Thread: barbri = monopoly... expensive, not very good! New class action lawsuit

I am involved in a Class Action lawsuit alleging antitrust violations by barbri that make the courses much more expensive, and substantively worse (outdated materials, etc.), because of numerous outright illegal actions taken by barbri to become a dominant monopoly. The Class will be comprised of everyone who took a barbri course in 2007 or thereafter. Would that include you?

If so, I wanted to ask you, first and foremost: how did you feel about the course? Lots of people have lots of complaints, e.g. "I didn't even get my practice essays back until after the exam!", etc. In my experience, most of us wound up at least a little disgruntled about the experience in general, especially if you paid for it yourself.

Also, if it so happens that you failed the bar, you might be interested to know that passage rates are down dramatically all around the country since barbri's illegal anti-competitive behavior started, based on the failure of barbri to improve (or even just update!) their product like they would HAVE to do if they still had any legitimate competition in the market.

I don't know if you took antitrust in law school, but if you did, then I don't need to tell you about the principles involved here... or about the automatic trebling of damages in most antitrust actions.

I'm eager to pick your brain about this... don't worry, I'll be gentle.

Category: Bar Exam - General

I took BarBri and it was fine. "Overpriced?" --perhaps... but all bar prep. courses are... Flemings is expensive, PMBR is considering it is so short a course, all the variations out there. BarBri has good materials and the lecturers generally were entertaining enough to keep me focused (specifically Chemerinsky and the female prof. who taught property my year...).

In terms of BarBri not "updating" I am not sure what you mean. If anything, i think they offer TOO much information. The bar is not about knowing every little nuance known in the common law. BarBri might not work for everyone. Also, sometimes people just don't put in the work. Othertimes, people are poor test takers. Other times things happen in one's life during bar prep (like a breakup or a death of a loved one or a medical problem) that distract from one's ability to focus. LOTS of factors play into the reason people fail. Additionally, passage rates can be low for MANY reasons. First and foremost more people are going to law school, more law schools are opening up shop, thus more people are taking the bar that otherwise likely would not have been in the applicant pool before. I went to a 4th tier-- so i am by no means saying that is a crappy education, however, when law schools (ABA and non-ABA) are availing such an education to students who otherwise would not have got (i.e. could not get into schools because of GPAs or bad LSATs or whathaveyou) then the passage rate is going to reflect that. I think blaming one company is a little lacking in logic. and no, i don't work for BarBri and yes, I think the Anti-trust suit was warranted (and yes, i am one of the many in the class getting reimbursed a measly $130 bucks or something)... HOWEVER, I think your posting is a little to suggestive in terms of BarBri's affect on passage rates and their overall evil-ness. It's a business, just like most things in America. I am not sure where you took the bar, but there are other options, and BarBri might not be perfect, but I think they do a pretty decent job considering the volume of information they teach and organizing it all into the lecture schedule and the materials they create to supplement the lectures.

Guess I just thought a counter-point was warranted.

Best of luck in your future bar endeavors,

:)

I am taking the Ca Barbri class right now and it is terrible. Just terrible. The "example answers" for some of the essay questions are just wrong, clearly wrong.

A particular pet peeve of mine is the "admission against interest" THERE IS NO SUCH THING. There is an Admission - which does not require "against interest" and there is a "statement against interest." My Evidence teacher would be screaming.

The classes themselves are also terrible, 55 people meet everyday to WATCH A VIDEO. Yes no real prof. Also, i have no idea what is up with their 'book lease' and essay grading (everyone i know "fails" every essay, without explanation.) For example one professor stated: "stay away from policy arguments" and everyone in the class fails this practical because "missing policy arguments." None of the professors seem to be on the same page. All of the class notes and outlines are in different format written by individual professors with varying quality. Barbri's lectures are very different from the 'mini review' and then the 'essay workshops' are somewhere out in left field. Barbri does not give comprehensive approach, or any kind. There is no game plan. I will pass the bar, in spite of Barbri, certainly not because of barbri. I knew a group of (7) students from stanford who got together and decided to study on their own, dividing the subjects and teaching them to each other and working the exams from the CA Bar website. All passed the first time. If i could do it again i would not take barbri.

I agree--barbri is not the necessity so many people think it is. I am not taking barbri because I can't afford it, and the NY bar course isn't offered in the area I live in. However, the first thing I did even before law school was over was buy barbri's materials and go to their website to download everything I could. My plan was to follow the barbri course as if I were taking it. I have friends taking barbri, and we talk and share info from the course. My opinion, then, is obviously more for people reading who will take the bar in the future, who are wondering about barbri or are just reading this.

Now that it's two weeks before the exam, I have concluded that barbri is a pretty bad course. I do agree that you can't blame everything for everyone on them. However, it seems like their method is to just overprepare you and over-scare you into doing well on the bar. By "overprepare," I mean the unnecessary amount of material they give you. Some of those books the majority of people NEVER open; others, some people hardly ever open; there are too many practice questions and practice essays--this would be fine, except at least with respect to the practice MBE questions they aren't even like the ones on the bar exam (I say this because I have many old MBE released questions, barbri's released questions are different from their fake MBE questions, and other people who have taken the exam pretty much ALL say barbri's questions aren't like actual MBE questions). With the questions being as different as they are, I don't feel as if all the practicing with them helps.

