Can I just buy the Barbri Materials off the Internet and Study on my Own?

[homycraz]

Can I just get the Barbri Materials and Study on my Own?

OR Do I really need to study with Barbri using their 1) Online or DVD lectures?
                                                                                     2) Live Classroom Lectures

I dont really want to waste 3K on in class lecture if its not going to help much...

I rather just get the Materials all 12 books and study on my own for the CA bar.

Let me know if anyone has attempted this in the past or what peoples thought on this method is...

[BikePilot]

I did the full boat barbri thing and passed, but wasn't at all impressed.  Their materials were mediocre at best and the lectures even worse.  When I took  the test I did not feel as if I'd been prepared very well.  If you have the work ethic to actually study, I don't think you'd be at all disadvantaged studying on your own rather than paying Barbri.  Whether that'd be best done with barbri materials or materials sourced elsewhere I couldn't say.  Barbri's on-line practice questions and such were somewhat helpful, though as it turns out not terribly representative of the real thing. I suspect that you could find print material with practice questions that would suffice.  It is safe to say that the barbri bar prep course is of dramatically lower quality than kaplan's LSAT prep course.  Now maybe that's just the nature of the tests or maybe barbri sucks, I'm not quite sure.  Luckily I don't have to worry about it anymore (and my barbri course was paid for by my employer).

[scooby21322]

I took barbri, but toward the end of the summer I couldn't help but think that I wish I had saved my money and studied their books on my own.  Their outlines are great, but they have you spend so much time doing other things (including listening to the lectures that aren't complete at all), that you never get to the details that the multi-state will want you to know. 

That said, I passed without much trouble.  Not sure if that is because of barbri or despite it. 

[MikePing]

With CA, I would pay and go to the classes if you are somewhere you can do them live.  You don't want to have to take this thing twice.  I have friends who had the Barbri material and tried the self study thing for CA and didn't pass.  I can't give you much better than antecdotal evidence.  If you can't go to live lectures, I wouldn't pay for the videos.

See if you can poll the people you know that have passed CA and see what they say.  I am interested in this, I might be taking CA soon.  Let us know what you do, and the result. 
 

[jdsomeday]

If you can find access to the videos (from somebody actually paying for Barbri), then yes, you probably can.  See another post I made about how to do Barbri watching the videos only (never going to class for videos or live lecture) and doing so at night while getting homework done during the day.

Only disadvantage is you won't have somebody doing the analytics on your practice MBE or grading practice essays.  I think the amount of work they actually put into grading these are marginal and you don't get a ton of benefit.  So I think it's totally do-able.

I'm sure you've heard it before, but the best thing Barbri can offer is structure.  If you're confident in your ability to stay on task and structured on your own, you'll be fine.