Any lawyers or legal practitioners using Obsidian?

Knowledge management
29

Sure!

When I made that comment, almost a year ago, linking to headings wasn’t a possibility. Now in regards to laws I can just link to a heading that refers to a specific article/chapter/etc. Same goes for notes on academic articles or any short document (short as in, not a book). The first thing I do when creating a new “resource” note is to create headings according to table of contents of the document.

That’s just one way in which Obsidian has evolved. With the Dataview plugin, I can use metadata to sort all different files. Using the Templater plugin, I also have the file metadata as for when I created this file and when I last modified it. I haven’t been making good use of tags yet, but I plan on eventually implementing them to sort through topics.

Once I have the headings in place, I have a structure for the note. Within the heading, I start taking notes in usually bullet points, because that’s easier. Most of my PDFs are formatted in a way that simple copy/paste is a solution when I want to directly cite, but I try not to do that too much (I’m guilty of taking notes by “highlighting”, which isn’t very effective for me).

My files are named “SURNAME, Title”. My template (inspired by great examples on the Dataview Snippet Showcase) for any resource I find looks like this:

---
creationdate: <% tp.file.creation_date("dddd Do MMMM YYYY") %>
creationdatetime: <% tp.file.creation_date("HH:mm") %>
lastmodified: <% tp.file.last_modified_date("dddd Do MMMM YYYY") %>
lastmodifiedtime: <% tp.file.last_modified_date("HH:mm") %>
aliases: []
tags:
  - 
type: book/article/caselaw/notes
source:
author: SURNAME, Name
title:
yearpublished:
---

And then on an Index note I put this, using the Dataview plugin:

```dataview
TABLE author as Author, title as Title, yearpublished as Year, tags as Topics, source as Source
FROM "FOLDER"
where type = "book (for example)"
sort author asc
```

Which shows all the notes that fit that criteria.

6 Likes
30

Thank you for your thorough reply! Helps a lot! :wink:

31

I come from a civil law tradition as well, and I am considering obsidian to publish a knowledge base. Can you please tell me how you are dealing with the legislation? I am new to obsidian so please let me know, if possible, all resources you consider useful. Thanks a lot.

32

@amilcar Hi! Sorry it’s taken so long to reply to this. I’ve been refining my process and now I think I’m at a point where I’m comfortable with the workflow.

I love the idea of publishing a knowledge base. Obsidian is a great tool for linking positive law, case law, principles etc. I hoped to at some point be able to do that, but I realised I can link many different interests that probably wouldn’t be as interesting to other people, so that project’s on hold for now :blush: maybe someday.

If you DO publish, or wish to talk more about this, feel free to reach out! I’m fascinated by all the possibilities.

In regards to how to deal with legislation:

I’m keeping one file per law/rule/regulation. Link to blocks is a very valuable resource to linking back between articles, paragraphs, etc. Another tool is Internal link to Link to Headings, for example, a legislation might be separated into titles and chapters that you format as a heading, making it easy to link in other files.

In order to keep direct quotes separate from my own annotations, I use the Admonition Plugin. However, community plugins don’t work on Publish, so you’d have to accomplish something similar with CSS. People have shared different CSS Snippets with pseudo-admonitions on the Discord server, so you might want to check that out!

One thing that’s useful for me to keep in handy, usually within an “info” admonition or otherwise at the top of the note, is how to cite that resource. Easier than to keep referring back to Zotero!

I use (nested) tags for classification, which is a controversial topic but works for me :wink: For example, I have “t/entity/LLC” which is “t” for Type, “entity” for genre (as opposed to, say, “authority” or “law” or “principle”) and “LLC” relating to a specific sort of entity. The “t” part isn’t really needed but it helps clean up the tag pane. For example, a law regulating LLCs would have both the tags “t/law” and “t/entity/LLC”.

I hope this helps a bit! I hope to eventually do a more detailed write-up if there’s interest.

4 Likes
33

Just curious whether you have made any headway with this. I am hoping to implement a workflow where I first import PDFs generated via Westlaw, then annotated, into Zotero or Juris-M. Then, using Zotfile and mdnotes, pull those notes into Obsidian. Just curious whether anyone has been able to get caselaw metadata to pull into Zotero.

1 Like
34

Anyone adapted Obsidian to being a Case Management System?

35

seGvWLg
seGvWLg1920×405 63.5 KB

I’m moving all my legal notes to obsidian I use it for research and academy

36

I’m just starting to use Obsidian and so far I haven’t done much with it. Mainly because I’m still learning to use it, but also because I’m trying to plan how it can be helpful to me. So far I can tell that it will be incredibly helpful with brief writing.

37

Much obliged for your comprehensive sharing, eheh.

