BARBRI is a legal education provider which helps law students prepare for their
professional exams. It has been running for over 50 years with an alumni network of
1.3 million. Although it has traditionally focused on helping aspiring American
attorneys pass their bar exams, it now offers courses to students in England and Wales who are taking the
Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE). The tutors and course designers regularly
use Lexis+
Legal Research and BARBRI have now rolled out access to their students to
help with their studies and future prospects.
We spoke to a couple of directors of learning at BARBRI: Alisa Gray, who is
responsible for design and delivery of substantive legal and business skills
training programmes including the “Prep for
Practice” programme; and Tracy Savage, who is responsible for design
and operation of SQE1 and SQE2 exam preparation courses.
LexisNexis helping with legal course design
Alisa and Tracy regularly use Lexis+ Legal Research to help with the creation of modules and to ensure they are kept up-to-date in line with the latest legislation and case law. Tracy says that access to the product is particularly helpful when designing legal drafting questions for students to tackle as part of their mock exams:
“If I'm composing a legal drafting question, I will first do some research on LexisNexis - occasionally there will be precedents which we can include in our legal drafting scenarios.”
The alert system built into the product helps to ensure that any existing exam questions are accurate and based on the most current law. Alisa finds this feature extremely useful for maintaining the quality of their course:
“The automated alert system is invaluable. It means I can quickly amend any questions which could otherwise become out-of-date.”
Having access to Lexis+ Legal Research provides crucial confidence to Alisa and Tracy when preparing their courses, which they would miss out on if they were instead relying on less trustworthy free legal resources or Google. The legitimacy and authority of LexisNexis information - which Alisa describes as “invaluable” - alongside visual cues which denote any laws that are being changed, means that mock examination and assessment material can be adapted as required well in advance.
Preparing students for their future careers
When they are asked niche questions by students, sometimes the BARBRI tutors need to
be able to access information which does not always directly pertain to their
courses and which they therefore might not have to hand. Tracy says that
“occasionally somebody asks you a question which is beyond the scope of
the syllabus” and this is where Lexis+
Legal Research comes into its own, by enabling the tutors to find a
trustworthy answer quickly, without having to sift through legislation and multiple
government websites.
But as well as course leaders and tutors being able to rely on Lexis+
Legal Research, BARBRI has now rolled out access for its students, which
will help them to conduct legal research exercises and better prepare for some of
the more practical day-to-day aspects of their future careers in law.
“At BARBRI, we believe that developing the fundamental skill of legal research with such an innovative solution as Lexis+ is crucial to our student’s success. We’re delighted to be able to give our students access to Lexis+ to help them hone this skill as early as possible for their future legal careers.”
Furthermore, they have built LexisNexis certifications into SQE prep courses, measuring the competence of students to effectively use Lexis+ Legal Research, which will further enhance their employability credentials - whether their future firm uses LexisNexis or another research tool.
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