rocky Dhir (08:35)
You

can access the courts with this like if you if you have a hearing or something. Yeah

Andre Davison (08:38)
You could actually zoom in to do a hearing. And what we did, we did this in a partnership with our sister library, the Harris County Public Library as well, because we understood that a lot of people came to the Harris County Public Library and they needed legal information and the public librarians were not ⁓ really trained to give them that type of information as well. But also we strategically placed these near the Harris County Justice Courts, the JP Courts, Justice of Peace Court.

Rocky Dhir (09:07)
so this is not just at the Haynesworth Library, so then you’ve got extra locations?

Andre Davison (09:11)
Right. Yeah, they’re actually including the Haynesworth Law Library, there are six law pods, but they’re spread out across Houston. So Houston is divided into four precincts. And originally there was supposed to be law pods and four precincts and two here. Well, in 2021, I believe they redistrict. So one of the pods got moved to another precinct as well. And so what we decided to do with this

what I call the fifth pod, because the last two were built here. But the fifth pod, we moved to another location in Northeast Houston. So we have one in West Houston at the Catherine Tower branch at the Harris County Public Library, one far south, almost in Galveston at Clear Lake, in Clear Lake at the Freeman branch library, one closer in but still south at the Parker Williams branch library. And then we have one far north at the Barbara Bush

Harris County Public Library, and then we have one here at the Hainesworth Library. And what we did, we strategically placed these pods near Justice Court. the closest someone can walk actually about a minute over from the court to the Harris County Public Library, and they can go in and use the pod. And the furthest one away is a one mile drive from the JP Court to the library as well.

Rocky Dhir (10:32)
Interesting. Okay, so I guess number one, what are the hours and then would folks have to make reservations? mean, how do you because you know what if somebody’s in the pod and they’re already using it, then what do do?

Andre Davison (10:42)
Currently in our pilot phase, have pods. So they’re available Monday through Friday and actually even on Saturdays because the public libraries are open then. But to book an appointment to speak with the law library, you can only book that appointment on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 o’clock to 2 p.m. to speak to a law librarian. And I think that initial phase was based on when the Harris County Public Library is open.

When we’re busy as well, when we have the capacity to be able to help them as well. And then most recently we started in a partnership with the Houston Volunteer Lawyers, started LawPod Clinics. So the first and third Wednesdays of the month, we’re there taking appointments from 10 to two on Wednesdays to speak with somebody at the Houston Volunteer Lawyers to help with family related issues as well.

Rocky Dhir (11:35)
Wow, okay, well, Andre, the time is flying by. This is a fountain of information, but we do need to hear from one of our sponsors. So guys, we’re gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we’re gonna talk a little bit about how folks are using these law pods. What’s a typical use case? Are there any stories about how folks have put these to use and sort of the success level? So those of you that are actually maybe needing these, you get an idea of how to use this amazing and innovative resource. So we’ll be back in just a few minutes. We’ll see you soon.

Guys, we’re here with Andre Davison talking about the Harris County law pods. This is super cool. During the break, I was trying to map it out and see how long it would take me to drive from Dallas to one of the law pods in Houston. Cause once you said there’s free Lexus and Westlaw access, I decided I’m, I’m just going to go there and park myself all day long. You talked a little bit about moving these. Are these portable? Like, can you move a law pod from one space to another?

Andre Davison (12:30)
It would take a team of people because they are very heavy as well. they are not portable. That would be a logistic nightmare trying to move La Paz. Somebody actually, one of our locations, they have an upstairs and downstairs location and they were thinking about moving one of the pods to another location.

Rocky Dhir (12:50)
call all your close friends, can you help me move? Here’s a disclaimer I got while using the law pod. found a language for it. What’s a typical use case on these? mean, tell me about how people use these, you know, to maximum benefit.

Andre Davison (12:53)
You

have

two specific use cases. So for the self-represented person, and I have a really great story that I actually shared when I attended the poverty law conference this past, the state part of Texas poverty law conference in August of 2025, where we were actually at a law pod at the Parker Williams location. And we were actually there just to test the software, make sure everything was running.

as it was supposed to be. And we ran into a young lady who was just actually, that’s the location where the court is just a minute walk over. And she came in and she was looking and she was really curious. Because again, the law files are really cool looking and she’s like, what is this? What does it do? And we were like, well, this is one of our newer initiatives. You can come in, you can get help with your legal issue. And she was actually dealing with an eviction at the time. And so we were able to actually

get her into the law, connect her to one of our law librarians, and she was able to talk and get the information she needed to get a stay on her eviction that day. And when I tell you just how impactful it was in the moment, and we didn’t even go there with the intention of helping anybody, but we were just at the right place at the right time.

