A
Tablet PC is somewhere in my future. Why? Because I already have a compelling application for it and one that is likely emerging. I have found that I can capture almost word for word (using a growing list of mnemonics that law students quickly adopt) with a pen and not nearly as much typing on a keyboard. Pencil and paper has the added advantage of quick annotations and drawing relationships between thoughts etc. Also, now this might be a personal quirk, but there seems to less "cognitive dissonance" between active listening and writing with a pen, then there is between active listening and keyboard input (your mileage may vary). I was in technology for twenty years and my typing skills are decent, so I don't believe that the speed of keyboard input is a significant issue, of course faster is always better, but probably only incrementally so. As notoriously competitive as law school is, and as daunting as the "time crunch" is, I still find that comprehensive paper based notes are an advantage. Ah, but when reading week comes, you have all this paper that you have to deal with and no backups! That is where the Tablet PC comes in...
As I reflect on my professional career, I never liked taking a laptop to meetings because it just didn't feel "natural", however others that did (especially project manager types) were probably somewhat more effective in their information gathering and dissemination tasks (i.e. a large part of what a project manager does). So I can see how legal work, where meeting and writing appears to be the lions share of what you do, would lends itself well to the Tablet.













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