This is a guest post from Jeff Bellin, the Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law at Vanderbilt
A recent social media post listing the annual revenue of major academic publishers (spoiler alert: gargantuan!) reminded me of an issue that gets surprisingly little attention given its importance to legal education: casebook selection. I have a forthcoming symposium essay on this topic: The High Cost of Law School Casebooks which starts with an economic puzzle:
- Low-cost, self-published casebooks are increasingly available. (Check out this great list organized by subject matter for options in your field!)
- High-priced commercial casebooks continue to dominate.
The essay offers some explanations:
- “Safe” Selection The most important casebook selection moment occurs early in a professor’s career when they are incentivized to select the “safest” casebooks, generally the book they used in law school (i.e., Harvard or Yale) and/or used or authored by their mentors and colleagues. These books are typically “published by the handful of established academic presses who set the highest prices.”
- Market Distortion “[T]he people who pay for the books (students) are different from the people who choose the books (professors). And the people who set the price (publishers) are different still.” Professors may not even be aware of the high costs and pricing models, with many books now priced over $300 and publishers offering enhanced casebooks at even higher prices.
- Quality Matters Most Casebooks are tremendously important to a course (and a field) and that means quality, not price or even value, is the deciding factor: “A casebook’s merits should be the most important selection criterion.”
- Casebook Selection Inertia Initial choices are sticky, determining not just the adopter’s choice for years to come but also the choices of those who follow their path. “[C]asebook selections are strongly influenced by the casebook selections of the past.”
The Essay concludes by emphasizing that since quality, and especially the perception of quality – becoming the “safe choice” – is the key to broad adoption, free casebooks are not the solution and could even cause new problems.
“[A]uthoring a great casebook is hard, ongoing work—unfolding over decades—especially if one self-publishes the book, which is currently the only viable route to a low price. Casebooks require regular updates and new editions. Someone needs to send out review copies and respond to accommodation requests. There is endless checking for and fixing errors and reviewing proofs. Proofs themselves cost money. It is possible that some professors will take this on as a pure public service. But professors are people. And people respond to incentives. If we want the most experienced and insightful law professors to author great low-cost casebooks, we should incentivize them. One possibility is that law schools could meaningfully reward casebook authorship, but until that occurs, the broad spread between casebook costs and price leaves room for an alternative incentive: a modest royalty…. Law school casebooks should not cost $300. But they also cannot (sustainably) be free.”
Curious to hear others’ thoughts via email or comments.
Full disclosure: My interest in this topic arose from authoring a widely adopted ($35) Evidence casebook and a less-widely-adopted-but-still-great ($35) Criminal Procedure: Investigations casebook.
