Themis Bar Review - Chicago, Illinois

B B.

I had an excellent experience with the Themis Ohio Bar Review course. I was nervous going into the process because I passed a Bar Exam in 2011 but it had been several years since I had to re-learn law school subjects that I did not focus on in my everyday practice. I began studying for the Bar Exam in March and completed the course by the day before the July 2024 Exam. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to complete as much of the course as possible. Themis has more than enough practice questions to make sure you are ready for both days of the exam.

The study materials, both print and digital, were very helpful and the essay practice came in handy during the Exam. Themis has analyzed which essay subjects have been tested and it was nice to have the charts available to keep me focused on the big picture. The professors did a great job explaining the concepts in ways that helped me learn and retain the information to succeed when the moment came.

In addition, my Essay Grader was helpful week after week as I adapted my writing to the style that was needed to maximize my performance. I also liked being able to speak with a Themis Adviser and learn strategies for success, particularly on the MBE.

I highly recommend Themis for anyone taking the Uniform Bar Exam and wish all who take the Bar Exam going forward the very best.

Blessing I.

Using Themis was a rewarding experience. I loved how I was able to control my study period to suit my schedule while following a strict schedule and tracking my progress while at it. I also loved the extra 2000+ multiple choice questions that we had access to. It was a very helpful tool that help me get over 150 in my MBE portion and eventually getting a score above 300.

Wesley S.

By all metrics I was a borderline bar pass candidate. However, Themis was simple to follow along, and gave me thousands of practice questions that allowed me to hone my knowledge of the law. Like any bar prep course, the video lessons by different instructors vary in quality. However, I recommend this bar prep course because the overall quality of the instructors are excellent, the body of material is well put together, and the questions are (in my humble opinion) harder on Themis than the actual bar.

Well done Themis!

Elaina L.

Probably one of the best commercial bar prep resources! The lecture videos are short and to the point, which makes watching them not very overwhelming. The free access to UWorld really helped me get extra practice on specific areas where I struggled. Themis' practice questions may feel challenging, but it's definitely worth it. Their flex study feature allows you to jump ahead. I passed the bar exam because Themis really tested my knowledge on all of the subjects.

sarah B.

I recently passed the Arizona bar exam, and I found Themis Bar Prep to be a solid resource during my preparation. Their comprehensive materials and structured study plan were incredibly helpful in keeping me organized and focused during my preparation.

However, I did find it challenging that once I fell behind on the schedule, it wasn’t easy to catch up. I wish the program had more built-in rest days, as the stress of falling behind added emotional strain to my study experience. Additionally, I would love to see more opportunities for live feedback on essays and MBE strategies throughout the process, as personalized guidance would have been invaluable.

Overall, I highly recommend Themis for anyone preparing for the bar exam. Their resources made a significant difference in my success, and with a few adjustments, I believe it could be even better!

Katelynd T.

I used Themis and passed the bar on my first try. Themis assigns a lot of tasks per day; don’t beat yourself up if you don’t finish. But if you stick to it and do most of it, you’ll likely be fine. I think the essay assignments really prepared me to do very well on the essay portion of the FL bar. My Themis essay graders were very good and one of them was super helpful with tips to improve. My Themis essay scores were also pretty consistent with my actual bar scores so I think that my graders took it serious throughout the summer. I’d recommend Themis to anyone! I did very well on the exam and Themis was my primary resource used.

Neil Y. H.

Up front I'll just say that I passed the bar exam using Themis. However, there were a lot of features that were irritating with their program. I cannot compare my experience in Themis with Barbari or another bar prep program because I did not use them, so please keep that in mind.

Generally speaking, the video lectures were pretty well done. The professors who taught them were generally intelligent, helpful, and sometimes surprisingly entertaining (some more than others). Themis also has a lot of great practice questions and essay graders to help grade practice essays However, I did notice that that the essay graders were more strict in their grading at Themis than the bar exam graders were.

My biggest complaint with Themis was the lack of flexibility with custom studying. For instance, they have a set schedule they have each student progress through. You can deviate from this scheduled pace to do a flex schedule, but the problem with the flex schedule is that it does not keep you on any sort of scheduled pace whatsoever. This was really frustrating. I believe Themis should let its users do scheduled studying but permit skipping certain tasks the user doesn't feel like they need or want to do. Personally, I like to stay on a scheduled pace, but there were certain tasks I thought were useless and I didn't want to go through them. Some told me they just skipped through these scheduled assignments without actually doing them, but this in and of itself often took a lot of time to do and made it difficult or impossible to redo those assignments in the future.

The scheduled pace also has you do way more assignments and work than is practically possible to perform in a 10 week period. Themis has unreal expectations when going through its schedule assignments as well. For instance, some tasks took me like 6 hours to complete, but only checked off about 0.4 or 0.6% of my course completed. On the other hand, some practice problem sets would only take me like an hour or two and would check off the same amount of percent. Some days, too, Themis would assign me so much to do that it was impossible to get it all done.

Another thing that bothered me was that Themis gives almost no scheduled time to just memorize your notes. Any additional note studying you do does not factor in almost at all into the Themis course complete percentage (note: they do periodically have a scheduled assignment that says, "review notes," but these only account for a measly 0.1 or 0.2%). Further, their physical books and long outlines were almost entirely useless and really only served for occasional reference on confusing topics. Indeed, I do not recommend reading the long outlines; I believe that would be an incredible waste of time (even though Themis recommends reading these and puts these reading assignments in the schedule).

By the end, I only completed about 70% of the Themis course before I took the exam. I also skipped through certain things I didn't think were really helping me, such as their flashcards. Even though I only completed about 70% of the actual course, I spent a lot of other time memorizing material. I believe this was the best way for me to prepare for the exam. How I studied ultimately paid off because I passed the UBE with a score of 297. Clearly, the content at Themis helped, I don't deny that. Yet, various features with the Themis system were aggravating and stressful. So, while this course did help me pass the exam, I believe Themis could help its users study and prepare in a much more efficient, user friendly, and less stressful way. I also believe a large factor into why I passed was because I deviated from the Themis schedule and memorized things on my own.

Overall, I'd give the program somewhere between 3 to 3.5 stars.

Berrel

Themis is great. Do what they say and get at least 75% of the course completed, and you'll be in great shape to pass the bar exam. I do think they could trim down all the outlines, lectures, etc and focus a bit more on practice problems and exams but it worked out fine as I passed the CA Bar on my first attempt.