Their paced schedule is insane, and the class structure was one of the reasons why I knew I could be okay without their course--for a lot of people, the classes will just be videos, and so many of the classes consist of you just filling in their lecture handouts! That's three hours you can be spending doing whatever study method works best for you or even relaxing! The fact that they provide so much material is almost, if not actually is for some people, counterproductive to doing well and preparing intelligently/efficiently for the exam. It's essentially no use to remembering any of their "tips," and it's as if they don't focus you in on what's most important and troubling in the materials--they just throw it ALL at you. Other books out there will SPELL OUT troubling points and tips a lot more clearly and succinctly, make them easier to find just because they are in ONE book and tell you very helpful things barbri won't.

Barbri also emphasizes volume at the expense of telling you what's REALLY most essential to preparing for the bar--memorizing. I realized that sitting around doing practice problems like everyone says was maybe helping with recognition, which is fine for the MBE, but wasn't helping with recitation. So when I sat down to do essays, I would recognize most of the issues but couldn't spit out black letter law like a lawyer can, and this is what state bars are looking for, as well as that you then apply that law. Barbri doesn't help with this. That's why so many people who take barbri end up doing other self-help things that increases the volume of their materials, such as create their own outlines and flashcards--to help with memorization. THIS is why they pass (figuring out memory is the key, and/or they are just the kind of person who can remember well anyway or through exposure); NOT barbri. In contrast, PMBR, while they have their own problems, gives you ready-made, more concise materials that help with memorizing more easily, such as flashcards and audio CDs. That's way better than 9 or so huge books.

By "over-scare," I mean not just the amount of material but also their simulated MBE and essay grading. They make the simulated MBE insane on purpose, so three weeks before the exam so many people are sitting around freaking out and sure they're not going to pass because they missed half the questions on it. Then barbri tries to take all the credit by saying stuff like "our students improve an average of 28 points from this test to the actual MBE." If anything, the students would already have been doing close to whatever they got on the actual MBE three weeks before if they'd been given questions more like the actual MBE, or their low simulated MBE score freaked them out so much that they studied like a beast the last three weeks. And as cclose1 said, it seems like everyone does horribly on the barbri essays, but then they pass the bar exam just fine.

If I had it to do again--and I say that because if I fail, I have no intention of going through this again since I don't even want to be a lawyer anymore--I would just buy the PMBR audio CDs and their flashcards, Walton and Emanuel's "Strategies and Tactics for the MBE," Gallagher's "Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays," barbri's "Drills & Released Questions" book, barbri's "Conviser Mini Review" book and maybe barbri's NY essay book (since I'm taking the NY bar exam). I would go to the NY bar website and download their old released essays and model answers, and I would use a site called the Flashcard Exchange to help me learn/review the law for the NY essay subjects in addition to Conviser. I would not spend all the money I have, I would not follow barbri. I would have spent week after week just replaying the audio CDs over and over and over and reviewing flashcards over and over and over, doing practice questions and noting what I miss. This would be a more efficient use of 8 hours every day, and you could probably take at least one day every weekend off doing this. Get over needing a "classroom structure" to motivate you. This is the bar exam--you have to be disciplined, and given that you only have two months you have to make the most efficient use of your time. Barbri just isn't efficient, in my opinion. They follow the law school/legal profession motto that everything must be 1,000 times harder and more confusing than it actually is/should be. That's not what we need, especially when preparing for the bar.

I can't believe they let you guys just watch videos!!! I thought you pay for all those professors' expensive hourly rate!! I guess I got lucky in the sense that I had live lectures, and my professors actually answer my calls.

I thought Barbri should not be used independently because it really does "overscare" you and does not tell you what is really important on the exam. On the other hand, it is so comprehensive that if you do not have a good grasp of the material, it is a good start. To compensate for the information overload, you should always use a set of baroutlines to focus on the tested issues.

Those of you who got no discount and no real professor, you should really sue them!!

I passed the NY Bar Exam, and I was in the bottom 25% of my law school class. The odds of students in my law school passing if they are in the top 50% are somewhere around 90%... after that it plummets substantially- I was literally statistically lucky I passed the bar exam, and would not have done so without barbri.

Now i dont schill for barbri, i never worked for barbri and I paid the full tuition amount because I waited like a fool till third year of law school, so i feel my objectivity is intact for the most part... for me barbri was perfect.It is meticulous, methodical, regimented, everything I am not.

Overkill and too much information is definitely a drawback to Barbri, but I will take over-prepared and over-scared versus under-prepared and too relaxed ten times out of ten...

I do have to critique Barbri's MBE questions as often being too easy or too straightforward, although the hardest of Barbri's practice q's are hard enough I suppose. I took a Kaplan weekend prep and their multiple choices were definitely more on point with the NY Bar.

