BarBri is a company in the United States that offers the most widely used bar exam preparation course in the country. A substantial majority of American recipients of a Juris Doctor degree attend a six-week course provided by this company, which features lectures by law professors on the six major areas covered on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) — torts, contracts, real property, evidence, criminal law, and constitutional law — along with additional lectures on the specific law of the state. Most of the lectures are presented by videotape. Like other bar preparation courses, BarBri also supplies participants with outlines of the topic areas, and several hundred sample multiple-choice questions.
More than 800,000 students have taken BarBri courses, and the company now also offers prep courses for entering the first year of law school.
History
In 1967, the company's predecessors were founded by William A. Rutter, who is still with West Publishing, and by three attorneys in Chicago. In 1974, both San Francisco-based "Bay Area Review" and Chicago-based "Bar Review Institute" were bought by publishing giant Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, and promptly merged. The new subsidiary was officially known as "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Legal and Professional Publications," but was marketed under the brand name BarBri. Rutter became Chairman and CEO and Richard J. Conviser became president of the merged subsidiary.
Over the years, BarBri has engaged in some rather controversial tactics to reach its current position of market dominance. For example, on November 26, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that as a matter of law, BarBri's 1980 agreement with its Georgia franchisee was an unlawful restraint of competition on its face. Palmer v. BRG of Georgia, Inc., 498 U.S. 46 (1990).
After an intricate [citation needed] series of business transactions in 2000 and 2001, the company is currently owned by The Thomson Corporation, the owner of the well-known Westlaw legal research system. In its literature, it refers to itself as "BarBri, a Thomson business," or "Thomson BarBri."
Courses and Faculty
BarBri offers preparation courses for both the summer and winter adminitration of the bar exam in virtually every state. In most larger states, live presentations are available in one or more locations during the summer course. The course is also offered on videotape in numerous additional locations, often on or near the campus of various law schools. The course consists of lectures on substantive law, multiple choice question review, a practice administration of the multistate bar exam, and in some states, essay questions. Most lectures last from three to four hours. BarBri also provides numerous course books which include summaries of the substantive law, note taking outlines, and practice questions. Most BarBri lecturers are full time tenured law professors, and some have lectured for the company for many years. Among long-time BarBri lecturers are Erwin Chemerinsky (Duke Law School); David Epstein (SMU Law School); Paula Franzese (Seton Hall Law School); Richard Freer (Emory Law School); Stanley Johanson (University of Texas Law School); Faust Rossi (Cornell Law School); Roger Schechter (George Washington Law School); and Charles Whitebread (USC Law School).
Law Suits
BarBri's courses are currently the subject of a number of pending class action lawsuits. One lawsuit was brought in the United States District Court for the Central District of California and is captioned Ryan Rodriguez v. West Publishing Corp., No. 05cv3222 (C.D. Calif.).
The plaintiffs allege that BarBri violated federal antitrust laws by colluding with Kaplan, Inc. Plaintiffs specifically allege that BarBri agreed not to compete in the LSAT business and Kaplan agreed not to compete in the bar review business, thereby allocating to BarBri the market for full-service bar review courses in the United States, thereby preventing a competitive bar review course from being marketed and sold. West Publishing Company, named as a defendant with Kaplan, Inc., denies the allegations. (After the suit was filed, Kaplan entered the bar review business in a limited way by purchasing PMBR, a BarBri competitor that focuses exclusively on preparation for the MBE.)
A jury trial was originally scheduled for September 12, 2006, and then postponed until February 13, 2007. On the eve of trial, a $49 million proposed settlement was reached, under the terms of which class members would each receive $125. The proposed settlement will not go into effect unless approved by the federal court and at least two of the named plaintiffs in the suit expressed strong opposition to the settlement on the grounds that would not adequately compensate class members and would not effect meaningful change in the bar review industry.[1] As of February 14, 2007, the court had not indicated when it would issue its decision approving or rejecting the proposed settlement.
Another class action suit, pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and captioned Anthony Park v. Thomson Corp., No. 05cv2931 (S.D.N.Y.), alleges that BarBri has engaged in an illegal tying arrangement by not offering students the option to take the state-specific portion of their course independently from the multi-state preparation portion. In early January 2007, the trial judge denied BarBri's motion for summary judgment and held that the case would have to go to trail. The judge said Thomson may be able to justify the alleged tying arrangement at trial by proving that disaggregating the BarBri course into state-specific and multistate components would undermine the course's effectiveness.[2]