Rocky Dhir (14:17)
not want to help anybody. You heard it first folks, Andre said he did not want to help anybody.

Andre Davison (14:23)
But we were there to be able to test and make sure, because it was an off day. wasn’t a Tuesday or Thursday, but we were at the moment. And we were able to help this person. And she was very thankful for the help that she received. And that’s really what the LawPod is about. It’s just making impact one person at a time. So that’s really for your self-represented litigate, your pro se. You could come in. You can ask a question. You could show us your documents. We can kind of guide you to the legal information you need.

And we always lead with that we are not attorneys. We do not offer legal advice, but we give you legal information. And I like to say we meet people where they are and we empower them to move forward as well with legal information and legal resources. And so that’s the one use case. The second one is we have an attorney. He’s on our, Houston Bar Association Law Library Committee, and he lives in Clear Lake, which is about 10 minutes from Galveston and about.

almost an hour from downtown Houston and could be more dependent on traffic. But this attorney used to drive an hour into downtown to be able to use the free Westlaw in Lexus.

Rocky Dhir (15:30)
He beat me to the punch dang, okay. I thought I was clever

Andre Davison (15:34)
He

was spending 15 to 30 minutes trying to find a parking space, being anywhere from $25 to $30 to park. Then he would do his research, for two hours, and then he would drive back home. That’s four hours of his day to do legal research. was a solo and small firm attorney, so not a lot of resources because we know, yeah, an Alexa and Whistler can be very expensive.

Rocky Dhir (15:56)
It’s tough out there.

Andre Davison (16:00)
My background was in big law, so I remember those contracts we had to negotiate. With the law pod just eight minutes from his home, he drives eight minutes. He does spend his two hours on research and drive eight minutes back home. It’s such a lifesaver for him that he has this resource to be able to help clients. He explained that because he’s able to do this and be more efficient, he’s able to spend more time.

you know, doing pro bono work. So it’s also contributing to the mission of access to justice.

Rocky Dhir (16:30)
recycling the time back in to the system. ⁓ But what happens though, if let’s say I need to use the law pod and I get there, somebody’s already in it, or it’s an attorney who’s spending a few hours doing research. Is there a limit to how long you can be in there? Or can you book time if you know you’ve got a hearing? How does that work?

Andre Davison (16:33)
Exactly.

Right. again, we, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we save that time for really pro se litigants who need to talk to a law librarian. So we block that time off for them as well. anytime outside those hours, when the Harris County Public Library is open, you can go in and book that. So if you need it for a couple of hours, we always encourage people so they can book the law space on our website. We have a system and they can

They just put in a description of what they’re doing. And if they’re doing legal research, we can extend that time for them. So if they need it more than a couple of hours. But typically, we book our appointments with our law librarians in 30 minute brackets.

Rocky Dhir (17:28)
What’s the usage been like? Are getting a lot of traction or do people still not know about these? I mean…

Andre Davison (17:33)
No, so that was the amazing thing. We opened our first LawPod in May of 2024, but 2025 was our first full year and we had over 500 plus LawPod bookings, which is amazing. And we can’t control who actually shows up to their appointment or not, but I think it was 550 bookings. had 307 people that we were able to track, able to have.

typically call them interaction. So we interacted with 370 out of those 550 people, which is about 60%. And that’s really amazing.

Rocky Dhir (18:09)
Are there plans to maybe build more of these?

Andre Davison (18:11)
Yeah, so that’s what I’m excited about is.

Rocky Dhir (18:14)
World domination. There’ll

be domination pods by the time he’s done with this.

Andre Davison (18:20)
All right, next initiative. really, Law Pods are built on three tenets, people, partnership, and collaboration. And, you know, initially through the leadership at Harris County with Harris County’s Commissioner’s Court, the Harris County Attorney’s Office, which is our parent organization, along with support from the Houston Bar Association, our partners at the Harris County Public Libraries, our partners at the Houston Volunteer Lawyers.

these six pods, but our plan is to grow and expand throughout Harris County because we know there are some areas in town that people still have to drive a considerable way to get to a lot of pods. goal is now to expand that with, I’m looking at four to six more pods as well.

Rocky Dhir (19:04)
Wow. In terms of the folks that you’re helping and the folks that are using the law pods, let’s say they are pro se litigant and they’re in court. Have you gotten any feedback from judges about whether the quality of pro se representation has improved because now these folks have better resources and aren’t making maybe the same, the same mistakes that they might’ve made not knowing how the system works.

