Sitting for the bar could be one of the most intense experiences of your life. A ton of time, energy, and money went into your legal education, and it’s all on the line.
A lot of different prep companies want to help you prepare yourself for this pivotal moment. It’s paramount that you choose the right one specifically for you.
Themis Bar Review offers one completely on-demand course. Read on to see if it’s the right bar review course to validate your blood, sweat, and tears and start your lucrative career.
Table of Contents
Themis Bar Review
Summary
Themis Bar Review is a self-paced, online course with extensive practice questions and essay feedback, ideal for self-motivated students. However, it lacks live instruction, personalized tutoring, and long-term access, making it unsuitable for those needing structure or extended timelines
- Digestible, engaging video lectures
- Great test-taking strategy tips
- Enormous library of MBE questions
- Special focus on essays
- Straightforward pass guarantee
- Excellent customer support
- Few program options
- No live-learning options
- Mediocre lectures
- Unappealing mobile app
- Limited access period
- No tutoring
Who Is Themis Bar Review For?
🎯Themis works for self-motivated law students who believe practice makes perfect.
Themis Bar Review is entirely online and self-paced, featuring on-demand videos and more practice questions than any other program in the industry.
Its 4,000 practice questions are all backed up with detailed explanations that kick in if you get them wrong. Kaplan provides more practice questions, however.
(Themis also offers a practical answer-popularity index, which shows how frequently each answer was chosen by your peers, as well as a link to the relevant video lesson. I’m not particularly sure how this answer-popularity index will make a difference to your studying, but if you enjoy random, useless data, you’ll like this feature.)
If you learn by pure repetition and have enough time to take advantage of that many questions, Themis might be your perfect prep course.
🎯Students who need extra help with essays will appreciate what Themis has to offer.
More than just about any other bar prep course, Themis can bring out your best in the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) portion of the bar. In most jurisdictions, the MEE accounts for 30% of your overall test score, but it’s often overlooked by other bar prep companies just because its subjectivity makes it more difficult to teach.
Themis, however, offers eight free graded essays in its prep package. These essays are all evaluated by a qualified, real person who offers extensive feedback. Themis has also jumped aboard the AI train, with unlimited essay grading by UGrader, its proprietary essay feedback tool.
Between the real graders and the AI help, you could turn a weakness into a strength by the time you sit for the bar.
🎯 Those who need flexible study hours should consider Themis.
Many students studying for the bar are still in law school, have jobs, or simply have real lives beyond studying. That means establishing set schedules for live classes can be really difficult.
Themis is completely online and self-paced, so it’s fully adaptable to your schedule. There’s also a mobile app if you really want to study on the fly, though it’s not the best bar prep app I’ve seen—Barbri’s app is more integrated into your overall study plan.
Inconsistent study times also might mean you can study six hours one day and zero the next, and with the Themis dynamic study calendar, your study plan adapts to your schedule, making sure you don’t get bogged down if you miss a few days.
❌Who is Themis Bar Review NOT for?
First of all, if you’re in Delaware, Louisiana, or Mississippi, Themis is not only not for you, you can’t get it anyway.
Themis also offers a one-size-fits-all course, so if you like to cherry pick which parts of a prep course to use, or if you want add-ons, Themis won’t help you there either.
It also doesn’t provide more than a few months of access to the program, so if you want to slow-walk your way to the bar, you should try PrepScholar or another company that gives you a full year of access to the materials.
More importantly, though, if you want one-on-one tutoring or live, interactive classes, you will not get them at Themis. Themis has designed its entire program for online and on-demand access, which means no live instruction.
You also need significant self-motivation to get through the Themis bar review because everything is according to your own timeline. Themis provides a calendar, but there is no scheduled course you can’t miss or personalized study plan—it’s all on your shoulders.
If you need someone to push you, you won’t find them here.
How Does Themis Bar Prep Work?
Themis Bar Review uses what it calls a “Prime-Present-Practice framework.”
First, students are “primed” for upcoming lessons by presenting relevant vocabulary words and an outline of the upcoming lecture.
This is supposed to prepare your brain for the lesson by introducing the concepts first.
Next, students watch short, on-demand lectures featuring step-by-step explanations, illustrations, and charts.
These video lessons are broken down into small 15–20-minute segments to avoid overwhelming you with too much information at once. Since Themis does not offer a diagnostic test at the beginning of its course, some of the videos assigned may cover topics you’ve already mastered. If not, students are encouraged to watch the videos multiple times if necessary.
Finally, you enter the practice portion, which consists of short quizzes based solely on the lecture you just watched.
These immediate assessments are meant to increase your ability to retain the information you just received, and further down the line the concepts will be reinforced in practice tests and graded essays.
Since all of Themis’s content is on demand, you can always go back to any lectures if you discover you haven’t yet mastered the subject.
Themis Course Options and Pricing
Themis is unique in the bar review prep world because it offers just one program. Rather than offering premium content for an additional price or prep aimed just at cost-cutting crammers, Themis offers only one full-service package to everyone.
Full price for the full Themis course is $2,895, but occasional discounts may apply.