Would love to have a glance at your workflow, another comprehensive sharing.

I’m new to Obsidian, so just wandering around getting new idea to implement :smiley:

40

Hi,

I use Obsidian for knowledge management. We are within the civil law tradition, so the sources are mostly statute with commentaries, uniformity decisions or other case law and jurisprudence, but maybe you will found my workflow useful. Also, it is great for final exam, bar exam and consultation preparations especially if combined with Anki.

First, I made a stucture in my vault with separate “I. Practice”, “II. Theory”, and “III. Sources” folders.

The practice folder have subfolders with files dedicated to a specific topic, e.g. case notes, best practices, general informations about organizations, contacts. Anything useful for work, that has significance beyond a daily memo in my diary.

The theory folder have subfolders based on legal branches: public law, private law and special (meaning it has elements of both). It has further subfolders for civil law, commercial law, constitutional law, criminal law, civil procedure, criminal procedure etc. I have built most of these based on lecture notes, textbooks, academic papers and recently my own legal research. I save the sources into the folder for later reference.

The sources folder have notes in relation to the practice and theory folders. If I find a good and reliable publisher, scholar, book, journal I list them. It is so much easier to look here instead of trying to remember, look back my previous sources or use an aggregator.

Trying to keep the formatting simple, I just use # for key concepts and color their nodes in graph view based on their theoretic legal branch. The text is formatted with — for horizontal bars, headings and emphasised with bolds. Easy and effective.

Regards,
M

41

Hey Everyone,
I’m presently a 3L law student and I’ve stumbled upon Obsidian when trying to optimize my note-taking/outlining and I can firmly say that it has absolutely improved my law school experience. I’ve probably spent more time than necessary “optimizing” my workflow but I’m happy to share what I’ve got at the moment and always looking for any

I’m a Canadian law student so I use mostly Westlaw and CanLII for case law. I import them directly to my Zotero folder via the Google Chrome plugin, which nicely auto-populates the case metadata as well (Case name, court, year…). I read cases directly in the Zotero viewer and highlight the parts I’d like to later extract. I have it set up so that each highlighter color is designated for a particular kind of text (e.g. yellow=general text / blue=header / green=block quote). This can be done by going to:
[ Zotero > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor > extensions.zotero.annotations.noteTemplates.highlight > “Modify” ] and then pasting the following code:

{{if color == '#2ea8e5'}}
	<h2>{{highlight quotes='false'}}</h2>
{{elseif color == '#ff6666'}}
	<blockquote>{{highlight}}</blockquote><p> {{comment}}</p>
{{elseif color == '#5fb236'}}
	<p>{{highlight quotes='true'}}</p>{{if comment}}<p><blockquote>{{comment}}</blockquote></p>{{endif}}
{{else}}
	<p>{{highlight quotes='false'}}</p>{{if comment}}<p><blockquote>{{comment}}</blockquote></p>{{endif}}

Instructions on how to create/edit code can be found here if you’d like to change up my color system.

I use the “Zotero Integration” plugin to extract the highlights from the case files and import them directly into my Obsidian literature note on the case. I use the following note template for case law:

---
Court: 
Judge: 
General_Subject: 
Specific_Subject: 
Zotero: ✅/❌
Publish_Date: 
Reviewed_Date: <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>
Citation: 
Status: ❌/⌛/✅
Tags: 🌱|🌲
---
# Case: <% tp.file.title %>
Tags:
[URL Link]

---
## Notes

I like the emojis because they are super simple to use and I prefer seeing color as opposed to just “true|false.” I identify “Status” as :x:=Not Read, :hourglass:=Reading, :white_check_mark:=Read. I use the dataview plugin with the following code block to keep track of all pending case law readings:

TABLE Status, dateformat(file.mtime, "dd.MM.yyyy") AS "Last modified"
FROM !"⚖️ Law/Case Law"
WHERE Status = "⌛"
LIMIT 40

The hourglass symbol can be interchanged with the X or the checkmark to show unread or completed case law readings as well.

I use the “:seedling:|:evergreen_tree:” tags to identify if any further “thought” is necessary on the case. Seedling=Need to think about this a bit more and Evergreen=Done and can be put away.

Underneath the Case Title (Level 1 Header) I include separate tags that may help me locate the case later if need be. I like to use nested tags, so some examples may be “#CivPro/Limitation_Period” or “Tort/Negligence/Causation”.

Then after importing my case law notes my file is saved in a separate case law folder. So long as I’ve tagged it correctly and made sure to include a link somewhere in my class notes then it will not be forgotten or will at least be found if ever required for research.

I hope these workflow tidbits were helpful and I look forward to any suggestions anyone may have! Likewise, if anyone has any questions I’m more than happy to help out if possible.

