$999 BarMax iPhone App Capitalizes on Bar Exam Anxiety

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

BarMax CA

We have a newly announced contender for the most expensive (and possibly the most disappointing) Apple app! BarMax CA (just California, however other states are being readied) has just been released at a cost of $999 in the iTunes store. This bar exam study app promises aspiring lawyers a wonderful learning experience, packing “50 pounds of books” into the palm of your hand, whether it be your iPhone or iTouch. They proudly announce:

“We offer all of this for one fourth of the price of current packages on the market. We are using the revolutionary technology behind the iPhone to enable bar prep at a much better price, and to teach students in a much better way.”

Horrible grammar aside, how this company thinks an app can take the place of a full blown bar exam study course is beyond me. Studying for the bar exam not only involves going over material, it also entails learning the tricks of the exam itself, and the strategies one will require to pass the exam. That kind of information would be tricky to convey in an app. Commenters have remarked that this would be self-directed study and as such would require incredible self motivation.

Traditional class based courses get your bum in the seat and actually doing the work on a scheduled basis. Plus I think I would go blind reading 50 pounds of books on my iPhone! I can barely read my Facebook updates in one sitting! That said, perhaps reading study guides on an app machine will change once the Apple Tablet has arrived.

The white elephant in the room that BarMax seems to conveniently ignore is that the bottom has fallen out of the job market for lawyers, new and old. The New York Times article from last week entitled “No Longer Their Golden Ticket” claims that the profession is lurching through its worst slump in decades, with jobs and bonuses cut and internal pressures to perform rising.

A law blog called the Adjunct Law Professor adds “student loan debt is up and job expectations are down according to a year-end, informal snapshot of several sources”. These articles both portray a bleak and indeed scary landscape for newly minted lawyers.

So I guess the only thing this app has going for it is that it is relatively cheap. If a law student has indeed made it all the way through law school and is worried about failing the pass or fail bar exam, adding a c note to their debt load for this app would be a mere drop in the bucket at this point.

This is an article by The App Machine.