BARBRIReviews of barbri.com

If you want to pass your SQE 2, avoid Barbri! Mocks they provide and sample answers are easy and lacklustre compared to the real exam. Have a look at the SRA sample papers and answers and you'll see the stark difference between the two in terms of details and expected level of application. Year after year they don't change or update their materials so you're just doing the same outdated course that hasn't been updated or improved. Workshops should be focused on going over workshop material but tutors tend to waffle on and on during workshops answering silly questions from some students who can find the answers if they read the materials properly. They provide sample answers for marginal passes meaning that the standard you're aiming for in the real exam is below the required standard. They don't provide you with realistic mock exams. Feedback is mediocre at best and not nearly as comprehensive. They underestimate the importance of the law and focus more on the skills. Going with Barbri is a waste of time and money and I would advise anyone considering them to consider other providers if you're serious about passing.

Awful, absolute waste of time and money

Full disclosure – got a scholarship to do the course. Scholarship chose Barbri. TLDR: SQE1 – go for it champ. SQE2 – amateur hour at 3 grand a pop SQE1 - great, easy to follow, straight forward. Grills you on the MCQs and you feel right at home at the real exam. SQE2 prep - garbage (save for a few good things noted at the end). Here is why: Tragic website. Clunky to get around, useless pre-recorded weekly recap videos by the tutor effectively just reading out the activity names for that week. You will have to download a bunch of pdfs with useful information from the resource page as and when you are going along with the course, as they are incompetent enough to include the information where it would be relevant ie on the actual activity. Case and point: Legal research answer template changed, thus activities need to be reflect this and the exemplar. Instead of adding this to the activity, go fish it out from the resources page (some exemplars were also missing just to keep you on your toes 🥴). You have to keep switching between the resources and course content pages to piece together what’s going on and what you want to do. Fancy digital bookshelf. Although a paper book is provided, if you’re born after the dot com bubble you’ll more likely to use digital resources as it allows you to search up terms. The digital copy is provided in a clunky website wrapper, and if you download a section of the reading for offline use, the copyright text is so prevalent and over every page that its just distracting and obstructive. Bonus points – no search function and you cant OCR the doc because its locked down🥳. Skills explainer videos. They splurged on a studio shot for the skill explainer videos, you can tell everyone is reading off a teleprompter. How about you get some engaging lecturers like you did in SQE1 and let them just deliver a presentation on the skill with demonstrations? Legal content explainer videos. Videos look like they were shot in a CIA black site with a mobile phone camera from 2005. Content is fine but it is grainier than pictures of Loch Ness monster. Legal content in general. Fun fact: barbri keeps emphasizing just how important legal content is for you to pass an exam. They also just don’t cover half of it 🤷‍♀️. They’re doing you a solid though by giving you a pdf with all the content gaps in their course that you can then conjure up some activities in your own time (apparently you’re not paying for a comprehensive course?). The rest will kind of come up once in an activity (maybe). Locating material for open-book practice is an absolute pain. Why not just provide a drop down on the activity with all the relevant videos and hyperlinked chapters? Legal research activities. Barbri seems to not know what text formatting is when giving you the text sources. They just copy-pasted 6 pages of text off lexis/westlaw into a word doc, slapped barbri logo on, didn’t bother with punctuation/formatting/logic of the document. This text following a bracketed number randomly starting on page 3 – is this a new paragraph or one of the footnotes? You figure it out 🤭Also the outdated templates and exemplars mentioned above🤙 Strategy sessions. Good: ask your own silly questions and no question is too silly. Bad: mostly a waste of time; questions repeated over and over again. You can also tell the people running those sessions are great at waffling to fill the hour. An idea: catalog the questions and put in on the website so people could look them up. Tutor calls. Mostly a waste of time, save for the last one (1:1). Most of the participants in my tutor calls were raising the same complaint about lack of legal content prep so I guess it isn’t just me? 😲 If you went to university and expect some sort of professionalism from the course structure itself, forget it. Peer assessments are terribly implemented; the website is clunky and too fancy for no apparent reason. GOOD THING: activities themselves are alright to give you a taste for the real thing. Tutor feedback is helpful and personalized.

There are too many inconsistencies in their books and practice questions. The same answer to exactly the same question is correct in one set of questions but incorrect in another. Additionally, some of the subjects in their books are unclear and outdated. They are doing a very sloppy job for a course that is so expensive.

Terrible customer service

A waste of money, never got my “graded essays” graded.

detail, not enough practice for the essays

Barbri is a joke for folks with ADHD. Bought for Texas and Louisiana. Failed both multiple times.