BARBRI Reviews 378

the video is wonderful

Barbri assisted me to easily pass the SQE1 the first time. I can recommend Barbri to anyone hoping to do the SQE.

Did sqe 1 course after doing a pgdl in England and wales law at a university.

Overall I liked it but a few of the lecturers were so boring and not very engaging. The exam itself had sections that I turned out to be I’ll prepared for.
However, I passed the exam on the first try, and it had a 44% pass rate when I took it.
I liked the multiple choice practice and the way it gives you a broad overview. It doesn’t go as in depth as you probably want to study at some point but, the exam is so tough, so it makes sense that it gives you enough info to pass.

I definitely would recommend doing a law degree at least either a pgdl or llb before preping for the sqe1.

I did the Barbri 40-week course for SQE 1. I am a senior lawyer qualified in a civil law jurisdiction and working full time at a Magic Circle law firm.
I think Barbri's best feature is that they really help you learn the exam materials with engaging lectures, concise books and questions. They cover strictly what is needed to pass which avoids having to learn too much content, which is very useful given the syllabus is huge. For this reason, I would highly recommend them to students who don't have a law background or a common law background or are taking the exam while working full time.
The weaker point of the course is that the mocks are easier than the real exam but while the actual exam scores tend to be lower than the Barbri mock scores, good results with Barbri will get you good results in the exam. I passed the Barbri mocks with high grades and the actual exam in the first quintile.

BARBRI were fantastic every step of the way. The lectures were clear, the books were excellent and well-structured, and the feedback and work I had on the mock exams for both parts of the SQE was phenomenal. I've been recommending them to everyone since I started the course with them

The structure of the SQE 2 prep course PSP could be better. The PSP for SQE 1 was intuitive and easy to navigate.However the SQE 2 PSP is really frustrating to use.

It also flexed across each person’s study plans to arrange the hours one needed to do per day to complete the course.

I would suggest that adjustments are made to make the learning process more enjoyable.

Overall structure of SQE2 course is good, but lacks essential section on FLK revision. This element has to be onboarded in the general timeline for the candidates as it will really make difference at the exam.

Great content, similar fact patterns with actual SQE, dedicated staff who’s always out there to help when you need them. PSP is designed so well that “spaced learning” becomes natural. Learners don’t have to make or use flash cards, take notes etc. one has to just blindly follow the PSP and do the reading. With Barbri, you’re in good hands.

BARBRI was chosen by my employer and I did not have a choice, but I was not impressed. SQE 1 was alright, though patchy across subjects, and I was concerned they prep you for c.60% when the pass grade is 56-58%, leaving a sliver of a margin. But SQE 2 was a disaster - you arrive to the start of the course and they tell you it is a presumption that you know all law required for SQE 1 (see 60% comment above), and then they train you for how to take the exam, but even there they train you for some of the exercises, but not really the others (like CMA and Drafting - these were almost non-existent in BARBRI's course). I appreciate some of this is due to the SQE being new and the SRA not releasing much information and binding all takers with an NDA, but then the price for BARBRI's course, esp. SQE 2, is absolutely disproportionate to the value.

When you read reviews for BARBRI - distinguish between US law reviews (there's a reason they're good there - the bar exam questions are released for tutors to improve their materials on) and UK law (SQE).

The course is effective in getting you to pass the exam but there are some questions during the exam
That will not have been covered by the teaching material.

Course prepared me well for sqe1

It course structure was very helpful and allowed flexibility between work and studies.

It was great. My only criticism is that the way Barbri update their content isn't very user friendly (including how there is no update to some of the MCQs during the course, meaning a limited amount was based on outdated law). I did however pass with 71 on FLK1 and 74 on FKL2, which was only about 5/10 points lower than my Barbri marks towards the end of the course. I also really liked the tutoring system.

Did my Higher Rights course (Civil) with Barbri. The best bit was that the course was conducted online with Live sessions. All recordings were available soo after. The Barbri mylearning system is very well structured and organised. Would recommend it. Quality of training is very good.

Great prep course, flexible schedule and easy to follow while working full time

Course was well organised and taught only enough detail for you to pass the course. The full syllabus is huge so learning it all was not an option. I hardly used any external material and passed with a GPA over 70%. Their learning technique of spaced repetition and repeated practise questions works well

It worked! Very effective.

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.

The material seems good. There are some inconsistencies and contradictions between the books and the questions asked. Also they are not helpful at all with payments. You are not allowed to set up payment for any day except the 1st of each month and if you are late you immediately lose access until payment is made. The 1st is not convenient for everyone. This just seems like poor customer service and lack of caring for their customers.

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.