On the Reddit sub called r/liquidtext_users, I ran across a lawyer looking for a high-powered, high-volume document manager and more. I put in a plug for DEVONthink, but, as I’m now a lawyer, I wasn’t able to speak to his question very authoritatively.
Anyway, if anyone wants to advise him, the Reddit conversation is here.
Done
[I am not a lawyer but what I do is close enough to answer his question… bottom line is he should use Devonthink in addition to LIquidText, not instead of it.]
may I ask what liquidtext offers? do you also use this combination?
When you get a chance, I’d appreciate any thoughts you have on the combination.
I’ve played with LiquidText a bit, and found that my original use case – taking notes on multiple documents in a single work space – ran into trouble because the screen isn’t big enough. But I’m still intrigued by the concept and interested in how it works for others.
I second @rkaplan’s advice.
I use both in combination:
LiquidText is particularly good for preparing oral argument in court. It’s great on the iPad and with both Apple Pencil and keyboard.
DEVONthink is much better for handling large volumes of documents and different file types.
As some other users of this forum have observed, DEVONthink is like a filing cabinet for everything (if a filing cabinet had advanced search, wikilinking, scripting customisation and too many other features to describe), whereas LiquidText is like the working folder of key documents you put under your arm and take down to court.
As has previously been noted on this forum, DT can’t see inside LiquidText project files AFAIK, so that is a minor limitation. I therefore haven’t seen any value to date storing them in DT.
If you add documents from DTTG in iPadOS, it will copy highlights back to DTTG. I haven’t managed to get it to do that with DT on MacOS. You can link to pages in LiquidText which will open from DTTG. I haven’t been able to do it in reverse, though - LiquidText doesn’t seem to recognise links to DTTG.
LiquidText is an incredibly helpful tool for annotating/bookmarking specific text or images inside a PDF and connecting those to related bookmarks/content in other PDF documents.
This ability to link key ideas can be earthchanging for an attorney who writes detailed briefs or who needs to be prepared in detail for whater direction deposition testimony or trial testimony may go.
I began using LiquidText almost 10 years ago and for quite some time it was one of the key tools in my workflow. They were also one of the first to integrate AI with their app, which suggested they were staying ahead of the curve.
As it turns out, LiquidText seems to have stopped iterating with regarding to its AI features, while the rest of the world has taken off. Currently I have found that Claude AI is better at most of what I used to use LiquidText for. I am continuously evaluating which AI app works best for custom scripts to summarize medical/legal documents - but at least for me LiquidText no longer fits that role, especailly as I do not see them developing new features at anywhere near the level of interest of other apps.
That my be an understandable disinction in viewpoint from a lawyer vs. a topic expert/witness. When I get a rqeuest to produce my whole file, it works best if that file is all stored in one location. Lawyers don’t usually get those notices; they send them.
True - I hear you.
I’m guessing subpoenas to produce are more fun to issue than receive. 
Toward that end - have you tried Apple Vision Pro?
I haven’t posted about that yet as I have just recently started using it. But I will say that the new Ultrawide Virtual Monitor is a total gamechanger.
I have a 6-monitor set up at home; I bought the AVP to use when I am traveling. But I am pondering whether the AVP may become my primary setup even at home given the immense screen space that it provides.
I’ll post more when I have used it some more.
No, and I have no interest in it. Hanging an extra pound of gear off my head for 3-4 hours a day would be an ergonomic disaster.
I was concerned about that from reviews - but really it doesn’t seem to be an issue. [Full disclosure - my wife did ask about the “new indentation” on my head!]
Joking aside - I used it for the first time on a trip this past week. Being able to use the large widescreen monitor attached to my MacBook was an enormous productivity booster. Whether I use it regularly at home is to be determined. But there is no doubt it has a permanent place in my computer bag any time I travel in the future and have to do work or access my work document database.
When you get a chance, it’s be fascinating to hear more about your experience with DT in Ultrawide; I think you’re the first on this forum to dive in, certainly this deep. (I’m a humble 3-monitor user, but it’s never enough, and those resolution numbers look very attractive.) I can see DT Workspaces playing very well with the AVP.
Workspaces are nice - but at least for my use the killer feature by far is that so many more columns are usable (with whatever width you choose). In turn this makes custom metadata fields more usable. You can set up the entire width of the ultrawide monitor as one DT window if you wish.
Moreover the physical size of the ultrawide monitor is larger than any physical ultrawide monitor; that means you can use it at max resolution and the text remains easily readable. I have generally found in the past that high resolution monitors often cannot be used practically at their highest resolution if the use case is reading text; the fonts wind up too small for continuous use.
With the AVP Ultrawide, the tradeoff is that the field of view is somewhat narrow so text to the side is slightly fuzzy, but it becomes easily readable as soon as you look at it. And you don’t need to click a mouse for that to happen; the eye tracking is superb.
So the net effect is that I can fit considerably more text on the AVP virtual monitor and it is easier to read than with a physical monitor. I do not rely on Spaces as much to fit additional content.
And if that’s not enough space, you can create additional windows beyond the boundaries of the ultrawide out to infinity. So you can set up a clock or reminders or stock ticker etc somewhere that requires you to move your neck a bit to occasionally glance at; it does not take away screen real estate from your main monitor window nor does it require that you change Spaces to access that sort of secondary information.
There are also a couple of third party windows management apps in the AVP store which extend the capabilities further such as allowing you to have multiple MacOS virtual monitors at the same time; I have not explored that yet since the available screen real estate is so impressive out of the box.
DTTG does work as an iPad app but it is not optimal because DTTG assumes you are using a touchscreen. To be ideally usable on AVP Devontech would need to integrate the keyboard a bit more with the UI. That means it’s not an ideal experience to use the AVP by itself. But when connected to a MacBook it works great for any apps you have installed in MacOs.