Cost of books Forum

[select]

what is the average amount a typical law student spends on textbooks per semester?

[TLSModBot]

A couple hundred bucks for me. It depends, though, first year classes will probably be very textbook heavy, whereas upper level classes and seminars might have no textbooks.

[First Offense]

If you're smart - 0 dollars.

[star fox]

Too damn much. Consider buying older versions but I underhand the hesitancy there.

[cookiejar1]

If your school is on learnleo you can just buy supplements, read the case law as excerpted in learnleo, and hope to god you don't get cold called on a "notes" case. This is what I did all of 1L year (mostly because I was too lazy to carry books around).

[Nebby]

$200 to $400. Depending if the professor makes you get the newest version.

[BVest]

what is the average amount a typical law student spends on textbooks per semester?

For 1L, expect to spend $500-800/semester on average (if you attend a school that does year-long courses for most of 1L, it will be more like $800-1300 for the fall and another $200-300 for the spring). After that, it depends on what courses you sign up for, but $200-400 is a fair estimate. Last semester I only spent $100 and that wasn't really necessary since the syllabus listed each case we were covering (we were doing about 1/4 from book and 3/4 from Lexis/Westlaw).

[select]

ok thanks guys thats helpful. Do you find you end up keeping most of the books for future reference? Or do you just sell'em right away as soon as class is over?

[skers]

After 1L I stopped buying books b/c you don't need them to cram from an outline. People will say it's a drop in the bucket and w/e, but that's a couple grand I got to spend on useful things.

[A. Nony Mouse]

ok thanks guys thats helpful. Do you find you end up keeping most of the books for future reference? Or do you just sell'em right away as soon as class is over?

I did actually buy/read books all 3 years, but I sold them as soon as the semester was over. If you had a recent edition you could get a decent chunk of money back. Casebooks are not helpful as reference books - there are lots of other things designed for that purpose which will be more helpful (and hopefully your employer will have them already/buy them for you).

[Blueberrypie]

Textbooks will always be expensive, well for the most part. authors of textbooks and the publishing company knows that people will pay the money charged for the book, because it is a required text in many institutions.

Used are always a plus. I often but used.