Cheers

5 Likes
42

This is what I came here looking for. I used to use Casemap, but when I switched to Mac I didn’t want to wrestle with Parallels or VMWare Fusion. There’s nothing really comparable for a Mac. (Having said that, if you’re a Windows user, Casemap is worth paying for.)

I have been trying DEVONthink, but the proprietary database system is a complete nuisance if you need your material to be portable. Recently lost TONS of data and work when Apple made some change to iCloud that essential broke DT. I won’t make that mistake again.

I was/am(?) hoping to use Obsidian, but it seems too cumbersome to adopt as a case manager. Too much work formatting, etc. So now I’m not sure what I want to try next.

43

Also, it is worth checking out the book “Effective Knowledge Management for Law Firms” by Matthew Parsons.

A bit outdated, but shows a great entry point on why and how to build a KM.

1 Like
44

Also, archive everything you have made a note about. Save it - without copyright infringement of course - in the same folder under your own naming convention and create a link to the file in the note.

Books, journals, podcasts, juridicial act and contract templates - anything. Try to use the most universal file extension possible.

45

Heh, is there any available Obsidian showcase of civil law originated ppl?

Would love to see how you guys implement the PKM of laws

46

I am a member of the legal education commission and the human rights commissions of the OAB sectional of my state, and I use Obsidian to manage a personal knowledge base, for external links, referral of bibliographic references with Zotero, academic writing, forensic writing, popular education, community and humanitarian aid, popular legal advice and for many use cases in which I also integrate a mix of technological tools such as Jusbrasil, AWS and Google Cloud, both for the elaboration of my constitutional, administrative, civil, social security, among other branches of public and private law that I work, of course, together with Microsoft Word and some PDF tool that suits the training required by the various electronic process systems existing in my beloved country.

Obsidian is a great tool, despite being under development and can still provide many improvements, but above all because it allows practically the inclusion of any type of plugin and additional functionalities and for its community focused on personal knowledge management and learning methods through writing. and other productivity management techniques, at least that’s what it seems to me.

Obsidian’s notion and backlinks is powerful, its graphic along with the internal and external links can also provide great functionality for a knowledge worker, such as a teacher or lawyer like me, and when it comes to hypermedia or writing in a environment that closely resembles the World Wide Web and GitHub itself.

With Obsidian I can request my notes and enhance navigation between them, in addition to associating content to obtain new insights. I hope to one day improve my programming skills in html, css and javascript and be able to do fantastic things on Obsidian and on the web in general, incorporating technologies and humanities into the science of law.

Of course, I use other techniques and philosophies in my work, which I would not dare to share with you in a single post, without the need for theoretical deepening and practical guidance, even weekend training, such as how I use my own Zettelkasten along with Get Things Done (GTD), Spaced Repetition, HTML Mind Maps linked to notes, file hosting and cloud computing, life coaching assessments, life hacking, biohacking and why not a sub-theme called management of legal knowledge, procedural practice, research and organization of procedural documents and theses with Obsidian through the use of legal technology to search for jurisprudence, precedents, cases, petitions, contractual clauses among other things that permeate the life of a great jurist , lawyer or legal professional.

Other than that, I hope it provided insights into my legal non-profit and education use case.

Big hugs to the community.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Vinícius Procópio

2 Likes
48

same problem with legislation here, pls help

49

Just want to +1 for Obsidian as a tool for lawyers or anyone in the legal field.

I am an attorney who was formerly in private practice and am now in-house. I used Obsidian heavily while at my law firm, and continue to do so in my new role. I use it primarily for matter and task management, communication notes, and (when I was working for the firm) time keeping. Happy to share more details about my workflow if anyone is interested.

I have dabbled in using Obsidian as a PKM system for brief precedents, cases, statutes, etc. as well as my own insights, and found that when I spent the time to set it up, it was a significant value-add. However, I often find that my work is too fast-paced to put in the leg-work throughout my work day for Obsidian to be fully functional for me as a PKM (for the purposes I need, anyway). I also struggle to identify what information is too much to include in my notes, in light of ready access to tools like Lexis/Westlaw. However, I intended to explore this use case for Obsidian more in the future.

1 Like
50

I research business laws/cases and tasks have no significance (for me). I use dataview heavily to gather end results and key points contested

53

Yes I would be interested to hear more about this.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is, in addition to knowledge management, using the daily note as a daily log of my work, calls, meetings, todos, etc. What I’m currently struggling is whether the daily note is the record of all work with links in the project/case note or whether the daily note just has the reference to the discussion, meeting, call, etc (as, say a back link) . And the details are refactored into the project/case note or some other location.