Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Sign Up for a Commercial Course 1L Year

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Sign Up for a Commercial Course 1L Year: Your 1L year comes with a wealth of new experiences. You encounter like-minded people, demanding professors, mountains of reading, and bar exam prep course salesmen. You barely get time to figure out your class schedule before commercial course sales reps and urge you to sign up. They pressure you to sign up now or else miss their discounted prices and live to regret it.

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Sign Up for a Commercial Course 1L Year

The mentality is that you have to sign up for a bar course eventually so they encourage you to sign up now to save money. Do not let them talk you into it so fast. You may be asking whether you should sign up for a commercial course your 1L year before the prices go up. But before you do there are a few things you should consider before you commit to a commercial course.

1. Once you commit to a commercial course, you may not be able to get out of the contract.

When you commit to that low price tag you are also committing to not ever change your mind. As only a 1L, you are only beginning your law school career and you are not prepared to pick a bar review course. You might decide that one specific course was not the right choice for you. Unfortunately, you may not be able to change your mind.

You may find out that another bar review course or an alternative bar study option is better for you but your money will be committed to a course. In an effort to save money you might end up wasting it if you realize later that the course that initially looked good was the wrong choice for you.

Also, do not think you can use your eventual law degree to get yourself out of a bad deal. Commercial courses knows their contracts. You cannot use your legal expertise you get out of your 1L year commitment. Your best chance is to not commit your 1L year and to wait and see what is best for you.

Note: Some law schools now forbid bar review courses from pressuring students to sign these types of contracts their 1L year. But not all law schools do. So make sure you are aware of what you are committing to.

2. Your future employer may end up paying for your bar review course.

If you end up going into BigLaw (or even some smaller law firms!), your future employer may pay for your bar review course or a big portion of it. So if you signed up in an effort to save money that effort would be wasted because someone else is paying for your bar review course and you will be stuck with a commercial course. Wait to see what course is best for you and pass on committing early.

3. You may end deciding that traditional bar review courses are not for you.

Everyone learns differently. Bar review courses are heavily structured and inflexible. This learning style may not work for everyone and it may not work for you.

After getting through law school you may decide that more alternative approaches work for you. You might prefer to hire a personal tutor, have a more personalized course (like ours) or use other alternative bar study approaches. All these options are available to you! So do not limit your options by committing to a specific course your 1L year.

You are still learning how you learn as a legal scholar. Give yourself time to figure out how you best learn the law. Then when your 3L year rolls around (and it will be here before you know it!) you can make an educated decision on what bar exam study prep works best for you.

So if you are asking, “Should I sign up for a commercial course 1L year?” the answer is “No.” Do not commit to something you cannot get out of. Instead, give yourself time to figure out how you learn. You do not know where you will be in 3 years with your legal learning style. So, give yourself time to figure it all out before you commit to pay thousands of dollars in the future.

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