Hello readers and welcome back from the holiday season! I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. I definitely did traveling from Michigan to Virginia to DC to New York. Now I am back and broke in Chicago ready to start the semester.
One aspect of law school that differs from undergrad is syllabus week. At my undergrad, and I know at many others, the first week of classes is not very rigorous. Because students are still sorting out their schedules, adding and dropping classes, professors usually use the first class to hand out the syllabi and give a bit of an introduction to their courses, only seeking students to attend class. It becomes an opportunity for students to reconnect and celebrate being back at school for an entire week without any work.
However, law school is a different beast all together. We are not let out early from class after reading over the syllabus; we sit for the full two hours. We are expected to have completed our first reading assignment and be prepared to discuss it in class. Gone are the dollar Corona Tuesday nights of syllabus week. Here are the “read and brief the first three cases” for Week 1.
But we grow up and grow stronger. Despite my lamentations of the once-was, this post is intended to address law text books; can’t get started on the homework until you get your books. Typically, each class requires a textbook with any where from 800-1,200 pages. Though, my Constitutional Law book for this semester sets a new record with 1,700 pages and is nearly 3 inches thick (and no there are not pictures and yes, the font is tiny). Sometimes the classes require an additional book such as a restatement or a copy of federal or state codes. Most often it is one book per class and the professors will post any supplementary readings in an online portal.
Because law is a constantly evolving field, new editions of the books are frequently released as new editions, keeping book prices very high. For example, if I purchased my Contracts book brand new it would be $216 and my Criminal Law book would be $224. To avoid these high costs the bookstore allows students to purchase used books for a discounted price or rent books for the semester.
However, if you are a savvy shopper, you can get online and find even better deals. The website I prefer to use is gettextbooks.com. It is a search engine that compiles a list of prices offered by over a 100 different online sources. All I do is punch in the ISBN number and it finds me the best deal. This semester I was able to buy 5 law textbooks and one supplement for about $400, less than half the new price.
In addition to buying my books online, I sell them online at the end of the semester. I post them on an online market, wait for them to sell and ship them away. I will be able to recycle the same $500 all three years to buy my books. Law school can be expensive, but there are always options to make it happen on a budget.
Questions for Amie? Email law-admissions [at] luc [dot] edu with the subject “Ask Amie” and she will make sure to answer them.