However, for new york essays, nothing beats barbri. They offer ACTUAL new york bar exam essays as practice, as well as many of their own design. There is no way you can be completely unprepared for a ESSAY topic if you attempted even half of the many many essays they ask you to do (too many, but who needs a summer really?). Although the essay graders are EXTREMELY TOUGH (in terms of giving low grades on handed in essays), rarely giving more than a 5 out of ten, most understood the purpose was to make you work harder in crafting your answers in a limited amount of time. NY Bar exam graders are not nearly as demanding as Barbri's, so knowing that may help some cope with getting 3's on essays...

MARINO'S ESSAY ADVANTAGE IS ALSO WORTH IT, ONLY FOR THE FALSE CONFIDENCE YOU FEEL AFTERWARD THAT MAYBE YOU KNOW AN ESSAY OR TWO BEFOREHAND... AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE FEELING

Barbri is perhaps overpriced, but it is guaranteed to prepare you for the bar. There are some things, however, which are missing from the program.

They do not stress memorization enough. I had to make my own materials to memorize, modeling my outlines on the outlines given by Barbri. But it would have been nice to have just the 'bare bones' spelled out there without having to make the outline myself. Flashcards would have been nice too for all those thousands of dollars.

Lectures give a false sense of studying. Some lectures are repetitive. I bought PMBR's CDs for the MBE and thought they were just as good as BarBri's lectures. I think it is not necessary to use BarBri - you can get by doing it on your own, with the right materials.

Their essay workshop could have been better. I also bought Jeff Adachi's BarBreakers books, which were as good or better than BarBri's essay workshops. A lot of the material is repeated, so they're virtually the same thing.

I bought BarCode Cheat Sheets as well. This book gives you templates for all of the major essay topics - like how to go down the line and analyze everything for 'negligence', 1st amendment, etc. Having canned answers for the major topics on the bar make life a lot easier. I planned on making these myself, but did not have time, so I opted for the book, which did the job. Barbri should provide templates for the major essay topics.

I found their MBE questions too easy. I also used PMBR's MBE books and was happy I did, as seeing two different types of MBE questions was instructive. I wouldn't have felt comfortable relying just on BarBri.

But given all of the downfalls (and the fact that if you give yourself an extra month to put all the materials together, you can study for the test yourself), it was worth it. But I wouldn't do it for my second bar exam - by that time, you can do it yourself with reasonably updated materials.

Hi All!

I just finished the NY bar exam... TODAY!

BarBri wasn't awful, but I can say with near confidence that given the choice again (and got, lets hope I don't have to when November rolls around) I would use a different bar review company. But then again, I didn't take the other courses so I can't say whether or not BarBri is or is not the best. But I can convey my personal experience...

For sure, they need to update their materials. Just a week before the exam I was running through a few topics with some of my friends (neither BarBri students) and we seemed to disagree on a few things. We compared outlines (not our own, but the published bar review outlines from our respective courses) and sure enough, completely conflicting rules on the same exact issue. We did a little research, and sure enough, BarBri got it wrong! Imagine the anxiety I got from that with less than a week until the big day!

I didn't care for their MBE stuff. They do it in "sets" of increasing order of difficulty. They also tend to test the same issue different ways back to back. I understand that may be good in the beginning to conceptually see the different ways the same concept can be tested, but they don't take the training wheels off soon enough... I started improving from identifying barbri patterns, not actually gaining skills useful for the MBE. I got a 150 raw score on their simulated exam, and I can say with full confidence that whatever score I get on the MBE I took just hours ago will not be anywhere near that high.

Probably the biggest problem (and this one actually isn't their fault) is that BarBri has a frequency chart of most tested to least tested subjects. They (implicitly) advocate concentrating on the top of the chart, to the lowest. So silly me, I trust them. Or so silly of me to think the Bar Examiners wouldn't eventually concentrate at the bottom of it.

I looked at every released exam and sample answers on NYLOBE website, and I wouldn't have "aced it" but I felt I would have passed had any of those been given. This week's exam was nowhere near of the same variety, and I strongly believe that it is because the examiners want hard work and not what bar review course you take to be dispositive of your final score. Why do I think this? Look at the issues tested, and look at where they are on the BarBri frequency chart (Coughs, bottom).

Look, I know everything is fair game and we shouldn't get spoiled and assume that those "minor" topics are just a joke. However, as you go through those BarBri lectures, they convince you that they know enough of the things that come up every time so you don't need to worry about the minutia of the infrequent topics. And for years, BarBri shows us the shortcuts, the shortcuts are enough to get the minimum, and if you had a good exam day, you passed. Now, BarBri shows us the shortcuts and based on the exam I just saw, the bar examiners are making sure that choosing BarBri is all you have to do to pass the exam... and while it sucks for me, I can't say I think that its a bad thing.

In the end, I don't know if I pass or failed yet. I was caught off guard, but I also know I gave it a good effort. I didn't take other bar review courses so I can't say whether my experience was typical no matter what bar review you take. I can say, however, that even if BarBri is really the best, the best currently isn't good enough.
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