The Bar Prep Battles

Last year I became a student sales representative for Kaplan PMBR- in part to avoid paying the approximate $3000 in tuition for a commercial bar preparation class, and in part to practice the skills I began to learn as a salesman at a car dealership in Las Vegas. After earning enough sales for a free class last year, this year I was asked to become the head student rep at the school.

When I first came to law school, I did not believe in the necessity of a bar preparatory course. I thought one of the primary purposes of law school was to teach me what I needed to know to pass the bar exam. After one semester, though, I learned that this not a goal of law school- at least not the better law schools. The best law schools in the country teach you to think about the ideas behind the law and why law has developed as it has. The "black letter law,"- what the law actually says in a given state- is what the bar exam tests, however.

I once tried to compliment a professor by telling her that I appreciated how much black letter law she taught in her course. Unfortunately, she did not take that as a compliment. Teaching the black letter law is the easy part, she told me. I now understand that many professors consider it beneath them to teach black letter law.

The commercial bar prep course a student takes after graduation from law school is supposed to teach the black letter law. The theory is that if you are smart enough to be in law school, then you are smart enough to learn the black letter law in the two months in between graduation and the administration of the bar exam.

The faculty of Florida State Law even recommends an outside bar prep course- though not one company specifically.

In Florida, there are really only two choices for a bar prep company- Kaplan PMBR or Barbri. Both companies offer a course that begins shortly after graduation in mid May and runs into July right up to the administration of the bar exam.

My experience as head sales rep for Kaplan PMBR thus far has been enjoyable and interesting. Many of the students treat sales like a game, which is fine. But for the regular employees of the companies, this sales business is their livelihood. Kaplan PMBR is part of a conglomerate owned by the Washington Post, and Barbri is a subsidiary of the Thomson Reuters information company. The customer base (law school students) is a captive one. Almost all of the students will eventually realize that they need a bar prep course. The competition for the enrollments of these students has been amusingly intense at times this semester.

It is fun. Trying to close a sale is a nice distraction from legal research, and the atmosphere of selling brings back some fond memories of Las Vegas for me. Law school selling is nothing like the sharks tank of a dealership where I worked out in the desert, though. The salesmen I met out in Vegas were some of the most colorful characters I have ever encountered. Perhaps in a future entry I will describe some of them.

Hopefully, the bar prep battles at Florida State Law bring good results for the students. Competition keeps the price from spiraling way up, though the courses are expensive enough as it is. The competition between Kaplan PMBR and Barbri also insures that the companies will do their best to offer a quality product that gets results.

The bar exam is now on the visible horizon. I filed my conversion application with the Florida Board of Bar Examiners earlier this week.

A bar prep course is a necessary part of the law school experience. So, see me if you want to enroll with a great program! : )

Until Next Time,

Nathan Marshburn