Top Apps for Law Students
As a law student, you already know the staples of mobile apps that almost every lawyer-in-training needs: WestlawNext, Black’s Law Dictionary, BARBRI, ABA Journal, and SCOTUSblog, to name just a few.
But here are 10 mobile apps that can help you become a more effective, efficient and organized law student that you might not have thought about (especially in a law school setting):
1. Things
The app is simple to use and beautifully designed, and it will help law students get — and stay — organized. There’s an inbox for quickly adding whatever’s on your mind, and spaces for today's tasks, upcoming tasks, and things you'll get to eventually—or maybe never. You can connect your calendar to see your to-dos in context of your day, and the app integrates with both Siri and Apple Reminders.
Useful to the student: You can add notes and checklists to each task, turning “Write App Ad Brief” from one monolithic task into a more manageable set of smaller tasks.
2. Wunderlist
Like Things 3, Wunderlist is another task-management app. With Wunderlist, you can create all the lists you need and access them from your phone, tablet and computer. You can also easily share lists and collaborate with classmates, friends or anybody else. And setting a reminder ensures you never forget important deadlines ever again.
Useful to the law student: If jotting down what you need to get done and checking off each task as you complete them give you a sense of accomplishment, then this app is for you.
3. Evernote
Evernote is one of the most popular productivity app
today, and it’s getting more popular than, well, ever. You can do much more on Evernote besides simply taking notes. You can use Evernote to be your to-do list manager, reminder, read-later app, or cloud-storage service.
Useful to the law student: You can use Evernote to communicate, collaborate and share in real-time with anyone in the world (like members of your study group) without ever leaving Evernote. You can also get real-time notifications on your mobile devices.
4. HootSuite
Admit it: you’re on social media. And you’re probably on social media a lot. It’s today’s reality for most people. HootSuite is a social media management tool that allows users to update and post any pages or profiles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Myspace, WordPress. If you spend a lot of time on social media and have a lot of profiles to take care of, streamlining all of those profiles into one simple system can help save you a lot of time.
Useful to the law student: Less time on social media means more time studying!
Voice Dream Reader is considered the world’s most accessible reading tool. With advanced text-to-speech and a highly configurable screen layout, it can be tailored to suit every reading style from completely auditory to completely visual, plus synchronized combination of both. Users can connect their Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote accounts to the app to access PDF, ePub, Word, and other text files saved there.
Useful to the law student: If you have long distances to travel to and from law school, you might find the ability to listen to your typed lecture notes or upcoming case readings more productive than listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
6. Dropbox
Dropbox is a cross-platform sync, backup, and file sharing tool. The Dropbox mobile app allows users to access any file in their Dropbox account from their iPhone (and other mobile devices). Forgot your outline at your study group meeting? Visit the Dropbox mobile app and email members of your study group any document in your Dropbox.
Useful to the law student: As more and more law students are replacing large-capacity laptops with smaller memory iPads and netbooks to take to classes, the Dropbox mobile app is becoming more relevant and useful by the day. Not only are all your files backed up, but they are all in one place and easily accessible from all of your devices, wherever you may be.
7. Streaks
The Streaks app bills itself as “the to-do list that helps you form good habits.” You can customize up to six tasks that you want to turn into daily habits. Read two hours each day? Work on your course outline for 1 hour each day? Brief at least two cases a day? Exercise for 30 minutes? You can even customize tasks that are not for every day, like go to the Y every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Every time you complete a task, your streak is extended. If you break the chain, your streak will reset to zero days.
Useful to the law student: Working on something on the scheduled days helps you form a new habit – and forces you not to procrastinate.
Pomodoro Time Pro is a powerful personal productivity tool incorporating the principles of the Pomodoro Technique™, which offers a systematic approach to getting things done and helps achieve set goals faster and more efficiently. The basic five steps of the Pomodoro Technique™ are: (1) define the tasks that you’ll be working on; (2) set the Pomodoro timer to X minutes (25 minutes by default); (3) start working and continue until the timer rings; (4) take a short break; and (5) after four Pomodoro alarms, take a longer break (15 to 30 minutes as a rule).
Useful to the law student: You can use this app to maintain focus while studying and to help you keep on top of your workload.
9. JotNot Pro
JotNot is the quickest and easiest way to save a digital version of your paper documents. With JotNot's advanced image processing algorithms, your scans come out crisp, clear, and suitable for printing every time.
Useful to the law student: You can quickly take photographs of your handwritten notes and other documents to ensure that they don’t lose them. JotNot can also capture a document as well as a fax machine can -- and, of course, it’s much easier to carry around!
10. join.me
join.me is a web-based collaboration software application for screen-sharing and online meetings. New to join.me’s family of products is its Whiteboard for iPad app. Why take a picture of a whiteboard and email it to the team when you can create whiteboards on an infinite canvas by writing, drawing or uploading images right from your iPad?
Useful to the law student: Want to meet as a study group with some of your classmates, but everyone is everywhere except at the law school? You can join meetings in seconds from your mobile devices. And now you can host meetings, present files, and even whiteboard from your iPad.
What's your favorite app to help you get through law school? Let me know in the comments.
