Demist for law students
A law lecturer will cite a case in three words and move on, assuming you know what it stands for. Latin terms arrive the same way, spoken once and never spelled.
What it does during a law lecture
Demist transcribes as your lecturer speaks, picks out the terms you are unlikely to know at your year of study, and puts a one-sentence explanation on screen while they are still talking. You keep listening instead of writing down a word to look up later.
Afterwards you have the full transcript, a glossary of every term that came up, a summary, and flashcards scheduled by spaced repetition so you revise something shortly before you would have forgotten it.
The kind of law terminology it explains
Ratio decidendi
The part of a judgment that forms the binding legal rule: the reasoning essential to the decision, as opposed to remarks made in passing.
Obiter dicta
Remarks in a judgment that are not essential to the decision, and so are persuasive but not binding on later courts.
Consideration
Something of value exchanged by each side of a contract, which is what makes a promise enforceable in English law.
Vicarious liability
When one party, typically an employer, is held legally responsible for a wrong committed by another, typically an employee acting in the course of their work.
Mens rea
The mental element of a criminal offence: the intention or recklessness that must be proved alongside the act itself.
Explanations are written for your year of study and the subject you set up, so a first year and a finalist get different levels of detail for the same word.
Case names and citations
Spoken case names are among the hardest things for any transcriber to catch, and Demist will not always get them right. If a card looks wrong, it is worth checking against your reading list rather than trusting it.
Where your lecture audio goes
In the Windows app, live recording is transcribed, and its terms detected and explained, by software running on your own machine, so the audio of a live lecture never leaves your computer. The iPhone app turns speech into text on the phone too, and sends only the words it explains, with their sentence. Your transcript and glossary sync to your account so you can see them on the web and keep your history if you reinstall.
The browser version works differently: it sends the audio to our server to be transcribed, and sends the terms it picks out to be explained. So does uploading a recording, in any version. The privacy policy sets out exactly what goes where.
What it costs
Live explanations, translation, your glossary and your flashcards are free, with no advertising. Recording is free and unlimited in the Windows and iPhone apps; in the browser, free accounts get three recordings. Free accounts keep lecture history for seven days. Demist Pro keeps your whole term, records in the browser with no limit, and adds unlimited summaries and Anki export for £4.99 a month. New accounts get Pro free for their first 30 days, with no card.
Built for students who find lectures harder to follow
Demist exists for law students who are deaf or hard of hearing, who have dyslexia or ADHD, or who are studying in English as an additional language. If that is you, it is worth trying for one lecture.