BarBri, Pain-Free

My good friend T took BarBri this summer, but alas, not with us in the BarBri dungeon. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among those of us who missed her, but she assures me it was all for the best.

She listened to BarBri lectures on her iPod in the comfort of her own home. Lucky her. I was curious, so I asked her for more details about how it worked. Here's what she had to say (posted with her permission):

I thought it was a good experience for me (but let me stress the "for me" part). It's definitely not something that would be good for just anybody.

First, it's not just an option for anybody. You have to have a good reason to give to BarBri as to why you need it. You need to either be not within 50 miles of a BarBri location, or you have to have some extenuating circumstances like I had (i.e., having no transportation at all). Plus, the kicker is that it costs an additional $1100, on top of the $2550 you already pay for BarBri.

For me, it was good, though, because I preferred actually studying at home, even though it's monotonous and lonely at times. The hardest part is just making yourself do it all. I just tried to at least stay on the BarBri live lecture schedule, and I actually ended up staying a bit ahead of it most of the time. That way I at least could gauge how I was keeping up with all of you guys.

Otherwise, it's the same thing you all hear during the live BarBri session, except that it's the lectures from the prior session (mine was the winter session for the February 2006 bar). It seems to me that nothing was different at all...the people lecturing were the same, it seems their lectures were identical to yours, and the worksheets didn't seem to have even been modified at all. So for me, it was a good choice.

So there you have it. Sounds like a good deal to me, since so much of my BarBri misery had to do with the commute and the site.

My big fear would have been that I wouldn't be as conscientious as T at keeping up with the lectures. I'd figure it would be so easy to catch up later, I'd probably do something crazy like wait until July to start listening to any of them at all.

Apropos of nothing, I know someone who took -- and passed -- the bar five years ago who didn't take BarBri and didn't start studying until two weeks before the exam. He checked out BarBri tapes from the law library. Then he made some calculations and realized it would be physically impossible to listen to them all in the next two weeks. So, his story goes, he played the tape at high speed. Commercial Paper a la the Chipmunks.

True? Who knows. It gives me comfort in the dark hours of the night when the bar-terrors take me. ;)