Analysis of Barbri’s Virginia bar exam materials for self-study

Those of you that have taken Barbri or are taking it know that when you receive your materials (usually in 2 or even 3 shipments), you get about 40-50 pounds of books. This is quite absurd and one of the reasons I developed my own methodology for studying for the bar exam. Nevertheless, I thought I’d go through and briefly discuss all the individual books you get with the Barbri Virginia package, especially for those of you who will be buying these materials used from a previous test taker as many times some materials are missing. This will hopefully assist in your hunt for used study materials.

Multistate (MBE):

First a quick word on the multistate stuff Barbri gives you. I’ll be honest, I think barbri’s MBE prep is one of the worst out there. Basically, anything else is better (kaplan/pmbr, etc.). They give you a bunch of books, I wouldn’t use any of them.

Virginia:

Now to the good stuff, the Virginia specific materials.

1. The large Virginia outline book – Basically worthless for bar exam purposes. If you are interested in learning detail that you won’t need to know to pass the Virginia bar exam, then by all means read this book. Otherwise, put it aside.

2. Virginia Conviser outline – This is a decent outline, but the good stuff in here is in the back of the book, the Virginia Distinctions. I talk about that a little further down.

3. Virginia Essays book – This is great stuff. Many of these essays are actual essays from past bar exams with decent answers and some commentary on the questions and how the law has changed since they were written. Definitely my favorite book barbri makes for the Virginia bar exam. And, the short answer questions in the back are good as well. I’ll talk more about those below as well.

4. Virginia Lecture Handouts – These are pretty good, as they are condensed outlines that are more on-point that the conviser. Some are better than others (civ pro is excellent) but overall I like them. NOTE: If you are buying the materials used, these must be filled in already because they are keyed to the lectures, which you cannot get unless you buy the class from barbri directly. Repeat: The lectures are not available used, so these lecture notes must be filled in when you buy them.

5. Supplemental Virginia Handouts – Barbri is famous for lots of supplemental handouts, completely worthless.

6. Virginia Essay Advantage Documents Including practice essays and answers – Again, there are more materials and extras barbri is famous for that you can get, many at an extra cost and are called “Advantage”. Completely worthless.

7. Virginia Supreme Court Rulings and Statutory Updates – Barbri has handed out last minute updates, most of which are completely useless as well. The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners does not typically test on brand new rulings, they wait at least a few years, and even then, they don’t like to do it too quickly. So, I’d say these are completely worthless as well.

8. Virginia Short Answer Questions (located in the essay book) – Good stuff. I like these (they give you 300 of them) because they give you a decent idea of what the short answer questions are like, and a decent chunk of these questions (maybe 1/2 to 2/3) are information that you should know anyway because the essays could test the same material.

9. Virginia Distinctions (located in the conviser) – Excellent stuff. Virginia likes to test on Virginia distinctions. It’s not too much information, maybe 20 pages or so in the conviser, but you should know it all and this is a well formatted and concise way to get that info.

There you go. Everything you need to know about what’s useful and more importantly, what’s not when getting second-hand Virginia barbri materials.