Andre Davison (19:26)
Right, yeah, I have gotten tremendous feedback from judges. You saw the I was.

Rocky Dhir (19:30)
It’s not like you were waiting for that question.

It wasn’t even a plant. mean, I was just, I was just an innocent question and you got so excited all of a You’re like, in fact, I do. Let me tell you. All right. So yeah, walk us through that.

Andre Davison (19:42)
of weeks ago, I was at the HBA Bench Bar Conference and the Houston Bench Bar Conference and got a chance to speak to a lot of judges. And some of them knew about law pods, some of them didn’t. So it was a chance to tell them about the law pods. we know, again, most of the courts are here in downtown Houston. So they typically send people to the law library, but we’re happy to share that.

Rocky Dhir (19:46)
that’s houston

Andre Davison (20:07)
they could send them to a law pod, even if they call the court and they’re at their house and they want to get information. We have flyers made up, we have marketing materials, we have pens, we have glass cleaner, you name it. We want people to remember the law pod and what it is and how it’s able to help them. And I think being able to educate these self-represented litigants on the legal information that they need. we’re steady trying to think of ways to get

more qualitative information from our patrons who use the pods as well. So surveys and things like that just to get, we have the qualitative information, but we’re trying to get that qualitative feedback so we can take that and combine it with that data so we can able to tell the story. That’s why that story about the lady with the eviction was very, very powerful. The story with the small firm attorney was very powerful because it’s actually kind of sharing real life stories, how this is impacting everything.

Rocky Dhir (21:05)
Wow. Well, Andre, you did it again. You got me so interested. I lost track of time. It’s time to hear from another one of our sponsors. So we’re going to do that real quick. We’re going to come back. We’re going to talk about the future of law pods, what this looks like, not only for pro se litigants, but maybe just the legal landscape in general. So hang onto your seats, folks. We’ll be right back with Andre Davison. And we’re back with Andre Davison, you know, these law pods, they’re sounding pretty cool. I didn’t know about these until we started talking about them, but along with the expansion plans that she talked about,

Where do see the future? for example, let’s take something like AI. Everybody’s talking about it. Do you see AI playing a role in law pods and pro se representation?

Andre Davison (21:44)
So I think there’s a huge opportunity with Generative AI. I attended the Legal Services Corporation this year in San Antonio, the Legal Services Corporation Innovation and Technologies. And we saw a lot of legal aid organizations doing some really great stuff with Generative AI, whether that be through the intake process or using chat bots to be able to help people and simplify information. And we want to be able to use that for us to identify gaps that we have.

use generative AI to kind of fill in those gaps, whether that be in the intake process or whether that be being able to help people with simple questions that they need to ask. So if we don’t have law librarians, we’re not in our hours that we serve, they can ask the chat by the question. think that’s the future for us being able to utilize technology to simplify information and whether that be videos on how to use Westlaw and Lexis and do the legal research yourself as well.

We want to be able to use those tools to make life easier for our patrons.

Rocky Dhir (22:49)
It’s an interesting issue. So in the legal sphere, we talk a lot about AI and generative AI. One thing that I would caution any users about is if you do use an AI tool, whether it a law pod or whether anywhere else check the citations. And so even if somebody generates something using AI, probably it’s a good idea to go to a law pod, have a law librarian look at it and make sure you can check what the AI has generated so that you can make sure it’s correct. last thing you want to do is

put something in a court that was an AI hallucination,

Andre Davison (23:19)
Right. And that’s the great thing about a law pod. We have tools that actually do that. So you could pop in a brief and it can go through and check your sites to make sure they’re legitimate as well.

Rocky Dhir (23:31)
I

need to buy one of these. need to get a law. It’s sounding better and better, man. You got the I’m going to move to Houston. But I’m going to do what that dude down into Galveston is doing.

Andre Davison (23:42)
Right. And again, we utilize our partners to be able to train people on these resources to be able to assist them. Because again, I think what I found with generative AI is that it looks real. You trust it automatically if you don’t have the training to be able to say, well, no, that doesn’t. And as a law librarian, I’m actually trained to question everything as well and make sure that we have research to back up.

we’re providing work product to our attorneys and really anybody, our patrons as well. want to make sure they get the right information at the right time.

Rocky Dhir (24:20)
For folks that are new to law pods or that maybe have never used them, do you have any advice for how best to make use of their time when they’re in the pod? Are there do’s and don’ts or frequent mistakes that people make when they get into a law pod that you’d love for them to, to kind of be unlearned out of so that they go in there and make the best use of the time.

