Best software for note taking and/or outlining

[JMac42]

has anyone used wordperfect. that is what dell sent in my bundle

I think WordPerfect is infinitely better than Word, which was dumbed down for newbies, as usual.  It's much more powerful.  Once you start getting into more complex documents, Word has a high tendency to screw up the formatting (and it'll be a royal pain to correct it), while WordPerfect chugs along just fine.  My father has had numerous problems writing reports with Word, and has had no such issues with WordPerfect.  Even when I tried to cut & paste text in an outline, Word screwed up the formatting.  I can cut & paste outline text just fine in WordPerfect.  Another thing I don't like about Word is that if you open up someone else's document, Word changes the defaults to that document's settings.  So then you have to change everything back every time you open up someone else's document.  Lastly, what in the world is MS doing making the left & right margins 1.25" instead of 1"?  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

WordPerfect was *the* word processing software before everyone switched to Word simply because MS was getting PC makers to bundle Office with new PCs.  IMNSHO, Word is highly inferior.  If you want to get Office for Excel and PowerPoint, by all means do so.  But I think you'd benefit from using WordPerfect.  Heck, you may as well try it out, since you already have it.

[vw515]

Thank you  for the tip on wordperfect. I have liked wordperfect so far it seems to be great. I will try it.

[mikebravo]

I found that MS Word worked great for me. I used StoreLaw my first semester, but I noticed it wasn't very user-friendly. Plus, when I went to create my outlines it was a pain getting everything into a usable outline format. Instead, I just placed everything into Word anyway (so I spent a lot of time cutting and pasting). My second semester I just took notes right into Word, so my outlines were updated daily. It just needed a little tweaking at the end, which meant more time to study. The new StoreLaw 3.0 just came out so maybe it is better, but I think I am sticking with Word. Hope this helps.

[DULaw2006]

Any decent word processor like MS Word or WordPerfect should be more than enough...

[GA_Kristi]

Has anyone tried CaseSoft's CaseMap?

I used CaseMap in my last job as a paralegal.  I personally hate the program because of the vast number of hours I spent entering our biggest trial into the program.  I'm not in law school yet, so maybe I'm off on this, but I can't see how it would help you in law school.  We used it in our office to keep track of documents, fact patterns, witnesses, etc.  I don't think it would be helpful for briefing or outlining in law school.

[jeffjoe]

Did I mention that when you type s.. in storelaw it turns it into the section symbol?

[swifty]

WordPerfect was THE best word processor and still is IMHO.  The other poster is right, when
MS went to Windows 95, and didn't release the entire code, everybody fell behind.  I had to go back and learn Excel and word, which are dumbed down versions of wordperfect and quatrropro.  Some scientist majors liked Excel before though, but not us accountants.  We we pissed!  Also, when I had my first paper due when I went back to college, I used Word and culd not for the of me figure out why the page numbers wouldn't print.  I even went to MS hoemepage, and saw an article on the problem stating that I should switch to a laser printer, because the manufacturers of injets didn't follow the procedures for Word.  WTF?

I took my paper to school and printed it ou on a laser printer, page numbers showed up.  Tokk the same file home, printed on my inkjet, no page numbers.  Then they tell you you have to edit the bottoms margins so that the page numbers would showed up.  After playing with that for a few hours, I could get maybe every 2 or 3 pages to print a number, not correct, and not all pages.  Unbelievable. 

[ptlaw]

MS Word is the PC version of ClarisWorks (Mac platform).  It assumes you want to do certain things and if you want to do something in a different manner (e.g., certain types of formatting), it drives you crazy trying to change it. 

I downloaded a demo version of WordPerfect this summer to play around with because I know several attorneys who refuse to use anything else.  It is so much easier to control formatting with this program.  The big thing that sold me on it is that you can publish to PDF from WordPerfect.  The court system is in the process of changing to electronic filing and by the time I finish law school, I suspect all of the courts in my area will be using electronic filing.

I used WordPerfect to e-mail tests to my students this summer (I am an adjunct instructor at a local university) and this was the first time that I didn't have to worry about my students screwing up my document when they printed it out. 

I have both MS Word and WordPerfect on my computer.  There is one thing that I like to do that makes WordPerfect "mad" and that is copy things from websites to paste into word processing documents.  MS Word will paste the information as I copied it.  WordPerfect thinks I want to reformat it in some way. [I usually do, but not always.]  I recommend having both because a lot of people use MS Word, but WordPerfect is the standard in the legal world.

PT

[ptlaw]

I would like to hear from others who are using StoreLaw.  There are some things I like about about the program, but I am still making up my mind about it.  I am using 3.0.

PT

[jeffjoe]

I've been using StoreLaw for about six weeks.  I'm happy with it for the most part, but it is not what I would call outstanding.  It's better than juristudent, but not as slick as flashlaw.  The knock on flashlaw is that it is a beta product and it is written in Java.