Notes

Just in case anybody from Thomson-West reads my blog, I want to say a couple things about Bar/Bri, the ridiculously expensive bar review course that you peddle to poor law students.

First, while I cannot deny the helpfulness of bar review courses, which falls somewhere in the neighborhood of “absolute necessity” from the highly distorted perspective of individuals who are facing an upcoming state bar examination, I am nevertheless troubled by the dearth of statistical data regarding the question of whether people who use your course are actually better off than people who don’t. Why isn’t this information out there?

For instance, I would like to see a chart that compares people who use Bar/Bri with people who use other review courses and people who use no review courses at all. I want to see it broken down by their law school grades, by their law schools, by their locations, etc., so people with similar situations can be compared to each other. I want to see what percentage of those people pass the bar exam on the first attempt. Where is this information? You’re just selling your stuff on the pitch that you’re long-established and lots of people use it. Yeah, so what?

This is a problem of all the bar review courses, though. Nobody wants to talk about actual success rates. So I had to choose a bar review course by the ridiculously lame criterion of “Which one seems to be the least fly-by-night?”

Second, the Bar/Bri website just flat sucks. It must be one of the worst websites I have ever used. Just terrible. Whenever I need to go there and get information, forms, or software, it’s always a hassle. Sometimes I think your website designers must be stuck in 1998, but the 1998 of a parallel universe where huge corporations whose main business is providing information think that the best way to channel your information to your customers is with clunky, obscurantist interfaces whose only clear message is, “Hi there, we are a bunch of dunderheads with no idea how to communicate with human beings.”

For instance, why is all of your content nestled into a tiny little frame in the middle of the window, so it feels like I’m looking through a keyhole to see all your stuff? Or how about this: When I wanted you to send me the “during law school” review books, why did I have to go to your website, download a PDF, print it out, fill it in by hand, and fax it back to you with my credit card number on it? Why do you bother having a website when you’re going to make things that circuitous and old-fashioned?

And Bar/Bri suckage is not limited to the website. Any chance you could clean up the scores of typos in that stack of books you send us? Or what about this goofy Flash-based “StudySmart” software? Doing MBE questions with software that tracks my progress is a super cool idea, I have to admit. Just like having a system of interstate highways is a super cool idea. But using StudySmart to prepare for the bar exam is like driving a 1987 Ford Aerostar on a cross-country road trip; it’ll do the job, but you’ll be cursing at it the whole time.

Third, would it be possible to provide some method of feedback other than leaving voicemail? An online forum? A wiki? How about an email address? Anything? Hello? I suppose I could have told you all this by leaving a message at the one phone number on the Bar/Bri website, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t do any good.

“Oh, some guy is ranting about how our website sucks. But we already have his money, so whatever.”

And that’s really what it comes down to, doesn’t it? You peddle your wares to people who are desperate, who have few other viable choices, not because your course is statistically proven to be superior, but because it has been around longer than the competitors. And you know that most of us are too busy and too fragged to go complaining about your lame customer service, especially when all you offer is a single phone number. And since we don’t take the trouble to complain, you don’t take the trouble to improve. If we pass the bar, then we’ll never deal with you again, unless we get suckered into using WestLaw for our legal research.

There’s this whole new generation of tech-savvy people coming into the legal profession and we are not remotely impressed by your products or services. Get a clue.

Now I have to get back to studying. Maybe some other day I’ll find time to complain about MicroMash, too.