Andre Davison (24:40)
Right. think for us, it’s just that we want to tell our patrons, especially when you’re going through that reservation process, be really specific about what you need as well. And that way, when we get to your appointment, we know specifically what you need and we can make sure we’re efficient with your time as well as ours so we can provide the right information. So that from an intake process, when actually using a law pod, I always say, especially for people who are doing their own research,

If it takes you five to 10 minutes to figure something out, just call us. Our number is right on the LawPod and we can direct you to that right information to be able to assist you and to help you be as efficient as possible with your time as well. And we again have great partners at the Harris County Public Library. So if there’s something that happens, you could reach out to them. We actually had someone unfortunately get locked in a LawPod before, but we were able to troubleshoot that immediately.

Rocky Dhir (25:40)
I hope they didn’t go researching how to sue the law pod for getting locked into the law pod. That’d be the ultimate irony.

Andre Davison (25:48)
No, it was just an issue with the door, we were able to resolve that real quickly and they did not sue us.

Rocky Dhir (25:55)
It’s

human safety deposit box. I get a question though about the future of these. It sounds like it’s off to a great start. Do you see these going beyond Harris County? I know you’re confined into that jurisdiction, but do you see other counties maybe wanting to do something like this?

Andre Davison (26:10)
Yeah, no, think the great thing, as I mentioned, I spent most of my time in big law. So when I got to the County Law Library, I began to reach out to my counterparts in Travis County, in Dallas County, in Tarrant County. And we began to have conversations about what we were all doing. And I think the great thing is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you have the resources to do a law pod.

I say run with it, but I think it’s replicable as well to I think everybody has resources, whether it be by email or phone, where they can extend and expand their services beyond four walls, beyond their buildings and to be able to extend their services. And also being able to partner with your local public library because we have lots of patrons who go to these public libraries and they have legal questions. And so we’re partnering with the public libraries all over the state.

The Texas State Law Library has a great initiative that they’re working with the Texas Legal Service Center on to partner with public libraries across the state to kind of address what we call legal deserts, where some counties in Texas don’t have five lawyers or any judges in their county. So we’re trying to utilize these public libraries to partner with them and give them the legal information they need as well. So I think it’s replicable. It may not be the pod, the idea, but the spirit.

of getting people legal information to address access and empower them with information so they can meet their legal needs as well.

Rocky Dhir (27:44)
purely online interface. You think that’s going to come where people can just do this from home or will we need the pod?

Andre Davison (27:50)
I think so. think at some point, I think that piece of it, as far as the Zoom, talking to a law library, I think to be able to access the resources piece of it, you will actually have to go to the pot as well. But I think at some point we will expand out and as we grow as a law library to be able to help more people, as our staff grows as well. I think when I started here, we had 10 people and now we’re up to 18 people and expanding our staff to be able to

help more people as well.

Rocky Dhir (28:21)
Before we put a cherry on top of this episode, final question for you. Where do folks go if they need to access the law pods? They want to make a booking, whatever. Where’s the best place for them to go to access all that?

Andre Davison (28:33)
They can go to our website, harriscountylolibrary.org, forward slash law pod. They can learn about the law pod. They can make a reservation there. They can see the law pod. We have an FAQ about the law pod there as well. So they can get all their information at harriscountylolibrary.org, forward slash law pod.

Rocky Dhir (28:52)
Law pod, not pods. is no S at the end. Okay guys. so make a note of that and check it out when you need something, if you’re a pro se litigant, or if you’re just a lawyer that wants to get some free Lexus and Westlaw, apparently that’s a use case. We’re learning everything every day, but this was absolutely fascinating. Andre Davison, thank you for telling us about the secret superpower that apparently exists in Harris County. This was fun.

Andre Davison (29:17)
Thank you, Rocky. I really appreciate the opportunity to share information. And that’s what I do. That’s my job, is to share legal information with everybody in Harris County. I share it everywhere I go. talk about law blood. So excited to talk to you as well.

Rocky Dhir (29:33)
Let’s get a quick plug in for your own podcast. You’ve got a podcast as well. Tell us what that is so people can tune in if they need any help with law library issues.

Andre Davison (29:41)
We just actually recorded our first episode for the American Association of Law Libraries, which I’m a member of and the podcast name is All In. I co-host that podcast with the Academic Law Library. And so we are going to be talking about some really cool stuff in innovation, in law libraries, talk about cool innovations like the LawPod as well.

Rocky Dhir (30:03)
That is awesome. Well guys, let’s thank Andre Davison for joining us. Of course I want to thank you as well. Thank you for tuning in. I encourage you to stay safe. Continue to be well guys. And if you like what you heard today, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time. Remember life’s a journey folks. This is Rocky Dhir signing off until next time.