BarBri On The Go

BarBri

Have you ever wished you could study for the bar exam without being tied down to 4000 pounds of study materials?  The folks at BarBri have heard your cries and rewarded your patience.  This week BarBri released a FREE mobile study guide for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.  I was asked to do a review of this new application and provide some feedback on my impressions.  I want to pre-text this with the knowledge that I know little to nothing about BarBri, their services, courses, and I in am no way affiliated with them.  Not only that, but since I’m still mid-1L, I’m not fully versed in all the areas of law that BarBri covers and cannot accurately represent whether or not the caliber of questions this application presents is equivalent to what is necessary or expected.

With that out of the  way, let’s get right into it.  The application itself is a web-based one in which the questions and data aren’t loaded onto the phone but downloaded each time you run the app.  Not unusual for these types of applications but a precursor that a data connection of some form is needed (yes, I’m talking to you iPod Touch owners out there).

BarBari App Startup Page

When you first start the app, you’re immediately presented with a very marketing driven page.  You have two options–play the challenge game or learn more about the BarBri service and why millions of others trust them.  This sort of turned me off.  I began to question the primary purpose of this application–was it just a marketing tool to drive business or a legit means to actually learn?  My initial reactions were leaning towards the former.

Once you select to play the BarBri challenge, you have the option of playing in single player or multiplayer mode as well as view top scores and the like.  Registration to use the app is required which mandates a username, password, and the current law school you wish to be affiliated with.  For your use of the application in the future, these scores will be attributed to your school collectively.  I immediately wondered how honest people were with which school they listed, though I will give BarBri credit for having a pretty composite list–even my unranked school made the list.

BarBri Player Mode

The way the BarBri challenge is played is that you are presented with ten multiple choice questions to answer in a period of fifteen minutes.  From what I understand this is similar to what is seen inside a BarBri course.  I played a few rounds and one of the biggest concerns I had was that when you selected an answer, you either received a ‘ding’ bell sound for correct or ‘error’ buzz for an incorrect answer, but nothing more.  There was no way to find the proper answer or understand why your answer was incorrect.  I cannot confirm if this is the way BarBri typically operates, but I would like to learn from my mistakes to ensure I don’t make them again.  This ability doesn’t appear to be present which decreases its value to me.  The questions I was presented with were simple in nature, covering topics of property, civil procedure, contracts, torts, and criminal law.  If there are more areas of review that are typically covered by bar review classes, I haven’t yet seen them in this application.  I have been informed by the makers that the current application only contains 300 questions but future versions will be have a larger collection.  I’m not scoring perfectly on them, but I am not finding them all that difficult either and considering how I was rushing a lot to get through all the questions I’m not sure how advanced the nature of the studying is.

BarBri Example Question

Based on the number of questions you answer correctly, you are allotted ‘points’ which are accredited to your account and can weigh in the ranking of your user profile and affiliated school.  After each set of ten question is completed, you are shown how many points you earned and given the opportunity to try another set of ten or view your ranking.  I don’t know if this is supposed to be some sort of pride based motivator or making this game more “gamey” but I felt it took away from what I expected to be a core aspect of the application–to educate.  I think that in the long run, you won’t find yourself really using this application to prepare for the bar or related activities, but rather as a goofing off tool or prop to make a new drinking game.  I’d classify it up there with the bar-stool based video trivia games popular a decade ago–a fun way to pass the time with friends and beer but not going to change much.

In the end, one must remember that BarBri is a for profit company seeking to earn revenue through their bar review based services.   Their goal is to make money, and considering that this application is being made freely available, one can argue that they are seeking to altruistically help others.  But given the learning limitations of the application, the marketing focused intro, and the competition style nature of the game–I find myself not as positive thinking.  Here’s to hoping future versions can be more study and exam prep ready rather than just a means to drive business.

The BarBri application is freely available on iTunes now and can be downloaded quickly and easily.

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