Thursday, May 25, 2006

Bar Review Of Doom

So I've made it to my bar review classes. I paid $2300 against my better judgment and so I'm going. This is one of the ways that lawschool and its associated industries get you. They don't sufficiently explain what's going to happen or what the next appropriate step is and then offer you a product at an inflated price. No one knows if it's worth it or not but it appears to be the only source of information about whatever particular anxiety they're crassly exploiting. So you buy it b/c everyone else is and you don't want to fall behind or end up disadvantaged. Usually there is only one provider of the service, or if there are multiple providers they are all substantially similar, so they charge whatever the hell they want and you have to put up with it.
So I'm going to these tedious classes that waste three hours to cover 45 minutes of material. I've got nine work books, bound cheaply and made with low grade paper, I get the opportunity to watch these lectures or listen to CDs of them later, and I get practice tests. The practice tests and the books are actually worth something, not $2300 but something. Eventually they will grade our practice essays as well. I don't know if that will be worth it or not, but one can hope.
So, I paid $2300 for a product worth maybe $400. I'm feeling pretty good, now they just have to show a little respect and I'll bite down on my "MTC workbook" or whatever three letter acronym they're using. But wait, do they show me any respect or do they just bald faced lie to me right out of the gate?
They lie.
But Antonio, it must be a pretty good lie that only you are able to see through b/c of your work with criminal defendants and police who are constantly shading the truth. Right?
No, it was a dumb lie. A really dumb insulting lie.
They tell us that they want us to ship our materials back after we get our bar results. I figure fine. They're running a monopoly and the only way they can maintain it is if people don't have the opportunity to review their materials and evaluate their program. Fine, I've got no problem with that. You give me a refund of a couple hundred dollars and I don't make my materials available. You get to make another $2300 off of some sucker like me and I get a little bit of money to console me.
But that's not their reasoning. They say they want us to return the books so that they can recycle them b/c they care about the environment. Now I'm not one of the enviro geeks who took every E-Law class they could. So maybe I'm off on this but it seems to me that if that was their concern we could just recycle the books and they could give us our check instead of having us use extra packaging, probably made out of new trees that have to be cut down, and then shipping the package, probably on several trucks that burn diesel fuel, all the way down to California. I mean if the environment is the concern lets not burn more fuel and use more packaging. Just have us drop the books off in our recycling.
We aren't all idiots. We graduated from freaking law school. That takes some amount of smarts. Don't tell us a fucking dumb lie. I rank this lie on the stupidity scale with the guy who told me that someone must have forgotten several thousand dollars worth of drugs at his house after a party or that the 20 bindles of heroin were for personal use.
Anyway, I'm pissed and insulted and they want me to evaluate the class. Christ, double Christ. I'm going to write that when I'm in a better mood.

4 Comments:

Blogger collateral evidence said...

Another laughable lie: the audio workshops on the web cannot be downloaded and saved because the files are too big. Uh-huh. I'm no techie, but I'd bet these things fit on a hard drive or an ipod.

6:15 PM  
Blogger liz said...

I couldn't even muster the strength to write an evaluation...

5:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

$2300? Good god!

10:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dude, are you taking Bar/bri? I just got notice today of a class action against Bar/bri for anticonmpetetive trade practices. Rodriguez, et. al v. West Publishing Corp., d/b/a BAR/BRI, and Kaplan, Inc.. It's a federal case in the central district of California. So, if all goes well, you could wind up with, what, maybe a $33.00 settlement in a few years.

Anyway, good luck with the bar.

7:29 PM  

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