An interactive web app that teaches law students Excel text functions through guided demos and hands-on sandboxes. Built for the 21st Century Lawyering course at Ohio State Moritz College of Law.
Live site: https://spreadsheet-sandbox.onrender.com
Students work through a fictional scenario — cleaning up messy case data after a law firm merger — using seven Excel functions:
| Function | What Students Learn |
|---|---|
| TRIM | Remove extra spaces from imported data |
| PROPER | Fix inconsistent capitalization (+ UPPER, LOWER) |
| CONCATENATE | Build full names, case captions, and merge fields |
| LEFT / MID / RIGHT | Parse docket numbers to extract district, year, judge |
| Flash Fill | Pattern recognition for quick extraction without formulas |
| VLOOKUP | Look up attorney names from email addresses across tables |
| COUNTIF Cross-Ref | Find which witnesses appear on both plaintiff and defense lists |
Each function has a step-by-step demo (with an Excel-like grid, formula bar, and cell highlighting) and a sandbox where students can try it themselves with their own data.
The app is designed for two contexts:
- In class: Professor clicks through the demos on a projector — no live Excel fumbling
- After class: Students revisit any function tab as a reference
- React 18 + Vite
- Tailwind CSS v4
- No backend — everything runs client-side
npm install
npm run devnpm run buildProduces a static site in dist/.