Textbooks

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It's August and it's time to go back to school. Actually, I've just started on Thursday and it hasn't been too bad. I'm a 2L, which means I'm done with the drudgery of the 1L year. This affords one advantage. Instead of the law school picking which classes will bore me during the school year, I get the chance to choose the classes. Woohoo! I make my own decisions like a real adult! If I select a class that turns out to be an experience from hell, it's my fault. Please excuse me while I relish this brief moment of jaded sarcasm about law school.
After a year of law school, you learn many useful lessons. Most are applicable to the real world, oddly enough. I had the honor to learn this. All while paying large sums of money for this experience. One can understand why many law school students and professors enjoy the numerous social events that law schools host. One can freely gripe about many things while imbibing large amounts of alcohol. One can do this during their own free time, particularly on Thursday nights, as most students only have one class on Friday. This is an interesting phenomenom. Why this is so, I'm not sure. Anyways...
Law school students enjoy complaining about many things. The cost of tuition. The classes at the law school. The lack of free beer flowing from water fountains. Yeah, beer does play a large part in the social life of law school students. Oh, and students complain about the textbooks.

I'm going to be blatantly obvious. Textbooks cost alot. This semester, I've spent about $600 for textbooks, and I still am not done. One of the books hasn't arrived yet. Anytime you ask the bookstore if a book has arrived yet, they'll generally respond with the phrase, "It should arrive tomorrow." Translated, this means "It won't be here until next week." It's true. When referring to textbooks, "tomorrow" translates to "next week". Sooner or later, the bookstore will admit the book will arrive "next week" and not "tomorrow". While in college, at least the bookstore gave an expected date of arrival, like the week of August 22 or something like that. Then again, it was generally next week.

A sample conversation:

Clerk: I'm sorry. This book hasn't arrived yet. It should be here tomorrow.
Me: OK. I'll come back tomorrow.

The NEXT day...
Me: Has it finally arrived yet?
Clerk: No, it hasn't. It should have been here today. It should arrive tomorrow.
Me: What? You said it would arrive today.
Clerk: Sorry. Come back tomorrow.
Me: OK.

The NEXT day...
Me: It it here?
Clerk: No, it hasn't.
Me: What?
Clerk: It should have arrived today. It should be here next week. Come back and try again on Monday.
Me: OK...

Hopefully on Monday and not another day...
Me: Is it here?
Clerk: Yes, it finally arrived. Your total will be a large amount for a poorly written, hard to understand, thick book that you won't be able to sell back to us. If you do manage to accomplish this Syssiphean task, it will be for a pittiance.
Me: What? That much? Damn.

Have you ever seen a law school textbook? They're referred to as a casebook, as the majority of the content are cases. However, for the sake of clarity, I will refer to them as textbooks, as most people know what a textbook is. Usually, they're published by a Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis subsidiary. They're thick and heavy. Most weigh five, ten pounds and number over a thousand pages. You could use them as weights and get well-toned arms, as carrying a large number of them can be tiring.If you open one to any random page, the text will be written in English, but will read like a foreign language. Writers for textbooks, for some reason, can't write a sentence without adding in numerous subordinate clauses, parentheticals, and other grammatical devices. It's obvious from their writing style that they haven't taken a legal writing course like Lawyering. Oh, and they can't use simple words. Yes, it is a legal textbook, but some common English would be nice. I won't subject you to the torture of a sample of actual text from a textbook. Or to the statutes they pepper the books with. My God. Reading them can be a painful experience.
Even lawyers who read the textbooks and teach from them complain that they're poorly written and hard to understand. Most professors have fun pointing out the errors. Which is why these heavy textbooks have supplements. Mainly to state stuff that didn't fit into the main text but the author thought was important to know. One would think a textbook this thick would have enough information for a semester long class. Oh no. These supplements are also badly written and badly edited. And it adds an extra $30 to the bill. Yeah. Which brings me to the legal guides like Gilberts and LegalLines. An extra $30 so you can actually understand what's written in the textbook. They actually explain the law in understandable English. But they're as thick as the textbooks they explain. It's an endless cycle of books and more books.
By the end of my law school career, I'll have an impressive collection of thick, heavy, and hopefully, easier to understand law school textbooks. Until then, it's time for me to go read another one so I'll be ready for class. That and I'll be hoping that the book I need will be there on Monday.

That's all for now.