Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: September 13, 2026

 

The London Business School casebook is a free consulting interview prep guide built by the LBS Career Centre and Consulting Club, pairing a 22 page interview playbook with 22 practice cases written and donated by firms including McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy& and Roland Berger. This article breaks down every case in the book, what makes it different from every other MBA casebook, and how to practice with it so your reps actually translate into interview performance.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

The London Business School casebook earns its place in your prep because the consulting firms wrote the cases themselves and attached a scoring rubric that spells out what separates a poor answer from a superior one.

You can download the casebook here: London Business School Casebook.pdf

 

• The current edition runs 224 pages and holds 22 practice cases, 17 of them contributed directly by consulting firms

 

• Contributors include McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy&, Monitor Deloitte, Roland Berger, L.E.K., Accenture, Marakon and Solon

 

• Most firm cases carry interviewer only notes, real exhibits and a poor versus average versus superior performance rubric

 

• Cases skew European and British, which makes this the strongest free casebook for London and continental recruiting

 

• The first 22 pages teach the recruiting process, fit answers, case components and timing before a single case starts

 

What Is the London Business School Casebook?

 

The London Business School casebook is a free PDF produced by the LBS Career Centre and Consulting Club to prepare students for consulting interviews. The current edition runs 224 pages and contains 22 practice cases plus a 22 page prep guide covering recruiting timelines, fit questions, case structure, market sizing and interview etiquette.

 

What sets it apart is who wrote the cases. Most business school casebooks are compiled by students recalling interviews they sat through. The bulk of the LBS book was donated by the firms themselves, complete with the exhibits and interviewer guidance those firms actually used.

 

One point of confusion is worth clearing up immediately. LBS also runs a separate LBS Case Collection through its publishing arm, which sells academic teaching cases to faculty for classroom use. That collection has nothing to do with consulting interview prep.

 

Which Cases Are in the London Business School Casebook?

 

The casebook splits its 22 cases into three groups: 17 written by consulting firms, four written by corporate strategy teams, and one drawn from a case competition. McKinsey, BCG and Strategy& contribute the most, with two or three cases each.

 

Firm	Cases contributed	Cases
BCG	Consumer Products Strategy, Cupid's Arrow Online Agency, Iceberg Ice Cream	3
Strategy&	Airline Co, Mobile Network Operator, Packaging Coating Co	3
McKinsey & Company	OldPharma, RefreshNow! Soda	2
Roland Berger	Mobile Phone Co, Private Jet Co	2
Solon Management Consulting	Free-to-Air TV Network, Rural Broadband	2
Bain & Company	Entertainment Co	1
Monitor Deloitte	Footloose Boots	1
L.E.K. Consulting	NewCo Petrol Retailer	1
Accenture	Rising Sun Oil Field Services	1
Marakon	AirJet Inc.	1

 

The remaining five cases come from corporate strategy teams and a student competition. They are useful if you are targeting an internal strategy group rather than a firm.

 

• BASF: Specialty Chemicals

 

• BT: Followers-of-Fashion online retail

 

• Ericsson: Telco

 

• Zurich Internal Consulting: Group Strategy

 

• Johnson & Johnson: Ethicon EMEA Trocar, presented as a case competition example

 

Case types are spread sensibly across the book. Bain's Entertainment Co, BCG's Iceberg, Marakon's AirJet and Monitor Deloitte's Footloose are all profitability cases, while BCG's Cupid's Arrow and Strategy&'s Airline Co are market entries. McKinsey's OldPharma is an acquisition question dressed as a market entry, and L.E.K.'s NewCo Petrol Retailer is pure estimation.

 

What Does the LBS Casebook Teach Before the Cases Start?

 

The first 22 pages are a compressed interview playbook, and they are the part most candidates skip. The guide walks through how consulting firms recruit, what interviewers score, how to structure fit answers and how to run the case minute by minute. Skipping it and jumping to the cases wastes the best material in the book.

 

On process, the book is blunt: expect two rounds, with a CV screen first. Round one is usually two interviews combining fit interview questions and a business case. Round two is usually two or three interviews in the same format, but with partners or principals.

 

Two operational details are easy to miss. You may be able to apply to up to four office locations on a single application, and some firms bolt on a group exercise or a written case. Neither shows up in most casebooks.

 

The interview itself is broken into rough time blocks that match what I saw running interviews at Bain.

 

• Introductions: about 2 minutes

 

• Fit questions: about 10 minutes

 

• Case: about 30 minutes

 

• Your questions: about 5 minutes

 

The case itself gets broken down further, and this is the single most useful table in the entire book. Most candidates blow their timing because they over invest in structure and under invest in analysis.

 

Stage	Time	What you are expected to do
Clarify	1 to 3 min	Understand scope, targets and timeline, without asking analysis questions yet
Structure	2 to 3 min	Take one minute to write your plan, then present the buckets you will analyse
Analyse	15 to 20 min	Ask driver questions, read exhibits, run the math and test hypotheses
Brainstorm	2 to 3 min	Generate options in buckets rather than as a laundry list
Recommend	2 to 3 min	Give the answer, the risks and the next steps

 

Fifteen to twenty minutes of analysis inside a thirty minute case means roughly two thirds of your time is spent doing, not planning. If you routinely spend four minutes building a structure, you are eating into the phase where interviewers actually form their opinion of you.

