Circus Ponies & Law School Forum

Many years ago TLS held a content competition. The competition is no longer active, but this forum keeps going.
Post Reply
User avatar
Xifeng

Gold
Posts: 2553
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:59 pm

Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Xifeng » Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:34 am

So this was inspired by inchoate_con's post about OneNote!

So, since there isn't a Circus Ponies how-to, I figured I'd do one. Disclaimer: it's not as fancy/in-depth as the OneNote one because 1. I'm lazy 2. This works for me just fine.

I like CP a lot more than Pages/Word for daily note-taking because it's more flexible in terms of the outlining function. The linking is great, and so is the multidex function.

GENERAL LAYOUT AND USE

Here's the general layout of my notebook for Property last quarter. I basically just take the syllabus and organize it that way, and you can have lots of levels of folders and things. You don't have to get as OCD with colors as I do. Property was obviously very case-based, so most of my note pages are divided by cases along with some general casebook page ranges. Different classes are organized slightly different ways.

Image

Here's a brief. Don't judge me, I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. This is also back when I actually briefed (lol). I tended to highlight rules and things with colors, but again that's personal preference.

Image

Note the weird little arrow thing near the case name? (it's also on the main page) That's a link! Click it, and it takes you to this:

Image

This is a page of my casebook notes. I found it helpful to organize it like this so I could get around and see the case in the context of my other notes. And the link turns colors!

When you get lazier and stop briefing, you can also just have your mini-brief/case notes under a little tab and you can expand it when you need to look at it.

Image

Image


MULTIDEX


So the multidex is pretty useful for when you name a case something weird or a professor says something related to it. Say you can't remember Stambovsky v. Ackley, but you remember you need to find that case with ghosts. Multidex -> G -> ghosts -> BAM.


Image

Image

Image



The "capital words" part of the Multidex is amazing for finding case names. And for the FRCP, the numbers part is great, too:

Image


EXAMPLES
So, I do my outlines in Pages so I can just have one giant page of my outline because it's faster, but for certain things I find CP to be invaluable. For the FRCP, I put them all in my notes like this:

Image


The great part was is that you can make it super easy to find the one you want like this:

Image

So it's really useful.

When you still look up words you don't know before you stop caring, CP is great for definitions because of the linking (since when you're outlining, you don't want to deal with all the stupid words you didn't know the first week).

Image


And then you can link to an entire page of definitions for quick access.

Image


GROWLY NOTES
So Growly notes is too free-flowing for me, but I like to use it to make graphics and things. You can have a different file for each of the classes, and then do things like this:

Image

Image

I highly recommend Growly as a supplement to CP for making flowcharts and things! It's great.

srfngdd6

Bronze
Posts: 282
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:08 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by srfngdd6 » Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:38 am

tagged

User avatar
Redamon1

Bronze
Posts: 481
Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2010 2:46 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Redamon1 » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:19 pm

Thanks so much for sharing this! I hear some people use Growly Notes even to take notes... (if there's a model set up out there, I'd be grateful). I might just give both a try and see what works best.

crv8623

New
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2011 11:40 am

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by crv8623 » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:23 pm

This is awesome.

cd7573

New
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:43 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by cd7573 » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:40 pm

Tag

Want to continue reading?

Register now to search topics and post comments!

Absolutely FREE!


User avatar
cougarlive

Bronze
Posts: 307
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:53 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by cougarlive » Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:25 am

Thanks for making this!

mcdeeremitch

Bronze
Posts: 317
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:16 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by mcdeeremitch » Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:45 pm

Tag

User avatar
PaulKriske

Bronze
Posts: 231
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2012 1:47 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by PaulKriske » Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:36 am

Xifeng wrote:I like CP a lot

hahaha.

thanks, though.

User avatar
Archangel

Bronze
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 8:08 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Archangel » Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:45 am

tag

Want to continue reading?

Register for access!

Did I mention it was FREE ?


TheRedMamba

Bronze
Posts: 177
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:33 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by TheRedMamba » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:40 pm

tag

JohnMarshall17

Bronze
Posts: 222
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:52 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by JohnMarshall17 » Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:05 pm

tag

User avatar
magp90

Bronze
Posts: 269
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:59 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by magp90 » Thu May 30, 2013 12:01 pm

tag

Rise'n'shout

New
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 2:46 am

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Rise'n'shout » Thu Jan 09, 2014 5:34 pm

tag

Register now!

Resources to assist law school applicants, students & graduates.

It's still FREE!


Buck Strickland

New
Posts: 82
Joined: Sat Aug 03, 2013 4:23 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Buck Strickland » Sat May 31, 2014 2:11 pm

So the Mac version of OneNote is now available for free, but my understanding is that it kind of sucks compared to the Windows version. Do you all think Circus Ponies is the absolute best alternative? Or would the free version of OneNote do just fine?

User avatar
RZ5646

Gold
Posts: 2391
Joined: Fri May 30, 2014 1:31 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by RZ5646 » Sat May 31, 2014 2:17 pm

Buck Strickland wrote:So the Mac version of OneNote is now available for free, but my understanding is that it kind of sucks compared to the Windows version. Do you all think Circus Ponies is the absolute best alternative? Or would the free version of OneNote do just fine?
Also wondering this. I was very excited when OneNote appeared in the app store, but then I read how it requires a Microsoft account, doesn't have local storage, and won't let you print, and my interest declined rapidly. Also, I already have to deal with meshing Apple's ecosystem with Google's, and I don't want to add yet another cloud system to the fray unless I really need to.

I used Circus Ponies for awhile but it seemed kinda buggy and unintuitive so I switched back to just using Pages outlines (disclaimer: I'm a 0L, so I'm talking about UG notes).

Caesar Salad

Diamond
Posts: 16094
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:06 am

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by Caesar Salad » Sat May 31, 2014 2:31 pm

Tag

User avatar
WhyYaCryin

New
Posts: 100
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 4:24 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by WhyYaCryin » Fri Jun 17, 2016 3:34 am

Tag a dead thread

kkrunner

New
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Jun 24, 2015 3:44 pm

Re: Circus Ponies & Law School

Post by kkrunner » Fri Jun 17, 2016 12:01 pm

Tag

Get unlimited access to all forums and topics

Register now!

I'm pretty sure I told you it's FREE...


Post Reply

Return to “TLS Content Competitions”