Law.com:

As a lawyer, I've always found note taking on paper extremely cumbersome and ineffective.  I think it has something to do with the fact that you write down notes, and only after you get part way through your writing do you gain some sense of how the notes should be spatially organized.  There are probably others who fit into this category.  The fact that you cannot rearrange your notes after you have written them down probably makes the notepad method of note taking less effective for people who fall into this category.  Note taking on a laptop is obviously much different - it's easy to rearrange, cut, and paste your notes.  Sounds like a minor detail but this makes note taking much more effective.

So I'm not terribly surprised to see an article talking about the demise of the yellow legal pad.  I don't remember the last time I've used one.  Microsoft's OneNote is pure bliss as far as note taking.  In fact, it's the best organizational tool I've come across.  The fact that you can cut and paste images/pdfs and documents themselves allows you to put together a set of notes that hyperlink to other documents annd that are completely self contained.  (So when someone refers to a document you can actually just stick it (or the relevant part of it) in your virtual "note pad").  I highly recommend it!