Play free-association with an attorney and the word “BARBRI” likely draws a Pavlovian wince and a bad joke about the UCC. During that window between law school and practice, bar prep courses become your only window onto the world. After it’s over, you remember the key takeaways about “hearsay exceptions,” or “adverse possession,” or “the history of Penne alla Vodka,” but we more or less move on from our relationship with the company that put all that into our heads.
But that may be a mistake.
The Instant Pot’s manufacturer filed for bankruptcy. Jarring transition, I know, but stick with me. The culprit, as always, was a bunch of private equity leeches. But the fundamental issue with the Instant Pot that drove its owners to make a mess of the company was the product was too good. People got one pot at their wedding shower that would last them their whole lives. Other than men having to buy a new one after the inevitable divorce, there wasn’t really a growth strategy. What they needed and could never pull together was another offering.
BARBRI isn’t following the Instant Pot model. Through acquisitions and expanded offerings, the company is branching out from coaching prospective lawyers through the bar exam into coaching lawyers throughout their career. Law school, in-house training, CLEs, and even AI readiness (because it’s 2025). BARBRI for Professionals aims to bring the BARBRI touch to the whole lifecycle of the practice.
If they could help you remember the Rule Against Perpetuities enough to joke about it for the rest of your life, then why not leverage that talent for practical education into the job itself. Who is going to train first-year associates in an AI-infused landscape to provide actual insight once firms can no longer justify keeping people on board to churn on brute force tasks? Probably not the octogenarian partner. Even if the firm has its own training materials, BARBRI can come in and customize that material and make it stick the way they’ve successfully made obscure bar exam lessons stick.
Justin Hummel, BARBRI’s VP of Product for Professional Education, laid out the strategy to bring BARBRI’s expertise to more legal professionals built on expanding its tentacles into LSAT prep, acquiring the old West Academic empire, eDiscovery specialist training, CLE, and paralegal courses. With SkillBurst, BARBRI’s digital learning subsidiary, they can deliver education right to the busy audience “in meaningful, salient, single source solution.”
Training is increasingly relevant as the lateral market builds a more fluid profession (or “mercenary” depending on your feelings about it). Firms pride themselves on having a “way we do things” and while a lot of that is pretentious faith that their firm is a special snowflake that does work differently than everyone else, there actually are a lot of often unspoken nuances in how a firm works. Add in AI tools threatening to upend the whole nature of junior associate work, and “training” isn’t an HR line item as much as a survival tactic.
Barring a total AI collapse, the whole nature of hiring will change over the next few years. Firms can’t justify keeping warm bodies at the bottom of the pyramid scheme if they can’t find a way to leverage them into billable work and AI promises to soak up many of the traditional chores of a junior. Spinning up future juniors into a full billable resource in this landscape presents a challenge law firms haven’t really faced before.
Which is why a name that lawyers remember from their most desperate hour of learning is swooping in.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
