The ancient art of 'arguing' has stood the test of time, originating in the times of Mythical creatures, Gods, and laws; Ancient Greece and Rome. What originated as the "orators" in Athens where denizens of the civilization of yore would have to argue their case, or have another 'ordinary' persons to argue it on their behalf. From there, the murky waters of the history of lawyers is established and we don't really even know how the profession started. One day, it was clearly understood that lawyers were a normal part of everyday life and just became the standard for almost any and every legal troubles you might have. From divorces, legal defense teams for corporations, criminal prosecution, to civil cases, estate writing and contract experts. The cases where you need a lawyer are abundant, especially so now.
Lawyers have taken it a huge step further from Ancient Greek orators to now modern, tech savvy professionals. To keep up with the times, legal practitioners across the globe will have to adapt to modern technological advances. To help them win their cases, do research for clients or searching for legal precedence, they're going to need the best laptops for lawyers to create a seamless process. Being a lawyer is tough enough as is with pressures and extreme scrutiny from multiple parties. We aim to simplify the process by taking out unnecessary headaches and problems like a slow laptop, constant crashing, or even lesser considerations you didn't know would affect your workflow like an ergonomic keyboard, high resolution display or a lightweight, portable laptop.
Besides established, professional attorneys, there are also unestablished up-and-coming lawyers doing their due diligence in law school. Even law students need a high quality, powerful, compact laptop to accompany them for a full day of classes, to the library, to internships, cafes, and back home all over again. Safe to say a premium laptop for lawyers would also serve law students well. Either way, we'll make sure that the best laptop for lawyers and law students will be adequately powered for the price.
But before we get into the search for the best laptop for lawyers, let's take a minute to understand what processes, programs and software lawyers use on a daily basis.
What Does a Lawyer Need a Laptop For?
Besides the most obvious answers of web browsing, streaming, music and probably countless Microsoft Word documents; there are now newer, easier processes for vital lawyer tasks. Lawyers will also probably be using PDFs often, so having a reliable PDF reader and converter to Word docs would streamline the legal process.
Modern innovation has created services like AbacusNext, Clio, and Harvest which simplify everything a lawyer has to manage. From time tracking, accounting, client management software, document management, file notes, and cloud software like Google Drive, DropBox, etc. for easy access to case files.
Law Students & Attorneys
For law students, it wouldn't hurt to familiarize yourself with concepts and real world 'law' tasks that need doing. Having that knowledge and experience could prove useful if you were to apply for internships at firms and later on when you embark on your very own law career. That little extra step might make you appear over other candidates, especially in a dog eat dog world where there are hundreds, if not thousands vying for the job.
It's safe to say it's even more important for law students to be equipped with a high quality, flagship level laptop as that's going to be your one, dedicated machine. Employed lawyers might have the backing of their firm for resources and a laptop, where as students are expected to get these tools themselves. Even law students will use their laptops consistently for taking notes, writing research papers and assignments, and even things like streaming a movie or binging your favorite Netflix series (see the best laptops for streaming Netflix).
That being said, it looks like lawyers have an almost insurmountable number of responsibilities to manage, and to help them execute these tasks we're going to take a look at what the top line specs and features you should look for in the best laptop for lawyers.
Features To Look For
Since there are no inherent 'specs' or minimum requirements for lawyers per say, we're going to speak more in a general sense plus some extra features we think would be beneficial for aspiring lawyers and veteran attorneys alike. For the most part, these specs will include the operating system, display, processor, RAM/storage, and portability/battery life. Mainly as these specs and 'features' are the exact things that will affect your workflow and process. Hitting the base recommendation for all these features, and taking it the extra mile will help narrow down the search for the undisputable best laptop for lawyers. Let's get straight into the features to get a better understanding of what we're looking for.
1. Operating System
"What is the best operating system (OS)" your laptop runs is honestly a vague question. Depending on your own personal laptop history and preferences, the answers might vary. Mostly you will see Windows 10 enabled laptops like the Microsoft Surface lineup. But you could take another route, and opt for Apple's staple macOS operating system instead.
As Windows is the operating system most people, young and old will be accustomed to, this is going to be our most featured operating system. Apple's macOS, while intuitive, powerful, and pretty, the process of learning new commands, keys and functions may be too overwhelming for the average consumer. If you are using, or have used a macOS laptop like the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, you should be more than alright getting the latest and greatest MacBook pro from Apple. But if you haven't, I'd suggest sticking to what you know.
There aren't intrinsic differences within applications and software you'd use on a macOS or Windows 10 laptop, but more of a question of what you're accustomed in terms of navigating the entire user interface. Not to mention that historically Apple's laptops like the MacBook Pro have been priced significantly higher than other cheaper, capable Windows 10 laptops. Either way, we'll include the best of both worlds for you to properly consider and stack against each OS.
