People often claim that taking notes by hand, because it is slow, forces you to interpret and condense what you are learning into a more compact representation, and therefore understand it better.
That has never been the case for me -- while I'm busy doing that thinking, I missed the last 3 sentences from the lecturer, and then am struggling to catch up, and when I finally figure out what they're explaining again, there's no more time to write it down.
But I can type faster than lecturers speak. And obviously you don't take notes verbatim either, just the gist of a sentence. Then after the seminar is over, I can go over the notes at my own pace to build my understanding. Details that didn't seem that relevant during the seminar, I suddenly realize are key.
I really don't understand why people don't talk about this advantage more.