How helpful is the ‘BARBRI’ Law Preview course for students entering law school? Is the location of the course a factor? Are there other quality Law Preview programs?
It’s been several years since I’ve visited CC Parents’ Café, so I’m feeling a little guilty coming here yet again for advice. Thanks in advance for your help – as always it’s much appreciated.
from what I read when my kid was an 0L, the general consensus is that the Preview course is a waste of money and time.
We only used BARBRI to prepare for the bar exam. Our S self-studied for the LSAT and scored similarly to his very high SAT scores. Back in the day, my LSAT scores were also very similar to my SAT scores.
HImom, not the LSAT prep but the one for entering law students. It’s suppose to help w/ their 1st year classes.
@TutuTaxi, there are a coupe of reviews of the preview course online which I don’t think I can link here.
My law school experience was years ago and we did not do “preview” courses just a review course before sitting for the bar. My concern is that some of the material like legal research and writing might well be covered during the first year of law school. Otherwise they likely do an overview of typical 1L classes which I guess could be helpful but certainly not necessary.
Take a look at the reviews from people who actually took the BARBRI course as they will probably be most helpful to you – one is on reddit and others on toplawschools.com
I was a paralegal before I went to law school, so I knew a lot more then the other students - about depositions and discovery and documents. I’d even done a four week federal trial so was pretty familiar with briefs and motions and the supporting documents needed.
On the second day, we were all back on even ground.
Like I said, the only thing that EXISTED in the 1980s and before was the Bar Review Course. There was none of this pre-law school prep. If you did fine on the LSAT, you were good to go and brought your native intelligence and did just fine like the rest of your class. BARBRI is inventing something that is NOT needed, except creating additional insecurity and they hope, money for them.
This “Preview” didn’t exist when I went to law school in the early 80s (although I did take the BARBRI bar review course and found it helpful). I don’t know why anyone would need a preview. If one of my kids was headed to law school, there is no way I’d pay for this course.
I went to law school in the 70’s, and I think the whole idea is absurd. What’s next? Undergrad preview courses to ease the transition from high school to college? Kindergarten preview courses to ease the transition from nursery school to elementary school? Generations of law students have managed to adjust to law school classes without BARBRI’s intervention, though I guess you have to hand it to them for thinking up a new way to squeeze money out of panicky parents.
I’m probably in the minority here, but, immediately after we had all graduated and were still in touch while sitting for the bar, some of us remarked how nicely organized the BARBRI materials were and how, in some cases, they made better outlines than the ones we had prepared for ourselves during school, first year especially. I think that this is in line with what a lot of us felt was true at the time: that even after three years of law school, very few of us had ever taken the time to review what we had learned once the final exam was over. In many, many instances the BARBRI outlines were a revelation. Having them available as a preview makes sense, however, I would not pay for an entire live course. That sounds like overkill.
In fact, I think many colleges use some form of college-prep classes, especially for entering students they think are at-risk. And lots give a boost to students who have gone through programs with demonstrated success at preparing kids for college – whether it’s Telluride or Summer Search or having gone to Exeter. And of course many kindergartens DO have a transition protocol.
Of course I agree with everyone else that this particular course sounds like first and foremost a moneymaking opportunity for BARBRI. (I didn’t even pay them when I took the bar. A friend who had done the course six months earlier gave me her books, and I self-studied. I thought if my passing the exam depended on knowing developments in the past six months, I didn’t deserve to pass.)
That said, I could imagine a program that might be valuable. Traditionally, there is a boot-camp aspect to the first year of law school. There is a lot of deliberate obfuscation, pressure, and sometimes public humiliation. Some students mind that regime less than others, and some students – not necessarily the same ones – learn more under that regime than others. A class that taught some coping strategies, and that helped students figure out how to navigate between the first-year case focus and systems of rules and principles, would probably help some students a lot. I have no idea whether the BARBRI course comes close to doing that, however – it’s a much different project than the company’s normal test prep.
@TutuTaxi: Law preview is a joke that exists solely to extract money from understandably-anxious students. Law students in particular are risk averse, neurotic workaholics so the idea of taking on extra classes sounds like just the thing. It isn’t.
Unless they’ve changed the model since I last took a look, the idea is that they offer a mini-1L. Professors come in and teach the basics of each course you’ll take over the year. This is at best useless and at worst detrimental for the simple reason that the Barbri professor and your professor will not be the same person. Different professors teach different cases and, even in the same cases, often emphasize different things. You would do far better to read the outlines of previous, successful students to your professor than you would be to listen to someone else. Just read the E&E if you need general understanding of a topic
Thought the same exact thing as @circuitrider . . . where the heck were these amazing BarBri outlines before I started law school. It would have been nice to have outlines for the main courses.
I probably would have taken the preview course had it been available, though I have not heard of these before now. It might be overkill but what is the downside other than the $$ and lost time? How much does it cost?
A preview of law school? Sounds like a waste of time and money. If you want to learn about law before going to law school, but some “Nutshell” books or commercial outlines and try to force yourself to read them.
^Those Nutshell books were awful.
I don’t know those Nutshell books and commercial outlines got me through Secured Transactions in my 3L year while I was busy finding a job. I pulled a B using them. I missed a bunch of classes finding a job.