Needs Refinement – BarMax Bar Exam, MBE & MPRE Review

Remember when you missed a class in law school and asked for the lecture to be recorded? Then asked your smart friend for their notes? Basically, that’s what you get with this. Which means the overall content is pretty good, however for nearly $1k, I expected more refinement (i.e. responsiveness to questions, outline free of typographical and grammatical errors, better flash cards, etc). So it is significantly cheaper than most bar review courses, however because the written material is so raw, I cant quite shake the feeling that I paid a Harvard grad a ton of money for his outline. Also very true that some of the lectures are bad, since they read the outline word for word...but depending on your professor that’s also true in law school, hence my comparison above. There are several that are really good in there as well. On the plus side, it’s basically what I needed to be able to study on go and on my terms. The app itself is simple to use and the added online access makes it very convenient. Note: I have not yet taken the exam, hence my opinions are free any pass/no pass bias, however I also cannot definitively speak to effectiveness of the materials. Edit: I reached out to BarMax regarding a couple blatant issues with missing info in both the outlines and flash cards...took them 3 days to respond with “we’re working on it” and “thanks for pointing that out.” It’s been two weeks, it doesn’t look like its fixed, nor have they provided me with the correct content. It’s becoming clear that being helpful to students is not part of their business model. Response to Dev: Thanks for the update on the cards, but would have been great if I were notified much earlier. Also, as I have noted, I don’t have an issue with the approach or content...just the overall sloppiness. There are a lot of spelling, grammar, and typing errors throughout. Additionally, besides the flash cards for Civ Pro and Crim, the rest are copy-paste jobs from the outline. Very disappointing that more time wasn’t put into others because the first 2 were great. Finally, some of the flash cards were in the wrong sections (e.g. “consideration substitute” in the section for “defense”). Shouldn’t this be something that is reviewed before publishing and the burden shouldn’t be on the student to point it out each time? Also CA Bar requires a scaled score of 1440 of 2000. Not a math wiz, but I think that’s 72%. All the scaling math may allow someone to get away with 65% in either the MBE or essays (but probably not both), but a blanket statement like that is misleading. Even under phased grading, you need an initial minimum score of 1390 (69.5%).
Review by ken.yama on BarMax Bar Exam, MBE & MPRE.