LearnLeo is a free, cloud-based platform dedicated to helping students excel in law school. LearnLeo is an study aid that allows law students to annotate, collaborate, and brief cases in a variety of courses, with casebooks already included online so you can use your laptop, tablet, or phone to access and read your assignments anywhere, any time. Although LearnLeo cases are similar to what’s featured in your casebook, the abridgments of the cases in your book are copyrighted and therefore cannot be reproduced exactly the same by LearnLeo.
To begin, go to LearnLeo's website and sign-up for an account with your university email address.
Once you create your account, you will be sent a validation email, be sure to check your ONU Spam folder.
LearnLeo also offers four specialized products, one for Law School Prep, which is great for building your skills before starting your 1L year, Academics, which is great for preparing for class, Careers, which is great for tracking your job-hunting, and PowerNotes, which is discussed further in our Citation Management Tools Guide.
You will be able to switch between these products in the top right-hand corner of your LearnLeo account.
To collect and organize research from online resources you will need to install and log in via the LearnLeo Chrome Extension, PowerNotes. Currently, PowerNotes only supports research on Google Chrome but is hoping to include more web browsers in the future.
Once you’ve installed the Chrome Extension, you’ll be able to highlight and annotate in all Chrome browser tabs. As you work, PowerNotes collects and saves all your notes and highlights no matter where you get them, whether it’s Wikipedia, any of the legal research providers, or other online resources.
Note that you won’t be able to highlight and annotate some websites that aren’t research focused, including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and Google Docs.
More information on this resource can be found on our Citation Management Guide.
Currently, LearnLeo offers an iPhone and iPad app so you can prepare for your classes anywhere! Download the app here: LearnLeo App.
To start adding notes, you will select the course from your main page and then the case you are looking to brief. Once you select the case, the Case View will open allowing you to brief the case with notes and highlights.
LearnLeo allows you to highlight important passages on your computer just like you would in your casebook. Once a passage is selected, the My Highlighters box will appear prompting you to choose an element of the brief. The My Highlighters box contains the standard case briefing Elements. For details on case briefing, generally, and specifics on each of the Elements, learn How to Brief a Case.
Once you have selected an Element from the My Highlighters box, LearnLeo will:
At any time, you can delete a highlight, add or modify your notes on the highlight, change the selected element by clicking on the left colored portion of the Notes box.
Clicking on a case puts you in the Case View. Here you can highlight and take notes on the cases as you read. LeanLeo will generate a case brief on your notes and highlights.
Once you’ve read, highlighted, and taken notes on a case, click on the Brief View icon. When you open Brief View, you will see, LearnLeo has automatically generated a stand-alone case brief based on your highlights and notes.
Here, you can edit these elements however you'd like by clicking on them, or add additional notes by clicking on the bottom of the category tag.
The Class View presents both the Brief View and the Case View in a split-screen. That’s the Brief View on the left and the Case View on the right. Edit notes associated with highlights by clicking on them. Add in-class notes by clicking on the bottom of any Element section.
You can also quickly scroll to any passage you highlighted by clicking on the highlighted quote on the Brief side. LearnLeo will automatically scroll to that highlighted section on the Case side. Use Control-F on your browser to search for any passage in the case.
At any time, you can switch between Case, Brief, and Class Views by using these icons in the top tool bar.
In a study group and want to compare or share notes from class? You can easily do this with LearnLeo! In the top toolbar, click on the plus sign button to send invites to your fellow cohorts. Invitees will be granted access to your online brief, allowing them to see all of your highlights and annotations; however, they are not able to make any changes. Nonetheless, your invitees can add "Key Takeaways" at the bottom of the shared brief.
LearnLeo gives students the ability to change how their library is presented in the top right-hand corner. These preferences include font size, background color, line spacing, and column width.
At any time, whether it be before class or when you are ready to integrate the case into your outline, you can export your case brief. You can Download your case brief to a formatted Microsoft Word file.
At the bottom of each View (Case, Brief, Class), LearnLeo offers an option to compare your work with their own briefing.
When you select this, a blue box will appear around your page, and depending on what view you are in, LearnLeo's own annotations will appear for you to compare with. 
You can add and remove materials from your LearnLeo library at any point by scrolling to the bottom of your library and clicking on the "Add/Remove Materials" box. This will take you to LearnLeo's library of materials to choose from.
The Taggart Law Library is here to help! Schedule an appointment with a librarian or chat with us using our online chat feature. Open to ONU Law students, faculty, staff, and alumni.