My initial gut reaction, as someone who learned how to do linear regression with pencil and paper and naught else, was to declare: "Ban laptops from the classroom!"

Then I remembered the tale of King Canute, and reconsidered my Luddite instincts. To comment on Christine's three points:

1. I suspect that multitasking on a laptop in a lecture hall is difficult for most to accomplish. But this arguably might be the latest Darwinian sieve. Of course, a truly scintillating lecture will remove all incentives for students to multitask in the classroom.

2. Not checking email is truly hard. But students can choose whether staying connected with their email correspondents, or learning something from the lecturer, is more important, and accept the consequences.

(I check and reply to email when I watch depositions, but I've never tried it when I'm the one examining or counseling the witness.)

3. I agree that taking notes on a laptop is cumbersome in many instances. So why do many practicing lawyers insist on taking depositions using laptops and LiveNote, or Concordance, or other software employing a live feed of the testimony? My own experience is that such techniques exalt technological "gee whiz" over simply finding out what the witness has to say.

I had a four-week trial several years ago where my opposing counsel had every scrap of evidence loaded onto CDs and brought multiple laptops and flatscreen monitors to court. The only contribution all that hardware ever made at trial was causing my opponent (who is a great lawyer; don't get me wrong) to trip over a wire and cuss in open court (not that I blamed him a bit).

Based on my seating location at the Workshop relative to yours, you have a pretty good idea about my practices. By the end of the final day, I had a signal as well and did check my e-mail a couple of times, but not much.

Beyond checking e-mail, though, I have to say that being near the front of the room made me feel self-conscious about what appeared on my computer screen. I would not have been at all comfortable playing Tetris or surfing the web extensively. The culture of the workshop and the perceived peer pressure in our setting was probably a stronger disincentive to frivolous "multi-tasking" than would likely prevail in your class. Still, cultivating both seems like the best option. (Of course, like you, I couldn't have surfed or IM'd and have had any hope of engaging the substance of the workshop and, like you, I'm probably better at recognizing that now than I would have been when I was 22.)

In terms of the note-taking on the computer being more difficult for diagrams and equations and the like: that's pretty easily surmounted by (i) supplemental paper notes with "insert diagram/equation #1 here" notations in the typed notes; (ii) pre-set macros that quickly generate the building blocks of both diagrams and equations; (iii) cutting and pasting from prior diagrams/equations; or (iv) some combination of the above.

I was an early adopter of laptop note-taking in law school (in the pre-Wi-Fi era) and found it to be much more suited than pad and pen to allowing me to take extensive notes, from which I studied and learned best, while maintaining some engagement in the class.

I've followed this debate with interest. I used my laptop for notetaking extensively in law school. Yes - I checked and responded to email but no, I never played Tetris (or solitaire or Texas hold 'em, or any other game, but I never do, anyway). I used graphics software or the simple drawing program in Word to diagram things quite frequently.

The MAIN benefit I found was that I could rapidly jump back and forth in my growing notes document for a given class, revising the early material with illuminating details not learned or understood until later in the semester. I also had immediate access to my notes from other classes, so I could easily check on comments on cases that cross over multiple disciplines (think of the number of cases that make appearances and link concepts in both Property and Constitutional Law, e.g.).

For me, the ability to more effectively integrate new information into old was the best reason to be working electronically.

I certainly had classes in which laptop use was not appropriate. For example, in small seminar classes in which face to face discussion is the configuration of class, it would have felt as inapproprate as bringing a laptop to a dinner party (a non-blogging dinner party). That being said, for most larger classes, I would have been most upset to have laptops banned.

Are these professors going to ban doodling next? How about spacing out? Would I still be able to think about other things during their classes?

These professors need to get over themselves. If they can't hold the attention of students during class, they should make their class more interesting. And if students don't care enough to pay attention, they're going to surf the internet or, if that's not available, they're going to find something else to do other than listen to the professor. I rather doubt the percentage of students actually paying full attention to class has declined since the introduction of laptops.

I agree fully, though, with those who would exclude laptops from seminars. You don't need to take notes and having a barrier doesn't facilitate discussion.

As a student in both the JD and MBA disciplines, I've seen both extremes of laptop use. Generally speaking, law school allows and business school doesn't. My take:

I took tons of paper notes in business school and lost them all. Managing paper notes is for dinosaurs. It takes too much time sorting, outlining, digesting, reworking, and relearning notes in paper form.

In law school, my laptop notes were indispensible. For the younger generation, it's easier to type what is being said exactly as it is said, and at the same time, digest what is being said. This can be very important to mastering the law correctly. Students are guaranteed to use these notes later on.

Let me share my opinion of those law professors that rant on and on about students multi-tasking on laptops during class: they're pedantic and oppressively opinionated. They need to get over themselves. Many of them like to hear themselves speak. They usually get off-topic and never come back. Honestly, these types of teachers are better at spotting internet users than they are at teaching a class. And they ought to worry about students multi-tasking during class because bad teaching is not captivating.

There are students that get bored and play around on the internet. But even boring material can be captivating to those students with a proclivity to learn. As the old adage goes, don't let a few bad eggs spoil it for everyone.

"For the younger generation, it's easier to type what is being said exactly as it is said, and at the same time, digest what is being said."

Pete, You make some good points, also made by one of my favorite former students, Mary Ann Brow, about managing notes with a computer, but I must say that this statement is a crock. Two things that bother law professors when they read this:

(1) We don't want you to write a transcript of class! That is not only a colossal waste of time, but a huge distraction (see more below). Just look at your description of class: the professors are "pedantic and oppressively opinionated" and they "usually get off-topic and never come back." Why in the world would you want to transcribe that? Even "good professors" don't think that their classroom discussions should be transcribed. Occasional notes should suffice.

(2) We know that people cannot transcribe and digest. The human brain simply doesn't work that way, and it isn't a generational issue.

Gordon,

Thanks for the hat tip. Yours were great classes. For the record, I don't recall using my computer much at all in your Entrepreneurship seminar class, but I used it quite a lot in Bus. Orgs. I and II for the aforementioned reasons.

My use of a computer was no more transcribing than my use of paper would have necessarily been shorthand transcription. It helped me 1) because I can type faster than I can legibly hand write, and 2) because as I mentioned before, it made management of information efficient. I didn't mention it before, but I also liked having electronic notes because it's particularly easy to supplement them with information from elsewhere. I was and am an compulsive reader of law-related blogs. While I was taking various Constitutional Law courses, I used to love finding interesting on-point nuggets of insight in blog threads, e.g., from The Volokh Conspiracy. I would sometimes add these as footnotes to my class notes.

As you know, it's not a generational thing with me, because I'm reasonably sure I'm older than you are.

Mary Ann

I thought I would include a link to a highly commented article by engadget on this same topic:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/03/professors-banning-in-class-laptop-use/

But that is an interesting question: With students paying exorbitant amounts to get a good legal education, shouldn't they have more say on the way they learn in class (as opposed to a teacher who is hired to supply that good legal education)? Yeah, it's the chicken or the egg question; who came first, the students or the teachers? And I know you might add that a teacher can't teach unless there is some way to control that process, but . . . who knows.

I want to note, however, students taking computer notes--even verbatim notes--is not akin to a court reporter taking notes without comprehension. I think of it as preliminary osmosis. That is never the end of dealing with those notes.