Inadmissible

Texas Tech University School of Law student DaNae Couch is a member of the law school’s national moot court team, a former intern with the Texas Supreme Court — and a competitor in the January 2013 Miss America pageant. Crowned Miss Texas on July 7, she is taking a year’s leave from law school to serve as the Miss Texas organization’s spokeswoman. Couch says she started competing in pageants when she was an undergraduate at Baylor University as a way to win scholarship money; she estimates that, so far, she has won about $30,000. The competition earlier this month was her fourth attempt to become Miss Texas. “Several times in law school I thought I was kind of crazy, but now I’m really glad I stuck it out,” Couch says. “Someone told me you only have certain opportunities in your life, and law will still be waiting for you when you get back to it.” Couch says she plans to begin her third year of law school in the fall of 2013, unless she wins the Miss America contest. In that case she will represent the Miss America organization for a year and return to law school in the spring of 2014. Couch says she has learned time-management skills over the past two years while balancing her law school studies and activities with pageant preparation, such as working on her talent (baton twirling), weight training and costume fittings. This summer she was an intern with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Fort Worth; she wants to be a litigator. As Miss Texas, Couch says she hopes to raise awareness about addiction and its impact on an addict’s loved ones. “Since I love speaking in front of people and I love advocacy, I can reach out and help people who are struggling and really make a difference,” she says. Texas Tech Law Dean Darby Dickerson writes in an e-mail that Couch is an “outstanding law student. She represents Tech Law on our national mock trial team, the Board of Barristers and the Estate Planning & Community Property Journal. I’ve enjoyed working with her and am proud of all that she has accomplished. We all wish her well during her reign as Miss Texas, and look forward to possibly having a Miss America in our student body.”

Courts Upgrade

Helping lead the way for the state’s appellate courts, last week the Texas Supreme Court switched to a new case management system, which includes a website upgrade, that gives lawyers and the public online access to search for and view more case documents. Houston’s 1st and 14th Courts of Appeals already use the Texas Appeals Management and eFiling System (TAMES), says Scott Jones, manager of software development for the Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA). Over the next six to seven months, the OCA will implement TAMES in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the remaining intermediate appellate courts, he says. According to the OCA website, TAMES allows litigants and lawyers to send case information and documents electronically. The system disseminates the records instantly to the judges handling an appeal; allows judges to circulate, discuss and vote on opinions; and enables chief justices to monitor the pace of work. TAMES will enable courts to place more public case documents like briefs on their websites, searchable by the public. Jones says when all the appellate courts use TAMES, people will be able to go online and use “one unified search” and expanded search criteria to look up cases across all the courts. “They use it in the courts to help find similar cases or similar writings that have the same concept or issue in them,” Jones explains about the expanded search function.