I draft, research and do a lot of matters from video conferencing. I need a reliable laptop, i am willing to spend a decent amount. which is more practical an m1 or an m2 for a litigation lawyer? keeping in mind M1 is a 2020 model...

Bump

Buy your macbook air/pro from a croma store at any mall over an apple store/ dealer. Croma offers a flat 7% price advantage over the rest by default. This is over and above all the discounts that are advertised in the papers. Buy an M2.

If you are buying the base model of M2, buy M1 instead. M2 base model has a slower hard drive - which leads to overall lower speed.

Fake and old news. The slower write/ read speeds of the solid-state drives in m2 Macs are more than compensated for with other apple hardware optimizations. I have gone to the depths of this rabbit hole with my research and encourage you to do yours.

Apple selling a laptop with 256GB is a straight-up robbery, considering that it is slower when compared to the 512GB variant.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23220299/apple-macbook-air-m2-slow-ssd-read-write-speeds-testing-benchmark

Get a Macbook Air M2 (15-inch) with a minimum of 8 GB RAM and 512GB S.S.D. and the 70 Watt Charger. If you still have some money left, get the 16 GB variant.

I’m also considering the 15 inch version, should I wait for m3 one ? As it’s just around the corner . I’m currently using m1 ipad pro and its a hell of a device ,based on it I’m also confused if m3 would be a overkill considering only academic use .

The new M3 is scheduled to be released in March this year. There should be a decent increase in battery life. I'd wait for that. Even if you don't like it you could always buy a discounted M2.