 

On fit, the guide is equally specific. It suggests the STAR method or its cousins, caps each answer at roughly 1.5 to 2 minutes, and tells you to spend 50 to 60% of that airtime on the action you took.

 

The exception it flags is the McKinsey PEI, where a single story can run 20 to 30 minutes. Each individual answer inside that story still runs about two minutes.

 

What Makes the LBS Casebook Different From Other MBA Casebooks?

 

Four things separate this book from the pack, and the second one is the reason I recommend it even to candidates with no connection to London. Firm authorship, an explicit scoring rubric, European settings and a stated hiring bar are all rare in free casebooks.

 

The cases are firm written. Bain, BCG, McKinsey and the rest granted LBS permission to publish real practice cases with their own exhibits and interviewer notes. Bain's Entertainment Co case even carries a formal copyright grant on every page.

 

Most firm cases include a performance rubric. Each one lays out what a poor, average and superior candidate does across four dimensions: framing the problem and prioritising issues, identifying relevant information, running calculations and drawing conclusions, and identifying key implications and next steps. Nothing else in the free casebook world tells you this directly.

 

The settings are European. You will size the UK online dating market, calculate break even pricing for a business class route to Vienna in pounds, and analyse a German boot market in euros. That is a real advantage if you are recruiting for London or continental offices rather than New York.

 

It states the hiring bar out loud. Older editions explain that firms assess four dimensions, that you must be above the bar on three and truly distinctive on one, and that truly distinctive means the top 25% of consultants currently working in the firm on that dimension. Being solid on all four and outstanding on none gets you rejected.

 

That last point is the most useful sentence in any casebook I have read, and it matches how calibration meetings actually ran when I was interviewing at Bain. Candidates optimise for having no weaknesses. Firms hire for having one obvious strength.

 

Which Edition of the LBS Casebook Should You Use?

 

Use the LBS Career Centre Casebook as your primary edition, then mine the 2006 Consulting Club edition for extra volume. Several editions circulate, and they are genuinely different books rather than reprints.

 

• LBS Career Centre Casebook: the current edition, 224 pages, 22 cases, firm written, with the rubrics and the modern prep guide

 

• 2014 Case Book: an earlier Career Services edition with the same firm cases and a fuller written explanation of the four hiring dimensions

 

• 2013 Case Book: 128 pages, firm written cases from Bain, BCG, Booz & Company, L.E.K., Marakon, McKinsey and Monitor Deloitte

 

• 2010/2011 Case Book: 12 cases including 7 that were new that year, written by professional interviewers

 

• 2006 Consulting Club Case Book: 18 student written cases plus a long teaching section on business, estimation and brainteaser cases

 

The 2006 edition is dated on firm names and market data, but its teaching section is the best free explanation of estimation cases I have seen. It walks through six major business case types and gives a full worked answer to a UK house paint estimation question, showing every assumption out loud.

 

Older editions still beat nothing. A profitability tree does not expire, and neither does the discipline of showing your math. If you have already worked the Kellogg casebook or similar American books, the LBS editions give you exposure to a different set of industries and currencies.

 

Where Can You Find the London Business School Casebook?

 

You can download the casebook here: London Business School Casebook.pdf

LBS distributes the current casebook through its Career Centre to enrolled students, alongside case workshops, Peer Leader mock interviews and Consulting Club crack a case sessions. If you are an LBS student, the Career Centre course portal is the first place to look, not a search engine.

 

If you are not at LBS, older editions circulate publicly through document sharing sites and casebook aggregators. Quality varies and scans are often incomplete, so cross check the page count before you commit to one. Collections of MBA consulting casebooks from multiple schools are usually a faster route than hunting for a single PDF.

 

Be careful what you search for. Queries for the LBS casebook frequently surface the school's academic case collection instead, which is a paid teaching resource for professors and will not help you prepare for an interview.

 

How Should You Practice With the London Business School Casebook?

 

Practice with a partner, run each case live under time, and read the rubric only after you finish. Reading cases silently teaches you almost nothing, because the skill being tested is verbal problem solving under observation, not comprehension.

 

1. Read the prep guide first: all 22 pages, before you touch a single case
   
   
2. Start with the shorter firm cases: Bain's Entertainment Co and L.E.K.'s NewCo Petrol Retailer are good entry points
   
   
3. Give the case, do not just take it: interviewing your partner teaches you what weak structure sounds like from the other chair
   
   
4. Time every phase: one minute to think, two to three to present structure, then fifteen to twenty analysing
   
   
5. Score yourself against the rubric: write down which of the three columns your answer landed in for each dimension
   
   
6. Redo weak cases a week later: repetition on your specific failure mode beats volume across new cases

 

Finding a reliable case interview practice partner is the hardest part of this for most candidates, especially outside a business school. Two disciplined partners running three cases a week will outperform ten casual partners every time.

