If you already use Office 2007, would you upgrade to Office 2010 for the purposes of doing work in law school? Are there any significant differences (e.g. changes in OneNote)?

I would not upgrade
They completely redesigned the user interface so you'll need to relearn how to do things

does 2010 offer any new features or improvements over 2007 that would be useful to a law school student? i would be willing to take the time to learn 2010 if it does.

If you don't you risk being behind a good half of the class. The fact that you will not be able to utilize at least 3 new fonts lets alone be able to use the new ctrl keys will put you at a severe disadvatange...this is a joke. The answer is no

I'm less than a 0L (don't even have an LSAT score yet) but I do use Office extensively for my current 9-5 gig. I think the big user interface upgrade was between 2003 and 2007, so you're probably already used to working with the "ribbon" rather than menus and toolbars. I'm not sure when OneNote changed to the ribbon UI.

Unless you're planning on doing some high-level formatting work or use a lot of clip art there are no real differences that you'd notice. The only reason to upgrade would be to stay current with Microsoft and make future upgrades less jarring.

well based on what i've read about office 2007 and 2010, i tend to agree with the general sentiment that there isn't enough of a difference to necessitate an upgrade.

the main thing that got me worried was a thread that shows how people use onenote in law school:

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=127496

i don't even know how to use half of those features, and i couldn't find some of them in onenote 2007 (ctrl + e for example), so i knew there were some changes, but since i don't actually have office 2010 right now, i can't say exactly what the changes were.

i was considering just getting onenote 2010 if they sold it separately, but now i'm just not sure anymore.

you can always just torrent onenote or the whole office suite

Is Microsoft Office really necessary? What's so special about it that makes it necessary for law school?

Why not just use OpenOffice or LibreOffice?

i don't know that microsoft office is necessary, but i just thought some of its features would be helpful. in addition to some of the features of onenote described in the link i posted, here's an old thread with a more detailed discussion of microsoft office vs openoffice/libreoffice:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=152792

the docx compatibility is no longer a problem. libreoffice opens .docx files just fine now. so my only remaining concerns are:

1. the lack of onenote in libreoffice
2. a possibly better citation system in microsoft word. this could make your life easier when you're writing a paper with 50+ citations?
3. differences in the way documents look when opened in libreoffice vs microsoft office.
4. special features of microsoft word like adding comments to the document that may not be compatible with libreoffice

i don't know enough about other possible differences to comment further, but i'm sure at least some people here have used one or the other. please share your views!

I should note for the record that, as a Linux user, I'd have to get another computer if I wanted to use Windows. I know WINE exists, but that carries its own house of horrors.

If I want Windows/Microsoft Office, I'd have to get another PC. That's why I asked the question I did.

...and as for #4, I've had comments added to by documents that were created in LibreOffice with no problems. It's compatible, so #4 is not an issue. The other three are reasonable arguments, but is it really worth the $100 you'd pay for software? I think not, personally....