Note-Taking Programs Forum

[thisislife49]

What program did you all find most useful for note taking? Microsoft word, Microsoft OneNote, Mac's "word" program, or something completely different?

[Nova]

i use onenote for cases cause the tabs are convenient

but prefer to OL in word cause idk i just like it better

[Dr.Zer0]

One note. Get it on your Mac, PC, tablet, phone. Make an edit and it syncs across.

[baal hadad]

Corel WordPerfect

[arklaw13]

onenote worked for me

[Mal Reynolds]

One note is legit. I had a separate section for each class and separate tabs for each topic we covered. You can also split up the screen between reading and class notes, if you're in to that sort of thing. But that went the way of the dodo when I learned you don't have to read for class.

[kalvano]

One Note. There's a long post on here about how to use it and how awesome it is.

[BVest]

I use Word in Outline View. One single document for each class.

I've tried other programs (Evernote, OneNote, Word's worthless notebook view on mac) but none I liked as much (nor have I found them to be as flexible for me when I then want to use them to help build my outlines) as the outline view of Word.

For the love of god, though, use a real-time cloud backup service for all your law school files.

[dowu]

I use excel

[haus]

I use excel

Why not vi?

[totesTheGoat]

I use excel

Why not vi?

You joke, but I used emacs' org-mode. It's easier than fooling with Word's auto-format... Some days I wish clippy was back, because he was much less annoying than auto-format.

[shock259]

Just used Word. I followed what the LEEWS guy recommend 1L. For those unfamiliar, you make two boxes for each case. On the left box, you put your reading notes. 3 lines max for what the holding/takeaway of the case was, plus any facts that spark your memory. Have to keep this super concise, though. On the right, you put any in class notes or things your professor says. Again, gotta keep this brief. I had one of these for each class. At the end of the semester, they were usually ~20 pages, which isn't too bad. Easy to flip through and review things.

[thisislife49]

I use Word in Outline View. One single document for each class.

I've tried other programs (Evernote, OneNote, Word's worthless notebook view on mac) but none I liked as much (nor have I found them to be as flexible for me when I then want to use them to help build my outlines) as the outline view of Word.

For the love of god, though, use a real-time cloud backup service for all your law school files.

What cloud backup service do you recommend? Many have said dropbox, while others have just told me to use an external hard drive for all backup. Those that said the external recommended using dropbox for sending documents to classmates, but not for storage. Thoughts?

[thisislife49]

Just used Word. I followed what the LEEWS guy recommend 1L. For those unfamiliar, you make two boxes for each case. On the left box, you put your reading notes. 3 lines max for what the holding/takeaway of the case was, plus any facts that spark your memory. Have to keep this super concise, though. On the right, you put any in class notes or things your professor says. Again, gotta keep this brief. I had one of these for each class. At the end of the semester, they were usually ~20 pages, which isn't too bad. Easy to flip through and review things.

Can you email me an example? I can visualize it, but wants to make sure it is the same as what you are talking about.

[BVest]

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