Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law now has access to Power Notes Plus – a powerful browser extension that allows you to gather and organize your research.
PowerNotes is a tool to help you save, annotate, and organize sources you access from databases and the internet. To use PowerNotes, you simply highlight text in your browser. Then you can save that text, create notes, generate a citation, and (later) organize your references into an outline. Your outlines can be exported to MS Word, Google Docs, Excel, or Google Sheets.
PowerNotes works with Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, Bloomberg, and many other popular legal databases.
How to install PowerNotes:
Short Guide
5-Step Detailed Guide
(on the PowerNotes website)
Advanced Features
(on the PowerNotes website)
Q: Does it generate Bluebook and/or ALWD citations?
A: For the most part, yes. However, you must double-check your citations. PowerNotes takes citations from Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, and Bloomberg and copies them into your PowerNotes interface. It will also auto-populate fields in PowerNotes to help you with generating manual Bluebook citations. PowerNotes does a good job of this but it is not 100% accurate.
Q: Can I export my notes and outlines from PowerNotes?
A: Yes, you can easily export to a .docx file or a .xlsx file so that you can open your notes in MS Word, Google Docs, MS Excel, or Google Sheets.
Q: Does this work with Macs?
A: Yes, it works with PC, Mac, and Chromebook. It is a browser extension that works within your Chrome or Firefox browser.
Q: Can I use PowerNotes on .PDF’s on my computer?
A: Yes, you simply use your Chrome or Firefox browser to open the .PDF and then you can use PowerNotes to manipulate the text the same as any webpage. You can just drag-and-drop the .PDF into your browser window.
Q: What about pictures and diagrams?
A: Yes, PowerNotes will allow you to save pictures and organize them within your outline. If you cannot right-click and save the picture, you can simply use the “take screenshot” feature (pictured below) to capture a portion of a web page and save it in your outline.
