Rule 11
Buy the Books
Buy the books. Seems simple enough. The professor assigns the books, you buy them. But the temptation is to study on the cheap. Sometimes buying a book that is $200 or more when an older edition is less than half the price is hard to justify.
No matter where you go to school, law school is expensive-too expensive. And the books only add to the expense. While it seems like a place to cut corners, recognize that the information you need to master lies in that text.
Casebooks are like gold-outrageously expensive and intrinsically worthless absent a collective agreement of their value. Yet, like gold, casebooks have survived, mostly out of tradition and because of the manipulated market that law school creates. You could reject these books and the semi precious analogy on which they are based, or you could treasure them as the collective wisdom of some very smart people that will help you master the material you need to become a lawyer. Acknowledge that you overpaid but then treasure them anyway because of their beauty and educational value.
