Hello, If I may ask, how are you doing your work at present? Pages will be important, together with creating relevant templates for drafts, motions, billable hours perhaps, etc. Numbers would be useful for basic tracking of financial information, although you would probably really want to use an account tool or software. Unfortunately I am unable to recommend one, as I am wondering about that myself.
As far as legal research, a solid understanding of VoiceOver skills, including an ability to comfortably move about the Internet and access databases such as Weslaw are important. Although many things may be located using Google, websites with databases and resources specific to certain fields are always the best source for finding specific and detailed information. You should be comfortable accessing PDF files, also. Although many PDF files are somewhat readable and many are not readable at all either because they are hand written text or a scanned image, there are some ways to approach these issues. First, PDF files open in an application called Preview. I recommend you set a short cut key for the NewTextEditWindowContainingSelection command, which does the following: After selecting all of the text with command A, press the short cut key you have created, and the text in Preview or any other application will be copied over to TextEdit. You will then be able to review all formatting and easily move about the text. The problem with Preview is that you can only really read by line, and that isn't even always the most reliable, so I regularly use this command to read PDF files. If the PDF file is a scanned image, you will need OCR (optical character recognition) software to access it. Many people use AbbyyFineReader, but I don't know if this works for PDF files, and I have never used it. There is also a program called iSky PDF Converter, but again I have not had much experience with that tool. These are just a few suggestions. To prepare yourself, I would practice all of these skills to get yourself ready for legal work. You will most likely be writing many drafts and things in your law school career, and this will give you excellent practice. Anne Robertson offers an excellent Pages course covering topics such as basic formatting, how to write a business letter, design a template, and other basic and more advanced word processing concepts that would be particularly useful to someone doing legal work or any other kind of work involving heavy use of word processing tools. You will be fine; it is a matter of practicing, and practicing, and then practicing some more. You won't learn it over night, but you will look up one day and realize you have been doing things with ease you never imagined you would be able to. Best of luck, and please write back if any of us can be of any further help. Harry On Apr 11, 2013, at 11:40 AM, Rahul Bajaj <rahul.bajaj1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm a first-year law student and intend to work as an associate in a > law firm after completing my education. > I'm not very proficient in the use of computers; I only know the basics. > Which applications will I have to use more frequently for doing my work? > What should I do to prepare myself for being able to do legal > research, drafting, etc effectively on my Mac? > > Your views will be really appreciated. > > Cheers, > Rahul > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
