Software for Law School

[Alameda]

I will begin law school in a few weeks and hope to buy most of my books in PDF format. The school has already sent me assignments and subscriptions to Westlaw and other services.

I’m not sure which learning curve is steeper: Learning the law, or learning all of these online tools! I already have a MBP and iPad Pro.

One tool I’m interested in is a PDF viewer which makes it easy to highlight text (yellow marker) and set bookmarks within a document. I will set many dozens of bookmarks. I know there is Preview but open to any better solutions.

I have also begun using Obsidian to take notes, because law is very similar to writing software: You have to trace a particular flow of events, cover every alternative path, reference external objects, etc.

Interested in other tools which are helpful in taking notes and organizing information and thoughts.

Thank you all in advance.

 

[mfram]

Preview is pretty limited with the ways it can modify PDFs in my experience. I especially find it really bad at filling out PDF forms. I've had a much better time with a program called PDFGear. I don't know if it can set bookmarks but I'm pretty sure you'd be able to highlight text sections with it. Give that a try.

 

[Alameda]

Preview is pretty limited with the ways it can modify PDFs in my experience. I especially find it really bad at filling out PDF forms. I've had a much better time with a program called PDFGear. I don't know if it can set bookmarks but I'm pretty sure you'd be able to highlight text sections with it. Give that a try.

Thank you for the help.
I posed this question to Claude, and the support is utterly amazing.
First, Claude helped me create a framework for note taking and organizing my work. For note taking, Claude recommended Obsidian, and then created an Obsidian Vault to create a structure for me. Then, I downloaded all of my class syllabi and asked Claude to re-generate the Vault based on the Syllabi. Not only did Claude create a better-structured Obsidian Vault for me, Claude is now creating a set of Reminders and Calendar entries (an .ics file) for every assignment and event listed in each of my course syllabi.