Survive Law
Jul 24, 20122 min
The first week of semester is always expensive. You had hoped to spend the cash from your holiday job on a fancy new camera or flights to Byron Bay, but there’s this place called a university bookshop and it wants all your money.
None of the books you need are in the secondhand bookshop at uni, and you can’t be bothered to make ‘Corporations Law Textbooks For Sale’ signs and stick them on the back of bathroom doors around campus… or does this only happen at my law school?
Luckily, there are a number of websites where you can buy discount or secondhand law texts, or sell a few of last semester’s books.
Textbook Exchange
The biggest site for buying and selling law books in Australia is Textbook Exchange, which currently has more than 15,000 law textbooks listed for sale. That’s a lot of copies of Laying down the Law!
Jekkle
Like other textbook sites, you can buy and sell books on Jekkle, but you can also purchase eTextbooks or rent your textbooks, which is pretty cool. And if you’re at a law school in New South Wales, you can search for textbooks using the subject number – no need to consult that subject outline.
Most uni bookshops offer discounts to members, but if you’re not a member or can’t bear to stand around in the start of semester queues, there’s always LawBooks.com.au, which provides discounted new textbooks.
TextBooks n Stuff
Got some books you’re keen to offload? Or maybe an old laptop you’re keen to replace? TextBooks n Stuff is a good place to buy or sell all study-related stuff, not just books.
meYOU
If you’re a student at James Cook University, check out meYOU, a website built by JCU students. It’s kind of like a geeky trading post. Although the service is currently just for JCU students, the team has plans to open it up to other Australian unis soon.
eBay
Okay, so it’s probably not the first place you think of when you want to grab some texts, but you’ll be surprised at the number of law books for sale on eBay.
If prices are still a bit steep for your meager student budget, consider the Textbook Free Philosophy. You may need to be a little bit more organised, but you won’t lose out on learning.
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