should I sell my books?

[confusedatquinnipiac]

Is there any value in holding onto my old case books, E&Es etc.? I just finished 1L and would like the money/could use the money from them but if they are useful for the bar etc. since it is largely the same material or if they would be at all useful for future practice, i will hold onto them


any advice on whether to sell or hold onto them?

[jacy85]

Just go ahead and sell them.  Everything you need for the Bar you'll get from BarBri, and things you'll need for practice will be state specific, not the more general/majority rules from your casebooks.

The only think that MIGHT be useful to keep is if you bought a hornbook, but even then, unless its an area you're 100% sure you'll be practicing in whatever area, you may get more use out of the money now.

[skeeball]

I'm selling the casebooks, keeping the legal writing books b/c I think they might be nice to have around later on.

[wrhssaxensemble]

Last year I took a semesters worth of books in to sell. Like 4 casebooks and two statutory supplements. I also wanted to buy a baseball cap with my schools name on it for $19.99. After they guy got done tossing  the books there were not using the next year and deducting the money they were paying for my books I still owed $1.37 for my hat.  Go ahead and sell them, but don’t expect much back.

This year I decided to keep a really fat casebook, hollow out the insides and stick it back on the self. That way when I go out of town I got a place to hide valuables or my gun or something where a burglar would never look. Unless he’s also a law student. But don’t use your crim law book, a criminal might decide to take that one. Admin would work good. Its so boring not even a burglar that’s also a law student would not take that.

hmmm good... I guess I wont sell mine afterall then... i mean I need $$ but saving all my books is worth more to be than like $17 lol

[jacy85]

That's what happens when you do the book buy back at your school's bookstore.

Sell on your own at something like half.com or amazon, and you'll get far more money for most of your books (assuming a new edition doesn't come out between now and next semester)

[skeeball]

That's what happens when you do the book buy back at your school's bookstore.

Sell on your own at something like half.com or amazon, and you'll get far more money for most of your books (assuming a new edition doesn't come out between now and next semester)

But you still have to deal with shipping the damn things to whoever buys them, which is not so good for lazy people like me.

I waited too long to get my books to the bookstore, and I couldn't even donate the ones they weren't taking b/c they had taken away the donation boxes. Goodwill?

[AmazingGrace]

I sold every one of those suckers recently.  Naively I really thought I would crack those books again when studying for the bar but...there is absolutely positively zero use for a casebook during bar prep.  Barbri is quite enough...casebooks just muddy the water. The E&Es may help in situations where Barbri doesn't explain something clearly or adequately and you just want a fresh take on a subject but I still only kept the outlines that no one would buy from me and I only really ever looked at the tort outline during bar prep.

I sold my casebooks on Amazon and got fairly good money for the ones that could be sold (like someone else said...new editions screw you).  Shipping them out wasn't too much of a hassle. Media mail is a great thing. 

Oh and...I have yet to find a use for casebooks as a practicing atty either.  I've looked back at bar materials an an atty but never at a casebook.