Electronic Tools for Law School

[GreyDude]

Hello! I'm looking for advice on electronic organization tools. Not being a naturally very organized person, I have come to depend heavily on these, but I am finding that my workflow isn't smooth enough and I am looking to improve it. I'm heading into 1L this fall. (Links to apps I mention are at the end).   

I currently use Todoist and Evernote, but I can't integrate them, which is a problem (Todoist is literally to-do lists and Evernote is document management and note-taking, though I don't like it for the latter). A few years back I tried Trello but I found it clunky (it's program management software that’s really more oriented to teams than individuals). My go-to notetaking app on the iPad is GoodNotes, but it doesn't easily mesh with the others. I have tried using IFTTT for this, but no joy. 

So my question (for those who haven't stopped reading) is: what do you use for organizing electronic documents and/or task management? How do you find it?

Just in case it might be helpful, here is more about what I'm looking for :

* I need something that will work well in law school--so electronic document / notes management and task management. Also, I might be taking class notes by hand on the iPad (not typing), so I'd like to integrate that, too.

* Evernote is pretty good for documents. It also has a to-do function that I find inadequate. Todoist is great for task management, but it isn't great with documents. Is there something that does both well, or that integrates well with one or the other of these?

* I'd like to pay as little as possible for subscriptions, but I'm also willing to pay for a good tool.

I'm an Apple guy (iPhone, iPad Pro, MacBook), but don't let that limit your creativity.

Thoughts?

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PS: for those who are interested, here are links to the apps I mention above:

GoodNotes: https://www.goodnotes.com/

Evernote: https://evernote.com/

Todoist: https://todoist.com/

Trello: https://trello.com/

IFTTT (if this then that): https://ifttt.com/

Edited August 7, 2023 by GreyDude
spelling

[Ryn]

If you have an Office subscription, give OneNote a shot. It’s great with lists and tasks, and will even hook up with your Outlook calendar and to-do list. You can also import and annotate PDFs and images right in and among your notes. The pen writing is okay, at least from when I last used it to take notes on my iPad a couple of years ago. It certainly wasn’t as nice to write on as some iPad apps that sense pressure and angle, but it was good enough and the bonus was I was able to get my notes on any other device. It also interpreted your writing and made your notes searchable. 

They may have made improvements to the pen tech since then, too. Worth giving it a shot anyway. 

[GreyDude]

I did check out OneNote a while back, but not recently. The pen interface was one problem, and another was that I didn't want to have my notes connected to the server provided me by my employer (for reasons not worth getting into), so I avoided Outlook and the outlook calendar, as well. I'll take another look! Do you find it effective for document management?

Edited August 7, 2023 by GreyDude

[Ryn]

5 hours ago, GreyDude said:

Do you find it effective for document management?

I didn't really use it for that. I used OneDrive and just organized all my files in folders based on school year and class. In OneNote you can organize things into tabs, sub tabs, and pages, and I do believe you can attach files to it. But that's not something I ever did.

[Turtles]

12 minutes ago, Ryn said:

I didn't really use it for that. I used OneDrive and just organized all my files in folders based on school year and class. In OneNote you can organize things into tabs, sub tabs, and pages, and I do believe you can attach files to it. But that's not something I ever did.

The most underappreciatef feature in OneNote is that you can just paste a screen grab into it and then right click the image ("copy text from image") to extract all of the text. It's really helpful for things like extracting text from a textbook or crappy PDF when the text can't be readily copy/pasted or the formatting is just bonkers.

[GreyDude]

1 minute ago, Turtles said:

and then right click the image ("copy text from image") to extract all of the text.

Ok, you just got my attention.  I’ll have a look for sure.