Depending on the timing, you might find a discount for early enrollment. So, if you’ve decided Themis is the one, sign up as soon as possible. I love a good discount, but it should be noted that courses like Kaplan’s on-demand package are still cheaper.
➡️Currently (April 2025), you can get $150 off for signing up early, but I’ve also seen significant discounts for signing up a full year in advance.
➡️Themis also offers a significant Public Interest Discount. If you already have a job in a public defender’s office, nonprofit law firm, or similar public-interest law firm and you qualify for the discount, the course costs you just $1,795.
➡️There’s also a $1,000 alumni discount for those who used Themis in one jurisdiction but are now sitting for the bar in another state within five years of using Themis the first time.
➡️Themis is also willing to help you out if you’ve put down a deposit at another bar review company but would like to switch to Themis. In this case, Themis will discount its course by the amount of your deposit, up to $250.
➡️And finally, Themis offers a $100 discount to members of ABA Premium, the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity International, and the Military Spouse J. D. Network.
What Does Themis Bar Prep Include?
Since Themis only offers one program without optional add-ons, all of the below is included with every Themis bar prep purchase.
☑️Video Lectures
As part of its teaching philosophy, Themis makes sure its video lectures are short and to the point. Most lectures last only 15–20 minutes, making them both convenient for students with time constraints and digestible for those of us with diminishing short-term memory.
The lectures are led by instructors from some of the top law schools in the country, including Duke and Stanford, all of whom tackle the topics in their fields of expertise.
The videos are well-produced with sufficient visuals to keep you engaged without being distracting. Some of the professors are more charismatic than others, but with the brevity of the video segments, it’s hard to get bored.
☑️Daily Calendars
The adaptable study calendar developed by Themis is an excellent tool for those with inconsistent study schedules. The calendar assigns you practice questions, lectures, and essays, all evenly distributed with the time you have until test day.
It then constantly updates according to how much studying you were able to get through and how much time you have remaining until your test.
If you miss a day or two, your workload is evenly distributed between the rest of the days until your test. That way you never feel like you’re falling too far behind.
If you’d rather set your own pace independent of the calendar, you can also opt for the FlexStudy program, which doesn’t assign you tasks and just lets you study whatever, whenever.
This option is a great option for those who find the daily calendar overwhelming. It can look a little intimidating, especially at the beginning of the course when there seems like an infinite number of tasks to complete in a very finite period. Then again, if you want to be a lawyer, you should probably get used to a multitude of tasks.
☑️MBE QBank and Practice Tests
In 2020, Themis was acquired by UWorld, which already had a bar prep course, and the combination has led to one of the largest libraries of practice questions in the industry. In total, Themis offers more than 4,000 questions, including 1,375 questions licensed by the NCBE.
Every question comes with detailed explanations, a link to the video that covers the topic, and a graphic that shows you how your peers answered.
You also get five practice exams written in the MBE style. These exams are meant to be challenging—and they definitely are—but at times the questions seem more convoluted than those on the actual bar.
Included in those practice tests are two full 200-question tests, to help get you used to the endurance and focus required for the actual bar.
☑️Essays + Feedback
Themis really excels in the MEE portion of the test. Each Themis student is assigned a “designated essay grader,” who is also a licensed attorney.
Your essay grader will read up to eight sample essays and provide substantial feedback about your writing style, your analysis, your legal knowledge, and more.
This human feedback is also supplemented by Themis’s new AI essay grader, Ugrader, which analyzes as many sample essays as you’d like.
Between the humans and the robots, you should see substantial improvement in your essay writing over the duration of the course, though I don’t recommend relying on AI’s knowledge of grammar and punctuation.
This is one of the areas where Themis excels over its peers. Even marquis programs like Kaplan don’t offer a qualified, designated, real-person essay grader with their base course.
☑️Performance Analytics
Performance analytics is one of Themis’s best features. It has a clean layout and provides a great deal of thorough information and regular encouragement.
You can easily see how much of the overall course you’ve completed as well as your day-to-day progress.
This can help you understand whether you need to step up your pace to be ready come test day.
Your performance is also broken down by the different prep categories.
With this feature, you can see how many outlines you’ve completed, how many lectures you’ve watched, your performance on practice questions, and how many essays you’ve submitted. Each of these categories is broken down even further, so you can really keep an eye on how well you’re preparing for each segment of the bar.
☑️Mobile App
Themis offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS. The app has a ton of useful flash cards, so you can sneak in study time even if you only have a few moments. It also has all of the course’s video content, plus quizzes and outlines.
Everything you do in the app synchronizes with the myThemis portal, so when you’re back on your computer, your mobile progress is reflected in your performance dashboard and calendar.
Access to the calendar itself, however, is currently not available in the app. That’s disappointing because the dynamic calendar is one of Themis’s most valuable tools.
This is one of the reasons the app has pretty rough reviews in the Play Store, where it gets an unimpressive 2.6/5. It’s not the only reason though—there are a number of other complaints, including bugs with the login (that’s long been fixed but still affects the score), among others.
