Here are my personal thoughts on the commercial review course Themis. If you are trying to decide what review course is best for you, I hope this helps by offering some candid feedback. There’s a lot you don’t know until you take the course, which I believe most reviews online do not talk about. I’m hoping this will help shed some light on things that most reviews of Themis don’t.
Upside of Themis- PRICE!
After initially putting down a deposit on the Barbri course my 2L year, I decided to back out and go with Themis towards the end of my 3L year. I did this on a recommendation from a friend who had used Themis and passed. The main reasons I decided against Barbri and opted for Themis was price (I received the public interest discount) and the convenience of studying at home. Themis cost me just under $1000 dollars with the public interest discount. I’m under the impression that Barbri would have cost around $4,000. I don’t believe Barbri offers you significantly more than Themis in terms of content, especially if you are stuck taking Barbri at a location which uses only video lectures (no live lectures). Therefore, it felt like a no brainer in terms of cost.
Downside of Themis (for me at least)- Surprisingly Regimented
I was attracted to Themis because I love freedom. Well, Themis is surprisingly un-free. When you sign up for Themis, they mail you the books and then provide access to the online course on a day which they have chosen in advance. If you want to access the course before that date, you have to sign up for the early access course or you are just SOL. To me, that’s one of the biggest downsides of Themis as an online course. All of their content is online aside from the books they mail you, but they don’t allow you the start the course until a specific day. Like Barbri, it’s regimented in this way. I think the reasoning behind it is that they have to update their content from cycle to cycle. I get that. But, I feel that one of the biggest selling point of Themis (in addition to price) is it’s supposed to flex schedule. Well… it’s flex only to a certain point, really, since you still have to start after their designated start date, can only submit graded essays after a certain point, and can only access simulated MBE after a designated days. To sum up, Themis really likes designated days.
Also, Themis really likes to track your progress, call you, and then send you a lot of group emails about being on top of things. If you are anything like me, this will stress you out and make you screen your phone calls all summer long. If you need constant contact, you’ll like this aspect. But, if you are the type of person who needs constant contact you probably didn’t sign up for Themis in the first place…
Downside and Upside of Themis- Lectures
Themis lecturers are pretty good for bar exam review lecturers. As you should probably expect from any review course, some lecturers are better than others (specific shout outs to Zachary Kramer the Real Property lecturer and Pamela S. Karlan the Crimes lecturer). I would say that the quality of the lecturers on Themis is probably one of Themis’ biggest upsides (since apparently their flexibility isn’t really so flexible…).
That being said, I think Themis needs to do a better job of having their lecturers edit themselves and go at a more rapid pace. Professor Kramer is great, but after 6 hours of watching property lectures I still wanted to off-myself. And I really wasn’t retaining anything after 4 hours anyway. Keeping things brief would really help move the studying along. After spending hours and hours watching lecturers, I felt like the length of the lectures actually made my studying worse. Depressing.
If you really benefit from lectures, then Themis would be a good course for you.
Downside of Themis- Graders are not ex-graders and MBE questions are not MBE questions
Essays
Some people might see this is as nitpicky and unrealistic, but I think the major shortcoming that all the big commercial review courses share is their lack of ex-graders on the payroll. My essays were graded by an attorney who probably graduated 5 years ago and has never graded for the CA bar. Sure, she is trained by Themis (and maybe even trained by an ex-grader hired by Themis), but I really don’t think she knew how to provide the nuanced feedback that only a former grader is capable of providing. While I don’t think this will be detrimental to all bar exam takers, I believe anyone choosing a commercial bar course needs to be aware of the simple fact that in all likelihood, your essays will not be graded by an ex-grader. This may set some unrealistic expectations. Make of this what you will. As far as I know, the one commercial (if you can even call them this) bar course offering essay grading from ex-graders is BarMax. More on them later.
MBE
Themis, like Kaplan and Barbri, do not provide exclusively real MBE questions written by the NCBE. To me, this is a total deal breaker. Doing real MBE questions is critical to “getting into the mind” of the MBE. Why? The MBE is tough. I guarantee it will be easier if you study from real past MBE questions. If you sign up for a course that doesn’t utilize real MBE questions, you should supplement your studying with a program or a book that uses real MBE questions. This is an added cost. Not a huge added cost, but a cost all the same.
Also, as a side note, not doing the MBE questions that Themis provides you with will bring down your “percentage completed” on the course homepage, which in turn will make Themis call you concerned about your progress. If you’re like me, you’ll find this slightly annoying.
Would I sign up for Themis again?
Not at this time. If Themis were to get licensing for real MBE questions and some ex-graders on staff, I would sign up for Themis. Until then, I think there are better choices out there.
CalBarista 