2. Processor
The processor is where all the magic happens for your laptop. Your processor will determine how efficiently your laptop performs, how fast it is, and how much it can handle at any given time. For reference, we'll take a look at a dual-processor like the Intel Core i3 versus the powerful quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. Mostly dual-core processors are more energy efficient and cheaper, while quad-core processors has (as the name suggests) four individual cores which splits the work of loading applications, software and files for faster load speeds.
Besides speed, a stronger processor will also minimize slowdown, lag, and freezes. For lawyers, since you don't technically need the very top-end 11th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, a slightly dated 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processor will work just as well. Considering you will still need to manage multiple programs, documents, tabs, and files open at a time, it's best to stick to at the very least an 8th Generation Intel Core i5 processor. Powerful performance will also prove its worth when you're combing through huge databases and Excel spreadsheets or hundreds of pages in a PDF file and it's silky smooth, without even a second of load times.
Graphics Card
Something I want to mention is about the graphics card spec. Since you're not handling any graphically intensive tasks such as graphic design, video editing, gaming, and image editing, you'll be better off opting for a laptop with an integrated graphics card. Since a discrete graphics card will cost you a premium just for being there, it's advisable to save some money on this spec to opt for more RAM/storage, a high performance processor, or high-resolution display.
3. Display
What's the point of all that performance if you're not going to have a good time looking at the results? That's right, having a crystal clear, vibrant display is just as important (if not more) than your processor simply because as lawyers, you're not going to be running too many super intensive CPU tasks. To fully take advantage of your performance, complement it with a stunning Full HD display and you'll have a good time reading through boring case studies and research papers. A Full HD display comes in at a 1920 x 1080 resolution, the base resolution for most web content such as videos on YouTube, Netflix shows and movies, Hulu, etc.
Screen Resolution
A high-resolution Full HD display will also make things like text, menus, and the general screen clarity and vibrancy that much better. As a base, the best laptops for lawyers and law students will house at least a Full HD resolution.
Screen Size
Besides the display resolution, the other factor when it comes to displays is the screen size. Most often you'll see a 15.6-inch to 14-inch screen size, and smaller 13.3-inch to 12.3-inch displays. For legal practitioners, I'd recommend trying to find a laptop between 15.6"- 13.3" since you're doing a lot of reading. Having that extra screen real estate might prove useful in the long run when your eyes are too tired to squint. Besides that, the only other thing the screen size affects is the overall weight and dimensions of the laptop. We'd also recommend a smaller screen like 14-inches as these typically come with a smaller footprint, making it easier to carry and much more portable. But more on that later.
4. RAM/Storage
To properly supplement the processor, having enough RAM and speedy storage is essential. Your best bet would to go all out with your RAM with 16 GB RAM. Depending on your budget, you'll see various RAM configurations ranging from 4 GB, to 8 GB and 16 GB but for attorneys, having at least 4 GB as a base should be enough to support your processor.
RAM
Having a higher RAM capacity will help manage multiple programs and files open at the same time by basically keeping it running in the background. A high capacity memory unit like a 16 GB RAM will allow for 16 GB worth of programs, services and applications to run simultaneously. If you open too many programs on a lower capacity unit like 2 or 4 GB RAM, your laptop will have a harder time managing to keep things running and you will face slowdowns and crashes more often. So to be safe having a powerful processor and high-capacity RAM will ensure your laptop's performance and keep you stress free from avoidable problems.
To bring both processor and RAM performance to the next level, investing in a high quality storage option will be your next step. For the most part, you'll see that the laptop industry has evolved to equip their laptops with a high capacity solid state drive rather than the slower, antiquated hard disk drive of yesteryear. A solid state drive is essentially just smarter than a hard disk drive as it directly obtains information from the microchips onboard the SSD rather than using magnetism. The caveat here is that a solid state drive is way more expensive at higher capacities like 512 GB or 1 TB compared to hard disk drives.
Storage Space
As a base, we would recommend you invest in at least a 256GB SSD to complement your processor and RAM for optimal performance. Depending on the price, we may recommend a lower capacity 128 GB SSD but that's a bit too little storage in my opinion. For any laptop we highlight, try to add in as much storage as you can to future-proof the laptop. A high capacity SSD will be useful as you pile on more and more programs and files onto the on-board storage over the years.
5. Portability/Battery Life
We grouped both battery life and portability aspects together as they mostly relate to each other. Your portability is measured by three various factors: weight, screen size, and battery life. Hitting these three features sufficiently will help increase how portable a laptop is. Weight is rather self explanatory why it would be essential. It literally just means how light your laptop is, equates to how portable it is. Mainly, laptops that manage to weigh under 5 pounds is light enough. However, another factor affecting the weight is how big the screen is.