If you plan on using an app for most of your bar prep, BarMax is a much better choice.
Digital Platform and User Experience
If you choose Themis, your coursework, analytics, and interactions with essay advisors will all take place through the myThemis platform.
The myThemis interface is organized, intuitive, and easy to navigate.
Beyond this entry portal, a lot of your daily experience will come through the dynamic calendar, which is also user-friendly and well organized. It’s actually the most straightforward study calendar in the bar test prep industry—you’ll spend very little time on a daily basis setting up a study plan; everything is already mapped out for you.
In general, the overall user experience with Themis’s digital platform is very good on your personal computer.
If anything does go wrong, or if you lose your way, you can take advantage of 24/7 customer support. (Keep in mind that these days, “24/7 customer support” means a chat bot with limited assistance capability.)
The user experience isn’t quite as good on the mobile app, unfortunately.
As I mentioned above, the mobile app is rather a disappointment. It’s received quite a few negative reviews, and although it’s getting better, there always seems to be one bug or another. Some users report issues loading videos and others complain about the constant need to re-login.
Themis is always addressing these issues, but I think it’s safe to call the mobile app a work in progress. There’s a ton of great content, but expect a few bumps in the road.
Live Support and Instructor Help
In addition to your personal essay grader, Themis also provides its students with a dedicated local director who provides a weekly broadcast message to provide test-taking strategies, specific information about your state’s exam, and much more. It’s more like a push notification than a personal message, but it can provide valuable information about your local exam.
Themis also advertises 24/7 support during the course of your review, that you can reach its staff via email, phone, or through your myThemis portal. You can use the portal to ask just about anything, from technical support questions to further explanations for practice problems you missed.
However, Themis posts the following disclaimer on its website about the “24/7” customer support: This feature is available for select subjects within the Uniform Bar Exam and California Bar Exam Themis courses for the February 2025 exam.
I recommend taking the claim of 24/7 customer support with a grain of salt.
Supplemental Study Tools
Although Themis is known as being an online course, it does actually send you physical materials as well, just in case you want a break from the screen.
Upon enrollment, Themis automatically sends out hard copies of outlines for the MBE as well as information specific to the state you’ll be testing in. It also sends paper copies of the practice exams. This could be useful to students who prefer hard-copy materials, though I am unsure why such students would sign up for an entirely online course if that’s the case.
In fact, students who want a bar prep course that supplies physical learning tools are better off with Kaplan, which provides actual textbooks.
Access Period
Themis only suggests 8–10 weeks of study for its program but provides early access to the materials starting about four to five months before the date of your bar exam. That means you typically get access starting in March for the July exam and in November for the February exam.
Compare that to Barbri, which offers bar prep courses starting up to two full years in advance.
I would also note that Themis uses the word “generally” when talking about access dates, as in you “generally” get access in March for the July exam. I’m not sure what sort of wiggle room Themis gives itself in this area, so be prepared for inconsistencies.
Refund Policy & Pass Guarantee
Themis offers a very straightforward pass guarantee but doesn’t include a refund.
If you are taking the bar for the first time and don’t pass, you will be able to retake the same course for the next administration of the same exam free of charge. Simple as that.
Final Verdict: Is Themis Bar Review Worth It?
Themis Bar Review is an organized, on-demand, adaptable bar prep course without any live instruction. If you are pressed for time, study at odd hours, and don’t need a live component, Themis offers all the tools you need to pass the bar in a relatively short time frame.
However, if you value live instruction and want to start your prep work earlier, there are better options out there, such as Kaplan, which offers interactive workshops, 1,000 more practice questions, and six months of access for $600–$700 less.
FAQs
How much does Themis Bar Review cost?
Themis Bar Review costs $2,895. However, you might be eligible for a discount, including a public interest discount, a discount for early sign-up, or a discount for members of certain organizations, such as the ABA.
What’s included in Themis?
Themis’s bar review prep course includes on-demand lecture videos, 4,000 practice questions, a mobile app, a “personal success team,” a dynamic study calendar, review of eight essays (by a real person), and five MBP-style practice exams.
Can you pass the bar with Themis?
Yes, you can pass the bar with Themis if you put in the work. Themis is transparent about its pass rates, and as long as you do 75% of their practice questions, quizzes, and essays, you have a much higher chance of passing the bar in every state.
Does Themis have a mobile app?
Yes, Themis has a mobile app available for both iOS and Android operating systems available in the Google Play store or the App Store. The app includes all practice questions and quizzes but does not include the dynamic study calendar.
Does Themis offer tutoring?
No, Themis does not offer tutoring, but it does offer a dedicated essay grader, a licensed lawyer who will read up to eight of your sample essays and offer robust feedback.
| Course | Features | Price (with current 20% discount) |
|---|---|---|
On Demand | $160 | |
Bootcamp | $640 | |
Live Online | $640 | |
Live Online+ | $880 | |
Standard SAT Tutoring | $1,600–$3,680 | |
| Premium SAT Tutoring | $2,400–$5,600 | |
Unlimited Prep | $1,600 |