Better to buy or rent law school textbooks?/Reading tips? Forum

[wolvegal44]

I am trying to decide how to go about obtaining my books. I'll be a 1L in a few weeks so this is all new to me.

Would it be better to buy completely new? Or used? I am worried someone else's highlighting and notes would be distracting for me, although perhaps some people find it helpful? How difficult is it to sell books with highlighting and writing in them?

What about renting? Are the books that are rented filled with other people's notes/highlighting or are they new?

Finally, are there some books worth renting or buying over others? My contracts textbook is around $180 to buy new... Is it one of those things I might need to look back on in the future?

Also just any tips on effective reading of textbooks?

[ymmv]

Rent. Reselling for any kind of decent price takes way too much time and effort.

Used is a crapshoot. Highlighting/notes can be a blessing or a curse depending on who owned the book before you, and you probably won't be able to tell which until halfway through the course. FWIW almost all my books were used and it didn't hurt me much.

[sundontshine]

Rent. Reselling for any kind of decent price takes way too much time and effort.

Entirely disagree. Amazon bought essentially all of my used textbooks for decent prices, and it took no effort outside of driving to the UPS store and hanging them a box with a pre-paid label.

[kalvano]

Buying them used on Amazon and then reselling them to Amazon made them the same cost as renting, maybe a little cheaper for me. And no worries about an overzealous highlight Nazi at the bookstore.

[fundamentallybroken]

Buying them used on Amazon and then reselling them to Amazon made them the same cost as renting, maybe a little cheaper for me. And no worries about an overzealous highlight Nazi at the bookstore.

I rented a lot through Amazon - worked out to about the same price, didn't have to worry about highlight nazis, and didn't have to worry about dropping 100 bucks or more on a book only to have the edition change the next year and your copy becomes worthless.

Also, an idea that isn't great for 1Ls, but I used during 2L and 3L year, is to use the previous edition. You have to figure out slightly different pagination (not difficult if the prof's syllabus lists reading by case name rather than just pages), and sometimes you have to pull a case from WL, but you can often get your books for dirt cheap, then donate them to Goodwill after you're done.

You'll find you likely will not have to revisit your books later in life, especially your 1L books.

[badaboom61]

I tried both renting and buying used. I bought through allbookstores.com and resold through half.com. More often than not I came out ahead by buying and reselling compared to renting. I few times I actually resold the books for more than I paid for them.

Don't keep your casebooks. Casebooks are worthless as references. And as learning tools, for the matter. They exist solely to haze law students and generate hilarious profits for the preftigious professors who collect all dem squib cases that you never read anyway.

Buy a supplement (like an E&E) and keep that instead. They're actually pretty decent quick references.

[randomstudent]

Most people don't keep their casebooks after law school, although I know a few people who have kept some of their commercial outlines or hornbooks after law school. As far as whether to buy or rent used or new, that's mostly personal preference.

[banjo]

I actually do some light highlighting in the books I rent. It's no big deal and I figure highlighting the holding isn't going to ruin the book for the next guy. Many of the books I rent from Amazon have highlighting from previous users.

[YYZ]

For 1L, I recommend buying/renting clean textbooks. Your best bet is to find "like new" copies of the books on Amazon or Half.com. The prices are usually very good, but you have to be fast because they'll sell out fast. You're more likely to brief cases your first year, so a clean copies of cases are nice. If the book is a brand new edition, I would rent in order to save money.

For 2L-3L, I recommend used, cheap, marked up copies of books because you'll probably brief less and in some cases, you won't have to read at all.