how old is too old for lsat books? Forum

[ypark87]

hi guys!
my keyboard is broken so bear with my typos and/or repeated letters.

i am taking the october lsat ((so not for a while) but i have several books from 2008 and 2009. are these books too old to study from? i am certainly planning on shopping around for the most recently dated books in may and purchasing the most up to date books, but is it a waste to study out of the older books that i currently own?

[iShotFirst]

If you are talking about the practice tests, they are all useful.

If you are talking about the books, the usefulness depends on the brand of the book, not the year.

The test hasn't changed much from the beginning, and certainly not since 2008/2009

[rman1201]

I'm guessing you're referring to some Kaplan/Princeton/whatever books...
Just stick with the Bibles from Powerscore (not dated, so question is moot), and the official preptests (more recent the better, but you'll use so many they'll be pretty old at a point anyway, save the newer ones for timed tests under testing conditions)

[david.patel]

It's a marketing trick. Kaplan and Princeton Review update their book covers every year to say "Kaplan 2011 Premier" or "Cracking the LSAT 2012". As far as I can tell they might have corrected a typo or two. That's the only difference.

[tomwatts]

It's a marketing trick. Kaplan and Princeton Review update their book covers every year to say "Kaplan 2011 Premier" or "Cracking the LSAT 2012". As far as I can tell they might have corrected a typo or two. That's the only difference.

That's not entirely true. Our yearly editions are supposed to change roughly 10% each year (by contract). (Sometimes we undershoot, and sometimes we overshoot, too.) So most consecutive years you won't notice much of a difference, but if you pick up an '05 and compare it to an '11, you'll see a fairly big difference.

An '08 to an '11 is probably not that big a deal, but I haven't been working on Cracking the LSAT myself, so I can't say for sure.