Login | April 26, 2026
Livescribe—write and record with your pen
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: July 15, 2011
Livescribe is a pen that records conversations while you take notes on them, and which has several built-in systems for coordinating those two functions. The company has just rolled out a computer interface for their pens,
If you are not familiar with Livescribe’s products, named Echo and Pulse and generically referred to as “smartpens,” you can familiarize yourself with them at their website, www.livescribe.com. They have been around for awhile, and are available at most stores that sell electronic devices. They range in price from about a $100 to about $200, depending on bells and whistles. There are also less expensive smartpens available from other companies.
The Livescribe pens have a built-in memory, and can also come with special Livescribe paper. The paper has its own functionality, but you can also just write on paper of any kind. Tapping on a word from your notes then replays that part of the recording. In conjunction with other software, the pen also has a speak-to-type function.
Of course, under some circumstances, if you are going to use such a system, it may be wise to tell people that they are being recorded.
The newest function of the Livescribe pen is called Livescribe Connect. It can take your notes and audio record and automatically send the information to Facebook, Evernote, Google Docs and Gmail.
The new term for this is “pencasting.”
Using Livescribe’s Dot Paper, a user can connect the pen to a computer, then write down the name of the destination of the document to send (say an email address or a Facebook address). Tap the pages you want to send with the pen, and the pages are sent to that address.
With pencasts you can immediately share your notes with a legal team or partner without having to wait for an oral record to be transcribed––and you may have written notes that correspond to audible events. Pencasts can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10. For Apple devices that lack Adobe support, Livescribe also has an app that brings pencasts to your iOS or Mac OS device.
I can’t even think of what might be next….