. Forum

[lawschoolbound13]

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[mi-chan17]

I took handwritten notes through all of law school, and did fine.

[swampman]

Some people do, and some professors don't allow computers in class.

[emciosn]

I took handwritten notes all through law school as well and did fine. I think it helps with concentration (no distractions) and distilling/processing the information as opposed to just blindly typing every word you hear. Plus when it comes time to outline for finals, it forces you to go through all of your notes and type everything up--the process of making the outline this way helps to remember the material I think.

Things don't move so fast in class that it is impossible to handwrite. A lot of class is your classmates talking, which there is generally no need to write down--really you just focus on the conclusions the professor gives you. Also some of my professors did not allow computers so just handwriting for every class gets you used to it at the very least.

[logdog]

Yes. You should absolutely take handwritten notes. It forces you to focus on important information and not just transcribe the lecture. It doesn't give you the option of getting online during class.

[Other25BeforeYou]

I took handwritten notes all through law school as well and did fine. I think it helps with concentration (no distractions) and distilling/processing the information as opposed to just blindly typing every word you hear. Plus when it comes time to outline for finals, it forces you to go through all of your notes and type everything up--the process of making the outline this way helps to remember the material I think.

Agree completely. I did a mix of handwritten notes and laptop notes, and I always did better in the classes in which I took notes by hand.

[lawschoolbound13]

Thank you everyone! This is encouraging because I agree, I think I absorb material better when I hand write it. I was only concerned as to if it is feasible to keep up with note-taking when they are written by hand. I definitely plan on hand writing my notes and using my laptop for other necessities in school. I also do not even like to read notes that I have taken on my laptop, I'm not sure why. Thanks for the input everyone.

[BmoreOrLess]

I think there is an instance when you should consider taking notes on your computer even if you're the type of person who benefits from hand writing: If you're professor pulls out random individual points from class on exams (like my civ pro prof) I think you're better off with taking notes on your computer. It's much harder to transcribe every little comment by hand.

[blsingindisguise]

I think I may be in the minority, but I vastly preferred laptop notes. My handwriting is terrible and slow, and I wind up with a bunch of messy, disorganized nonsense. The most important part of the process for me was distilling the notes toward the end of the course (especially if it was open-book/open-note final), and having typed notes made that 10x easier.

As far as distractions, I would just switch off the wi-fi on my laptop. Took some discipline, and only lasted for the first year, but that was enough to get the grades that counted. I'm also an auditory learner so I think I tended to naturally listen to the lecture and pick stuff up that way even when I was typing, because I generally do well listening to lectures.