I'm just finishing up my second year of law school and I've noticed similar things, though our school has seen a big uptick in Mac users who seem to use a wider variety of software. On Windows, almost everyone uses Word, though most don't even bother with outline mode. Some people use OneNote but it's a rarity. One girl takes her notes in Excel because she likes the way she controls the indentation and nothing magic happens (reformatting, auto styles, that kind of thing). The Mac users seem split half-half I'd say between Word in "notebook" mode and various outliners like NoteBook and OO. I think OO is the most popular of the dedicated outliners.

-- Alan

dan7000 wrote:

I graduated from law school last May. I
used ADM all through law school and it was a huge advantage. I agree that it was always
curious to me that most of my classmates didn't use information management software.
It's especially curious because the accepted method of studying in law school is to
create an "outline" of everything you know about a topic and then to refine that
outline into a tool to take into your exams (or to memorize for closed-book
exams).

When I learned that I was expected to make an outline, it seemed natural to me
to then try to find some good outlining software. But that's probably because, prior
to law school, I was a software developer and so I naturally gravitate towards
technical solutions to problems. I think most of my english major / philosophy major /
poli-sci major classmates aren't as drawn towards software solutions as I am.

Most
of my classmates made Word outlines (ugh!). NoteMap was sold, and prominently
displayed, at the law school bookstore - and yet only a couple of my classmates used it.
(We all took notes on notebooks during class, so you could easily see how everyone in
front of you organized their notes.) Some people asked me about ADM when they saw me
using it, and I enthusiastically praised its advantages, but I'm sure no one ever
adopted it -- it just looked too geeky and complicated. I actually like Notemap, but I
feel burned by the ADM dead end so I'm going with the big boys now (OneNote). I'm slowly
exporting all my law school notes into OneNote outlines as I need a particular topic.
I'm not totally happy with my new solution, but it's still a heck of a lot better than MS
Word :)