BARBRI Outages Make It Impossible For Exam Takers To Study

While law school graduates scramble to study for the bar exam, many have taken to social media to complain about the BARBRI bar prep course crashing multiple times a week—even following a system update that was implemented recently.

“This is the third network crash in 8 days. The bar exam is in 56 days. You guys are playing with people’s careers,” tweeted Teddy O @_TeddyO.

“The outages were unfortunate and inexcusable,” Mike Sims, BARBRI’s president, told Law.com. “Our students have the right to expect more from us and we didn’t deliver.”

BARBRI has been posting status updates to its website on a daily basis—often multiple times a day—like this message saying: “The BARBRI course is available, however, the system may still be functioning slowly for some users.  We are continuing to investigate, monitor, and stabilize the system.”

And: “Our team is urgently working on the issue. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience.”

A status report then said: “While we understand this is not the learning experience you are hoping for, we have compiled some additional tips to help make the most of your review time” along with “Our team is urgently working on the issue. We expect the issue to be resolved soon and we deeply apologize for the inconvenience.”

On Twitter, @X_BryanH posted, “Then Barbri had the nerve to put up tips for how to spend your time while the site is down. I—“

Last Tuesday BARBRI’s status update said: “We know this is an incredibly stressful time and an apology is inadequate. While all BARBRI courses are currently available, it’s critical that we provide an experience you can rely on as well as an explanation.”

“Prior to the February 2022 bar review course (December 2021), we implemented new technology to enhance session caching capabilities for a more efficient user experience. We monitored it throughout the Feb 2022 course and it worked well,” the status update stated.

“Unfortunately, these enhancements may be causing current issues. Over the past two days, we have taken numerous steps to address the issue,” according to the BARBRI status update.

However, users continue to tweet about issues following the system update with many others posting similar issues.

“[C]an’t login again. Are you going to release your daily apology with no solution?” @StaceyMenjivar posted.

@DuncanMac101 tweeted, “I wonder if it’ll ever load.. probably not. Thanks for nothing @barbri“ along with a video of the “spinning wheel.”

@barbri is so slow I want to cry,” tweeted user @clorica.

BARBRI’s Sims took to Twitter on May 30, saying, “Today BARBRI went down for many students. It’s up now for most, and we’re continuing to monitor it. For some, this is the second time you’ve been unable to study when you needed to. I know an apology is inadequate, but I am profoundly sorry for the stress this has caused.”

However, this did not help calm the outrage nor quell the outages.

On Twitter, @duynguyen0495 replied to Sims by posting, “I don’t want your apologies. I want a refund considering how expensive your program is. One would think you would hire more competent IT people but apparently not. You’re taking away our time and making it harder to bar prep.”

User @Lilfudge56 posted a screenshot of a message from “Steve, Customer Service Supervisor,” stating: “There may be times when the Site is unavailable due to technical errors or for maintenance and support activities.”

“We do not represent, warrant, or guarantee that the Site will always be available or is completely free of human or technological errors,” Steve wrote, according to the screenshot.

User @Lilfudge56 posted another screenshot of a message from Steve that reads, “I’m sorry but we are not offering compensation for the technical issues.”

As far as not offering refunds, “we felt the best way to compensate students was to provide additional service and support,” Sims said.

Users said they have tried both the website and the app but have found that neither works well.

On Twitter, @zackcantweet asked BARBRI, “Do you have a lawyer on staff that can teach us how to certify a class action against you for your defective product that crashes regularly?”

Reddit user toastfacekilluh who said, “barbri feeling like the ice cream machine at McDonald’s with how often it’s down,” to which user gremlin30 replied, “And just like McDonald’s, it’s slowly killing me.”

You can read more about these ongoing problems here.

We have heard directly from many BarBri students experiencing these problems and it is affecting their studying for the upcoming exam. If you are taking the July 2022 bar exam and have similar problems, it’s not too late for us to help you. Contact us right away, as the sooner we speak, the sooner we can help you set up a gameplan for success on the exam. Just email us at [email protected] or call us at (866) 788 8589.