GroundBooth- Free Law Student Notetaking Tool, Study Group & Class Social Networking

GroundBooth is a free note-taking and study group social networking service, designed specifically for law students. It was designed by a law student – C|M|LAW third year Art Geigel. GroundBooth can also be used by an entire law school class to allow the professor and students to continue the discussion outside of class. See About GroundBooth for more information and a video demo.

Why use GroundBooth instead of Word for notetaking and Facebook for social networking?

Student notes can be organized better than in Word. You can expand/collapse entire sections of notes using GroundBooth. All your notes become incorporated into your overall outline which can be auto-generated at the end of the semester. Searching notes becomes easier because you no longer have to sequentially step through each instance where a certain word appears. You receive actual search results stating, “The word x is located in this case”. Finally, a student can take and access all their notes in the cloud. If you use Word, you run the risk of saving only to your hard drive which can fail. GroundBooth backs up notes nightly and will soon integrate Dropbox backups.

Facebook is great for social networking with ALL your friends, but GroundBooth cuts out the noise of Facebook and allows you to concentrate on communicating with your fellow law students and faculty. Your class notes, the class discussion and study group are all contained in the same site. It creates an intimate setting for your specific law school, and is a closed universe social network. Many of the new features of GroundBooth enhance this unique online community.

So, what is new with GroundBooth?

The Docket: Every person, course and study group has a designated area called “The Docket” to post comments, files, and more. It is similar to a facebook wall. You can see all the discussions for a particular class you are taking in one place, and even search the postings.
The Scoreboard: Have some fun in law school, engage in some friendly competition and maybe win a prize. Students earn points by checking in (ie. signing on to a class page). Students can award points to each other, say, for having a great answer in class. Students can only award 3 points a day to other students. The student with the most points at the end of the semester will win a prize.
Improved text editor, with an autosave every 2 minutes and the ability to open multiple windows. Outlines and notes can be exported to word to print the material and/or as a backup.