“The world's best PDF app for lawyers and law professors.”
That's the ambition behind LawPDF: a reader built around how legal scholars actually work.
Created by Professor Yonathan Arbel, LawPDF is a free, open-source desktop PDF reader and annotation editor for Windows, Apple-silicon Macs, and Linux x86_64.
Version 0.2.45 adds the first Linux release; see Linux setup.
The 0.2.46 release candidate adds a Windows print-preview window with Ctrl+P and detailed layout controls; see Windows printing. This change is not included in the public 0.2.45 downloads linked below.
Read the article, follow the footnotes, and keep your place. Review Mode reconstructs reading flow and footnotes in law review articles, while the original PDF remains available for checking quotations, citations, tables, and layout. Highlight a passage for class, leave a comment on a colleague's draft, or work through a case with search, annotation, and recovery tools in one application.
Review Mode provides a clear choice between Show footnotes and Show comments, displaying one set in the margin at a time. Imported PDF comments retain their authors and reply threads. Set your own comment name under ⋯ → Comment name…, or click your name on a comment to edit it globally. Author colors distinguish readers. Narration uses System, ElevenLabs, or OpenRouter throughout the app; select the source and configure provider keys in Settings.
Footnotes also offer Find source. Existing URLs and DOIs open directly; otherwise BBGPT returns candidate article links in the note, with Crossref as a fallback when BBGPT is unavailable. Choose Find article links in Review to queue up to 32 unresolved footnotes at a time. Lookups run in the background, deduplicate identical queries, and cache results. Only the selected footnote text is sent; opening a document starts no searches. Choose the matching result to make that note's button open the source during the reading session. Search results are suggestions, not verified matches.
The “world's best” line expresses the creator's vision, not an independently tested ranking. Version 0.2.45 is a public beta.
Download LawPDF for Windows, Mac, or Linux
| Platform | Download | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Store | Microsoft Store | Microsoft-signed package and Store-managed updates; check the version offered while updates await certification |
| Windows installer | LawPDFSetup-x64.exe | 64-bit Windows; installation may request administrator approval |
| Windows portable | LawPDF-windows-portable-x64.zip | Extract the entire ZIP, then run lawpdf.exe |
| Mac | LawPDF-macos.zip | Apple silicon (M-series), macOS 13 or later; Intel Macs are not supported by this build |
| Linux | LawPDF-linux-x86_64.tar.gz | x86_64 Ubuntu 24.04 or a compatible modern glibc desktop; see Linux setup |
Close older LawPDF versions before installing or opening the new version. Keep a backup of important PDFs while trying the beta.
Prefer the Microsoft Store edition for Microsoft-signed installation and automatic Store updates. The Store edition follows a separate release process; check the version offered there. A GitHub release does not establish Store availability.
For direct downloads, run the installer or choose the portable ZIP. These direct-download packages are not publisher-signed, so Windows may show an unknown-publisher or reputation warning. Download only from this repository's release page. The installer registers LawPDF as a PDF-capable app and offers the Windows default-app chooser. You can also choose Make LawPDF the default PDF reader from the ⋯ menu; Windows requires you to confirm the PDF association yourself.
Extract the ZIP and drag LawPDF.app to Applications. This build is ad hoc signed
and is not notarized by Apple. If macOS blocks the first launch, use Apple's
documented per-app approval process in System Settings → Privacy & Security
after attempting to open it. Do not disable Gatekeeper globally.
See Apple's instructions and our
signing policy.
Verify the download against the release's SHA256SUMS.txt, extract the archive,
and run ./lawpdf. Keep the extracted directory together. Optional ./install.sh
adds LawPDF to your application menu without administrator rights; the in-app
menu can make it the default PDF reader. Updates are manual: extract a new
release into a new directory and run its installer script.
Printing needs a CUPS client, local OCR needs Tesseract, and System speech needs
espeak-ng or espeak. API speech playback needs ffplay or mpg123; MP3 export
works without either player. API credentials use an unlocked Secret Service
keyring. See Linux setup for details.
- Read footnote-heavy scholarship: Review Mode reconstructs reading flow and sets each footnote in the margin beside the line that cites it. Long or crowded notes are shortened to the room they have; click a note, or its number in the text, to read it in full. Keep the source PDF close for verification.
- Follow the page into Review Mode: a brief reveal shows its words moving into the reading column and footnote cards on the first switch. Review Mode opens at your current page. Reduced motion skips the animation, and any click, scroll, or key press ends it.
