From LifeHacker, here’s a really interesting post on how to improve your note-taking.
I really like LifeHacker and featured the site at as one of my 60 Sites in 60 Minutes at ABA TECHSHOW.

Not all of these ideas may apply to lawyers, but I really liked the idea of symbolizing your note taking, e.g.
[ ] A square checkbox denotes a "to do" item
( ) A circle indicates a task to be assigned to someone else
* An asterisk is an important fact
? A question mark goes next to items to research or ask about

Some of the free notepad template generators noted in the post are really great. They create a PDF and then you print out as many as you need.