Transportability
The screen size typically dictates how heavy your laptop is going to be. Having a bigger 15.6-inch display will net in a bigger body to accommodate even more hardware i.e. a better processor, more RAM, storage or battery life. That will make your laptop heavier. A smaller 14 or 13.3-inch display will generally net a smaller footprint and weight. The latest tech trends however, has skewed to bigger screens, in smaller bodies, with slim bezels. Either way, you should be portable enough with a laptop that doesn't weigh too much in co-relation with the screen size. It'll make morning commutes and just getting around with your laptop in a bag that much more comfortable.
Battery Life
The last factor that plays into how portable your laptop is will be the battery life. Battery life is important for quality-of-life factors, as it's not a sought out feature and often just an afterthought. I personally never looked at the spec until I started to review laptops and have come to appreciate how much value a long lasting battery life brings to the table. As a base, we can consider up to 10 hours of battery life a standard.
Now that we've discerned some of the most important features students of the law and practicing professionals should be on the look for, let's get straight into the list of the best laptops for lawyers!
The Best Laptop For Lawyers
1. ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 by Lenovo
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 by Lenovo (phew) is the definition of a work laptop for the modern professional. For attorneys, even more so with the attention paid to an industrial, tough design aesthetic and durability. This thing is tough, tested against 12 military-grade requirements and over 200 quality tests in various extreme conditions. However, a tough exterior and aesthetic isn't the only thing the Lenovo ThinkPad has going for it. Packing in a 14-inch Full HD display with up to 400 nits of brightness making for a fantastic screen. Having a higher brightness option up to 400 nits makes for a more versatile display, capable of being used outdoors relatively easier.
But the beauty of the ThinkPad X1 is the accompanying power under the hood. Powering the ThinkPad X1 is a 10th Generation Intel Core i7-10510U with 16 GB RAM and a staggering 1 TB SSD. A very stacked spec sheet with one of the latest Intel Core i7 processors and huge capacities for both the RAM and SSD. But the caveat here is you're going to have to pay quite a premium for it. There is also a Intel Core i5 variant with 8GB and 512 GB SSD for a pretty discount, so if you wanted a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop for less, this might be a better option. But either way, you're paying for quality as the Lenovo ThinkPad brand has long been the tool of choice for many businesses, executives, and attorneys.
Lenovo also sweetens the deal by weighing in at only 2.7lbs and still managing to be that durable. It's impressive that a laptop manages to be that thin and lightweight with tough durability simultaneously. Some other great features you get with the ThinkPad X1 is the ThinkShutter to cover the webcam, fingerprint reader, and with up to 18 hours of battery life. The best part about the battery life is that it can charge back up from 0-80% in just an hour. Overall a powerful, attractive, and portable laptop built for the modern attorney.
2. Apple MacBook Pro (2019)
If you were looking to get into the Apple ecosystem but weren't keen on paying the premium for the latest and greatest; the 2019 Apple MacBook Pro is still very capable of high-performance. Even though it has some slightly dated specs, it's still one of the best laptops you can get from the Apple lineup of MacBook laptops. On the front we're met with a 13.3-inch Retina display with some great on-screen tech to create a clearer, colorful display. The Retina display features 500 nits of brightness, 25% more color than sRGB and their True Tone technology which automatically adjusts the display to the environment.
On the internals, the laptop is powered by a slightly dated 8th Generation Intel Core i5 processor with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. And while this might not be the 'best' features around, for attorneys and legal practitioners I'd say for the work they would need to do, this is more than sufficient. Besides, you're still getting a Apple MacBook with all their exclusive features, OS and capable performance all for a discount.
Some other great extra features the laptop comes with includes a backlight Magic Keyboard, Touch Bar, Touch ID and up to 10 hours of battery life. Speaking of battery, the laptop has two Thunderbolt 3 USB Type C ports which can be used for a speedy charge, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt/USB-3.1 speeds. The charging is actually powered by a 61W Type C power adapter, so you can expect a pretty fast charge which is a great added bonus. All in all, the Apple MacBook Pro 2019 has great value for what you're getting with the price in terms of aesthetics, performance and Apple-centric features well suited for law students and professionals alike.
3. Microsoft Surface Pro 6
The Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is a bit of a 'unique' entry into the list of the best laptop for lawyers as it's technically a tablet. What it really is however, is a super portable, versatile machine built for consistent high-performance. When it's fully decked out, you'll be hard pressed to find a better, more versatile laptop that can keep up in terms of performance. On the display we've got a 12.3-inch PixelSense display touch-screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio. It's not the largest, brightest or highest-tech display around but it will serve you well while you're on the move from client meetings and court dates. Thanks to the 12.3-inch display, you can carry a powerful, Windows 10 enabled laptop weighing in at only 1.7lbs.
