One month ago, Themis went down for the day and I urged nervous bar examinees to keep calm and just go over their notes. The exam was still almost two months away and one could argue that an early summer outage offered a silver lining because it would force the company to focus on addressing the problem sooner rather than later.
Though I did conclude by noting:
That said, if this sort of thing happens in mid-July, go ahead and panic like you thought you had an interest in Blackacre but forgot about the fertile octogenarian.
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It’s not quite mid-July, but this was the day that examinees were set to take the last full practice exam before the test in a mere three weeks, so it’s close enough that everyone is free to start freaking out.
This is getting to be a pendulum problem. BarBri suffered all the outages last summer, a debacle that almost certainly inspired more graduates to sign up for Themis this year. Some folks have explicitly stated on social media that they’re only in Themis because they feared a repeat of last year’s BarBri struggles. Now Themis is the one suffering from overload and BarBri will — almost assuredly — unofficially market itself as the more stable alternative to next year’s crop.
And so the cycle will continue.
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Still, Themis is right that folks have printed materials they can use in the meantime. It’s never going to compare to the eminently memeable lectures, but don’t dismiss them out of hand. Not to sound like someone who climbed hills both ways through a blizzard, but a lot of us passed the bar with only written materials to review.
But this really needs to be the last time we have to talk about this.
Earlier: Bar Exam Prep Company Goes Down For The Day… Please Don’t Panic
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.