 

Casebooks give you volume but not a method. If you want to learn case interviews quickly before you start burning through practice cases, my case interview course walks you through proven strategies in as little as 7 days.

 

What Are the Best Tips for Using the LBS Casebook?

 

Tip #1: Read the rubric before you run the case, not after

 

This sounds backwards, but do it once. Reading a full poor versus average versus superior rubric before your first case rewires how you think about the whole exercise.

 

You will notice that superior performance is almost never about getting the right number. It is about spotting implications, prioritising without prompting and driving to solutions on your own.

 

Tip #2: Use the firm cases to calibrate interview style

 

The book flags that most interviews are candidate led, where you ask for data and drive the analysis, while McKinsey typically runs interviewer led cases. The McKinsey cases in the book reflect that, arriving as a numbered sequence of questions.

 

Practice both styles deliberately. Candidates who only rehearse candidate led cases freeze when an interviewer takes the wheel and starts firing questions.

 

Tip #3: Do every calculation out loud on paper

 

The LBS cases are unusually math heavy. RefreshNow! requires a break even in units, then a conversion into market share, then a capacity check.

 

AirJet goes further, asking for economic profit per aircraft and then a segment level pricing analysis.

 

Silent math is the fastest way to fail a quantitative case. If your case interview math is slow, drill it separately rather than letting it eat your case time.

 

Tip #4: Practice the British market sizing separately

 

The guide includes a worked estimate of London Zoo's annual ticket revenue built from opening hours rather than population, which is a genuinely different approach to market sizing. It also runs a UK online dating market estimate through a five step funnel.

 

Both are worth redoing from scratch. If you are recruiting in Britain, knowing rough UK population, household counts and typical price points will save you real time.

 

Tip #5: Do not copy the case structures as reusable frameworks

 

The book is explicit that shoehorning a memorised structure onto a problem is a known failure mode, and it says LBS MBAs have been criticised by firms for exactly this. The example structures printed after each case are meant for review, not for reuse.

 

Learn the underlying logic instead of the boxes. Solid case interview frameworks are starting points you adapt, not templates you paste.

 

Who Is the London Business School Casebook Best For?

 

It is best for candidates recruiting in the UK or Europe and for anyone who wants firm authored cases with a scoring rubric. Undergraduates and experienced hires get almost as much from it as MBA students, since the cases themselves are not degree specific.

 

The context helps explain why the book is so firm heavy. According to LBS, the five year average share of MBA students joining consulting firms is 39%, rising to 45% for Masters in Management students, and the school reports that 40% of the MBA Class of 2025 accepted a consulting role.

 

That volume gives LBS unusual pull with recruiters. The school's Head of Consulting Careers notes that company interactions start from mid September, with full time recruitment in the autumn term and internship recruitment in spring. Firms invest in the casebook because they hire from the class every year.

 

The one group that should look elsewhere first is complete beginners. If you have never seen a profit tree or run a market entry case, the LBS cases will feel punishing, because several are explicitly designed to be too long to finish.

 

Used properly, the London Business School casebook is one of the few free resources that tells you not just what to solve but how you will be graded. Get through the prep guide, run the firm cases live with a partner, and score every performance against the rubric instead of against your own gut.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Is the London Business School casebook free?

 

Yes. LBS distributes it free to enrolled students through the Career Centre, and older editions circulate freely as PDFs. No consulting club casebook is sold commercially by its school.

 

How many cases are in the London Business School casebook?

 

The current Career Centre edition contains 22 cases across 224 pages. Seventeen were contributed by consulting firms, four by corporate strategy teams and one comes from a case competition. Earlier editions carry different counts, including 18 cases in the 2006 edition and 12 in the 2010/2011 edition.

 

Which consulting firms wrote the LBS casebook cases?

 

McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy&, Monitor Deloitte, Roland Berger, L.E.K. Consulting, Accenture, Marakon and Solon Management Consulting all contributed cases. BCG and Strategy& supplied three each, making them the largest contributors. Corporate strategy cases came from BASF, BT, Ericsson and Zurich.

 

Is the LBS casebook useful if you are not an MBA student?

 

Yes. The cases test structure, math and business judgement rather than MBA coursework, so undergraduates and experienced hires can use them directly. The only MBA specific content sits in the recruiting timeline section, which assumes an on campus cycle.

 

Is the London Business School casebook the same as the LBS Case Collection?

 

No, and this trips up a lot of searches. The casebook is a free interview prep resource from the Career Centre and Consulting Club. The LBS Case Collection is a paid library of academic teaching cases sold through LBS Publishing for classroom use.

 

Which LBS casebook edition should you download?

 

Start with the Career Centre edition, since it has the most cases, the clearest rubrics and the most current prep guide. Add the 2006 Consulting Club edition afterwards if you want 18 more cases and the strongest teaching section on estimation questions.

 

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