10 apps and tools for every student lawyer

Here are 10 wonderful tools and applications  every law student should use.

OneNote—You’re probably among the many who use Micro-soft Word or another basic word processing program to take notes. However, another Microsoft product calledOneNoteis specifically designed with note-taking in mind.It has organizational functionality that’s lacking in traditional word processing software. You can include categories and subcategories that will make it much easier to find specific information in the future. For example, you can group notes by semester, then further by subject, and still further by date.You can also search and sort through your entire notebook. This searching feature makes finding topics covered in multiple lectures incredibly simple. In fact, you should always keep future searching in mind while you’re writing notes.For example, instead of inconsistently switching between writing “motion for summary judgment” and abbreviating it as “MSJ,” pick a style and stick with it. That way, subsequent searching will capture every instance of the term.Another great way to organize your notes is to use virtual note tags.Whenever you’re about to discuss a new topic in your notes, consider adding a special character (such as “^”) followed by the topic. Doing so will allow you to search all your notes for terms (such as “^Depositions”) quickly.You can also use different virtual tags to denote different levels of depth (such as largeror more minor treatments).OneNote also allows you to take a photo of your professor’s whiteboard, PowerPointslides, or other visual mate-rial. While many other students are trying to keep up with writing down the important information your professor presentsvisually, you’ll be able toallocate that time to adding other important points only made orally.Finally, OneNote is highly portable. You canaccess one set of noteson your computer as well as your mobile devices. You can also collaborate with your classmates and friends by sharing access to specific notes so that you can jointly edit them.

Class review videos—All the major bar preparation  companies,Including Barbra, Themis, And Kaplan, provide hours of lectures designed to briefly summarize manylaw school classes. Themis is currently the only one to provide these lectures for free. Its lectures include most or all of your first-year classes and a good amount of your upper-level classes. These lectures can be as quick as a couple of hours and as lengthy assix hours or more. They’re intended to provide a very rudimentary overview of a given subject.One unconventional use of these materials is to use them to get anover-arching view of what a course will be like before your classeseven begin. This perspective is especially useful for theupper-level classes, which are usually purelyelective. So if you’re undecided as to whether you should enroll in a particular class, consider spending some time watching one of these lectures to get a sense of what the material is like.Similarly, some students report that in certain classes, it can take weeks or longer for them to see the bigger picture and how material in a class relates to other topics in the same class. Watching these review lectures at the beginning of the semester may allow you to see the bigger picture earlier. This verysimplified version of the material can make the much more detailedreadings and class lectures from your professor easier to understand because you’ll have had some prior exposure to the basics.

Dropbox—By now, almost everyone has heard ofDropbox. However, it’s so important that I’m including it here just in case you’re not aware of it. Dropbox (and alternatives such as Google Drive) allow youto store your files on remote servers. This creates a backup of your documents so you can download them to your other devices. If you’re not using a program with its own backup functionality (such as OneNote), make sure to save your documents to your Dropbox or a competitor’s folder.Throughout your law school career, you’ll probably have a few friends who’ve lost all of their documents due to a computer malfunction. Dropbox’s remote backups can easily prevent this type of data loss for free.

Quizlet—Flashcards areused by students all over the world to study for their exams.Quizletmakes this process much easier by turning your smartphone or computer into a set of digital flashcards. Some people will argue that the process of writing flashcards by hand is an important part of the memorization process.But not everybody wants to carry around hundreds or even thousands of flashcards. Quizlet lets you quickly copy and paste from your notes into its software. It thengenerates digital flashcards you can swipe through. Quizlet also has a text-to-speech feature so you can have your phone read your notes to you like an audiobook.