The sleek form factor isn't the only great thing about this 2-in-1 functional laptop as it's pretty powered up under the compact exterior. Powering the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8650U processor, a hefty 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD storage. All that power, with a still capable Intel Core i7 processor in such a small package definitely makes this the best laptop in terms of power and portability. I will note that you have to purchase the accessories for the laptop separately but I personally feel the investment is worth it. You can also add-on the Surface Pen, which would be handy for taking handwritten notes or drawing for the multi-talented lawyers out there.
The laptop also features some other unique features like transforming into three various modes: Laptop mode, tablet mode, and studio mode. Seamlessly transition from reading case notes in tablet mode and typing possible answers in laptop mode or even writing directly on the screen with the Surface Pen. You also get up to 13.5 hours of battery life with USB Type C charging, Windows Hello sign in options and two eye catching colors: black and platinum. For the professional attorney on-the-go, you truly can't go wrong with this lightweight, portable, feature packed laptop-tablet hybrid.
4. HP Pavilion 15
For law students looking for a reasonable price tag without compromising performance, the latest HP Pavilion 15 could be the best laptop for you. The HP Pavilion 15 comes with a gorgeous 15.6-inch FHD micro-edge display which means the display frame has really thin bezels. This results in a stellar 81% screen-to-body ratio for more screen real estate in a compact body. Besides the screen, the laptop also has some of the best aesthetics and design with a one tone platinum color all around. On the rear panel is a minimalist HP logo with a smooth metal finish.
Aside from the pretty looks, the laptop also features some great internal specs. The main processor is one of the latest 10th Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 with 16 GB of RAM and a huge 512 GB SSD. These are some great internals, literally some of the highest specced, best laptops around with a steep discount. I'm not even really sure why this is priced as low as it is, but I'm really not complaining. So far, in terms of performance and design, the HP Pavilion 15 is hitting all the right checkmarks. Even though it houses a 15.6-inch display, you get a relatively slim and sleek laptop weighing in at only 4.08lbs.
The laptop also has some other features that makes it that much more desirable such as up to 10 hours of battery life, charging back up from 0-50% in 45 minutes with HP Fast charge. It also features an elevated keyboard for an ergonomic typing experience, speakers by Bang&Olufsen and a media card reader. All together, the HP Pavilion 15 is one of the best deals for solid performance and a premium design without breaking the bank. The perfect long time companion for law students and rising talents in the tough, tough law industry.
5. ASUS ZenBook 13
For the truly broke, budget conscious law students out there, you can't get a better deal than what the ASUS ZenBook 13 has to offer. The best part about the laptop is the fact that it truly does not compromise to attain an affordable price tag. On the display the laptop is equipped with a 13.3-inch FHD NanoEdge bezel display on all four corners of the screen. Which translates to an 88% screen-to-body ratio and a gorgeous looking frame. The bezels are really almost non-existent on the sides which creates this illusion of a bigger screen. The rest of the design features a black display bezels, and an otherwise simple, premium silver color all around the chassis. The back of the laptop features some sort of texture that highlights the ASUS logo embossed on the real panel.
Accompanying the attractive design is some decently powered specs. The processor is the 10th Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1, 8 GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. Considering the price point, this a fairly stacked spec sheet which will be more than sufficient in handling day-to-day lawyer tasks. Since it is one of the latest Intel Core i5 processors, I'm a little more confident on the laptop performance than I would a dual-core processor. Definitely one of the best laptops for consumers on a budget for all you get at a low price point.
But that's not all folks, because the ASUS ZenBook 13 encapsulates best in class performance and features special to their devices. Some special features you can only find on the laptop is an ErgoLift hinge which lifts the rear to get a more comfortable typing experience. Another fantastic feature is the built-in ASUS NumberPad 2.0 located on the trackpad. A genius use of space which you really don't see other laptops doing too often. To cap it off, the laptop also meets the MIL-STD-810G military standard for durability, up to a staggering 22 hours of battery life which charges from 0-60% in 45 minutes and weighs in at a light 2.45lbs. All together, the ASUS ZenBook 13 packs in so many features, and reliable performance for such a fantastic price tag. Truly one of the best deals for a laptop around.
Conclusion
We have seen the best of the best laptop brands and devices around and we've reached the consensus that every laptop featured will be a capable companion for attorneys and students of law alike. But of course, we have to choose one out of the best laptops for lawyers as the ultimate champ.
This time around, the most powerful, best laptop for lawyers is the ASUS ZenBook 13!
The ZenBook 13 hits all the right checkmarks in terms of performance, style, and price plus some innovative features special to the ASUS laptop brand. One of the most recent Core i5 processors with great support from the 8 GB RAM and 256GB SSD combined with a lightweight, attractive design makes it the undeniable champion laptop for attorneys across the globe.
