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.
It runs on your own computer
The Windows and Mac apps do the transcription, the term detection and the explanations with AI models running locally on your machine, so your lecture audio never leaves your computer. Your transcript and glossary sync to your account so you can see them on the web and keep your history if you reinstall. There is also a browser version if you would rather not install anything.
What it costs
Recording, live explanations, translation, your glossary and your flashcards are free and unlimited in the app, with no advertising. Free accounts keep lecture history for seven days. Demist Pro keeps everything, adds unlimited weekly summaries and Anki export, and costs £4.99 a month.
Built for students who find lectures harder to follow
Demist exists for law students with a hearing impairment, with dyslexia, who find holding attention difficult, or who are studying in English as a second language. If that is you, it is worth trying for one lecture.