Lexis for Microsoft Office—LMOis the perfect companion for any class that requires you to submit legal memos and papers. It’s an extension for Microsoft Word that automates and simplifies several common legal writing tasks. First, it automatically makes sure your citation formatting is correct. This can be a huge source of inconvenience for manylaw students (and lawyers, too). LMO allows you to check these citations in seconds.You can also use the Shepard’s Citations Service directly within your Word document. Finally, you can create atable of authorities automatically. Everyonetaking a class such as Legal Writing and Research should use this Microsoft Word extension before submitting their papers page is the perfect companion for any class that requires you to submit legal memos and papers. It’s an extension for MicrosoftWord that automates and simplifies several common legal writing tasks. First, it automatically makes sure your citation formatting is correct. This can be a huge source of inconvenience for manylaw students (and lawyers, too). LMO allows you to check these citations in seconds. You can also use the Shepard’s Citations Service directly within your Word document.Finally, you can create atable of authorities automatically. Everyonetaking a class such as Legal Writing and Research should use this Microsoft Word extension before submitting their papers.

Kindle book versions of popular case books andstudy aids—I’m a big fan of electronic searching mechanisms.So I was delighted to see that many assignedtextbooks and study aids now have Kindle versions available. Whether you have a Kindle device or not, theKindle app works with almost every computer and mobile device. Amazon sells many popular textbooks and legal study aids as Kindle editions.The biggest value in these versions is that you’re generally able to search through the entire book for certain terms or phrases. This can streamline your studying and review process enormously. Students often fear the Socratic method style of teaching. However, searching through your materials electronically can make an unexpected question from your professor a lot more manageable.The Kindle version is often cheaper (but probably not by as much as you’d expect) than a traditional book. And you can use the Kindle app’s text-to-speech feature to turn these books  into audio books.The Pocket app—Pocketis one of the most popular mobile apps in existence. It allows you to save online articles, videos, and other content to all your devices for future viewing. Instead of constantly opening up new tabs or sending emails to yourself, you can use Pocket to better organize the material you intend to read later. Pocket is particularly useful for reading content on a smartphone or other device with limited Internet connectivity. You can download the material when you havegreater access to the Internet and save it for times when the Internetis unavailable. You can also share content with friends or integrate it with other apps. And you can use Pocket’s highlighting tool to better organize your favorite and most important content.

dLaw—Formerly called Droid-Law, this is an Android reference app for lawyers and law students. It allows you to quickly access federal and state statutes and rules of procedure.Some of the material is free, but others, such asstate laws, require a small fee. You can easily save content for offline viewing. And dLaw allows you to use keyword searching so you can pinpoint exactly what you want to find in a given statute or other material.Another Android app, Legal Dictionary for DroidLaw integrates within the dLaw app to provide a free legal dictionary.Lexis and Westlaw haveapps, too—Many students use only Lexis and Westlaw on their computer. However, trying to use these websites on a smartphone can present interface-related problems or limitations, depending on your phone.Each company offers a mobile app as well. These apps often have the same extensive functionality of their website counterparts, and often they provide the better experience on mobile devices.

Black’s Law Dictionary— The most widely cited law book isBlack’s Law Dictionary, according to its publisher. However, it’s a large book that can besomewhat cumbersome to search through.Thankfully, Black’s is now availableas an app, which is significantly cheaper yet arguably a lot better. The app allows you to instantly search for a given word insteadof manually going through the physical book.Given that the 10th edition of the dictionaryis 2,054 pages, electronic searching is particularly convenient. Further, you can carry the dictionary around wherever you have yoursmartphone. While there are free dictionaries available, Black’s is the gold standard and can be well worth the money.

TalksOnLaw(Price FREE /iOSonly)
Talks On Law is a cool N.Y.-based legal media and education companythat seeks to educate lawyers through enjoyable interviews with top thinkers (think podcasts or TED Talks but for law). The TOL (short for TalksOnLaw) mobile app offers a sleek platform, bringingkiller interviews that any legal geek will admire.  The 30-minute interviews cover a wide range of fascinating topics, from constitutional questions about surveillance technologyto the intellectual property implications ofdance and hip-hop music. The app is easy to navigate and 100% free for law students (or anyone not looking to get CLE credits).