Seriously. Neither texting nor laptops were common when I was an undergrad, but were when I started law school years later.
I actually never brought a laptop to class my entire 1L year, even though all of my professors allowed it. Not coincidentally, I finished that year near the top of my class. I started bringing my laptop during my 2L year, and my grades predictably plummeted (though there were a number of other reasons for that). I started bringing it because my handwriting is atrocious, and I could barely read my own notes, let alone keep them organized. Of course, it wasn’t long before I started surfing the internet in class just like everyone else.
If I was a law professor or any other kind of professor, there’s no way I’d permit laptops in my class unless there was a very good reason to. As useful as they are, they’re the most distracting devices ever invented by man.
Personally if I had the laptop I have now back then(I was a computer sci major and we still worked with punch cards), since my hand writing is atrocious as well, I’d bring the laptop to class but turn it toward the instructor so I could record the lecture in audio and video to replay it later. I remember being so busy trying to transcribe the lecturer in my horrible handwriting and then not being able to read it later that I learned almost nothing. I relied almost completely on the text books. But as for texting, it is the scorge of higher education.