  It is shown that in the presence of strong magnetic fields, spin-orbit
scattering causes a sharp increase in the effective density of states in the
variable-range hopping regime when temperature decreases. This effect leads to
an exponential enhancement of the conductance above its value without
spin-orbit scattering. Thus an experimental study of the hopping conductivity
in a fixed, large magnetic field, is a sensitive tool to explore the spin-orbit
scattering parameters in the strongly localized regime.
