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Given that 90% of the cases are available online, has anyone ever NOT purchased a casebook and made it through a semester?

Yes.

Another way is to buy the older edition book. There is a steep drop off after a new edition comes out and the older edition is usually only a couple bucks.

Casebook's are edited. I had to read twice as much as everyone else/

Nope.

I find the note sections more useful than the cases in many respects. In a couple of my classes, most of the interesting splits were explained from the notes, and consequently issues on the exams were derived from notes following a case. If you paid close attention to the notes you likely had a better idea of what the professor wanted on the final. This may not be common to all classes, though. These were in classes where the professors wrote the casebooks, so the note sections were essentially their work product.

In fact, in my Conlaw class, if you looked up some of the cases referenced in the notes, as I did, those cases came up nearly unchanged in multiple choice questions. That made answering some relatively easy.

I suppose I could have gotten by without buying one, by just using a copy in the library. But I prefer to work in my apartment. I probably spent all of 5 hours last semester in the library.

missinglink wrote:Nope.

I find the note sections more useful than the cases in many respects. In a couple of my classes, most of the interesting splits were explained from the notes, and consequently issues on the exams were derived from notes following a case. If you paid close attention to the notes you likely had a better idea of what the professor wanted on the final. This may not be common to all classes, though. These were in classes where the professors wrote the casebooks, so the note sections were essentially their work product..

totally agree

Yup. Conlaw... never bought a casebook. Instead, I purchased Chemerinsky and obtained a 2L's outline keyed to the course. Scored an A.

If there was a big case that we spent some time on I would read it on Westlaw.

This would be the stupidest thing you have ever done. Your spending 60k a year in law school. WTF would you NOT want to buy a casebook and deal with the hassel of pulling stuff from westlaw?

uvahooo wrote:This would be the stupidest thing you have ever done. Your spending 60k a year in law school. WTF would you NOT want to buy a casebook and deal with the hassel of pulling stuff from westlaw?

Find and Print + citation = 4 seconds of work.

I can definitely see how this would be a viable strategy with Con Law, and in hindsight, I wish I would've done it.

LAWYER2 wrote:Given that 90% of the cases are available online, has anyone ever NOT purchased a casebook and made it through a semester?

I think the better question is, have you ever bought a casebook and never read any of the cases lol

scan it from the library . . . didn't buy any.