- Know what you are reading: the masthead names the article, its authors, and its citation, read from the PDF itself, with contents, find, and the Original / Review / Side by side switch beneath.
- Prepare for class and workshops: highlight, underline, comment, add text boxes, and save annotated PDFs. The markup tools, zoom, page, and save status share one bar you can drag anywhere over the page.
- Read a colleague's feedback: switch the Review margin to comments to see existing PDF comments, their authors, and reply threads beside the reflowed article. Your own comment name is configurable, and each author has a consistent color.
- Find a footnote's source: open an existing URL or DOI, or request candidate article links from the footnote. Choose the matching result yourself; batches are limited to 32 unresolved notes and run in the background.
- Choose your narration: System speech keeps the text local. ElevenLabs and OpenRouter support API narration and MP3 export with your own keys; provider charges apply. You can include footnotes after the body.
- Print on Windows, Mac, or Linux: Windows Ctrl+P or the visible Print… button opens a live preview with page ranges, copies, duplex, paper size, scaling, margins, 1/2/4 pages per sheet, grayscale, and annotation controls. See Windows printing. Mac uses Command-P / File → Print… dialog, including Save as PDF. Linux uses Ctrl+P with CUPS printer, copy, and page-range controls. Both print a separate copy containing current, including unsaved, annotations. A Linux queue receipt confirms acceptance by CUPS, rather than paper output.
- Find the passage you need: native text selection, search, copy, continuous multi-page viewing, and zoom.
- Work with scanned materials: Run OCR reads scanned pages with the text recognizer built into Windows or macOS, or separately installed Tesseract on Linux. Local OCR keeps the page images on your computer. Recognized text feeds search, copying, and Review Mode, and OCR: save a searchable copy writes a searchable PDF. On Windows, OCR uses the recognition languages installed with Windows; if none is installed, LawPDF says how to add one. Cloud OCR through your own OpenRouter key remains optional.
- Keep your work: automatic annotation saving, visible save status, undo/redo, recovery copies, and external-file conflict detection. Closing waits for pending writes; failed writes keep the document open. Protected PDFs require Save As for an annotated copy.
- Choose where to save: use Save As… in the toolbar or the Mac File menu (⌘⇧S on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+S on Windows and Linux). Choose a folder and filename; further edits save to that file. File → Show in Finder locates the current PDF on Mac, and hovering over the save status shows its full path. Export → Save PDF copy makes a separate copy while keeping the current document open at its original location.
- Choose your tools: optional AI-provider features, with provider keys stored in the operating system's credential store. Review the privacy guide before using network-backed features.
Version 0.2.45 adds Linux, author-labeled margin comments, consistent speech choices, and footnote source discovery. Comment import, printer discovery, and speech start when requested. Citation searches run in the background only after Find source or Find article links; opening a PDF does not trigger them. The existing model-led Review Mode pipeline remains in place.
Before release preparation, the PR #31 candidate recorded 1,185 passing tests and successful CI checks. These are pre-release results. Tagged package builds, checksums, provenance, and exact Windows installation evidence are checked separately. See the release verification and the downloadable artifact record for the released source commit and workflow runs. Hosted Windows installation checks do not establish testing on the maintainer's own Windows hardware.
Broader screen-reader workflows, real-world reliability, large-document performance, and signed-update replacement/recovery still need more testing. Reading reconstruction can make mistakes: verify quotations and citations against the original PDF, and keep backups of important work.
Windows and Mac automatic updates require a manifest signed by LawPDF's pinned release key plus matching package sizes and SHA-256 hashes. Linux updates use the manual download route, with package checksums and GitHub build provenance. This is separate from Windows publisher signing and Apple notarization. Until the complete automatic-update path is qualified, the release-page downloads provide the manual installation route.
Found a problem? Report an issue. Include your operating system, LawPDF version, and steps to reproduce it. Do not post confidential client files or private research.
LawPDF is free. If you enjoy using it and want to support my coffee addiction, you can buy me a coffee. A little coffee keeps the footnotes flowing. Support is entirely optional and does not unlock features. The small coffee cup in the app's top bar opens the same support page in your browser.
Created and maintained by Professor Yonathan Arbel.
LawPDF is free and open source under the MIT License. It is provided “AS IS,” without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement. The license also limits the authors' liability. No promise of error-free operation, document preservation, or suitability for a particular legal matter is made. See the full license for its terms.
The Linux and imported-comment foundations adapt Sarah Lawsky's MIT-licensed LawPDF fork; see Contributors. Bundled third-party components and models are credited in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Technical evidence and remaining qualification work are documented in the current release evidence and release procedure.