U.S. judge certifies BAR/BRI suit as a class action

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), May 18, 2006 by Ann W. Parks

If you took BAR/BRI's bar review course any time since 1997, a team of lawyers in California is trying to get you some money back - whether you passed the bar exam or not.

This week, in a lawsuit against BAR/BRI owner West Publishing Corp. and Delaware-based Kaplan Inc., Judge Manuel L. Real of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted class certification on behalf of all persons who purchased a bar review course from BAR/BRI from August 1997 to the present. The case is scheduled for trial in September.

The suit, filed in May 2005 by former law students in California, Michigan and Louisiana, accuses a BAR/BRI executive of making an illegal market division deal with an executive at Kaplan in summer 1997.

According to the complaint, BAR/BRI allegedly agreed to stay out of Kaplan's market for Law School Aptitude Test preparation courses - and pay it more than $500,000 per year besides - if Kaplan would steer clear of the bar review market.

We have reason to believe that BAR/BRI went to Kaplan and said, 'We'll make it worth your while to stay out of the market,' Eliot G. Disner, the plaintiff's lead counsel, said yesterday from his California office.

Some students could have paid as much as $1,000 above a competitive price, Disner said. The lawsuit seeks to recover what they overpaid, which he estimated at $150 million to $200 million.

West Publishing purchased BAR/BRI in 2001.

At the time of BAR/BRI's alleged deal with Kaplan, though, West Publishing operated West Bar, a BAR/BRI competitor, and Kaplan was considering purchasing West Bar, the suit alleges.

In September 1997, West transferred West Bar's bar review assets to BAR/BRI.

This whole collection of competing courses got dumped into BAR/ BRI, [so] BAR/BRI owns everything, Disner said.

Absorption of West Bar's business into the already dominant BAR/ BRI eliminated substantial actual competition from the bar review course market and, in fact, made BAR/BRI the only company providing bar review courses preparing for virtually every state in the United States, the suit states. This lawsuit seeks to remedy BAR/BRI's continuing wrongdoing inflicted on some 300,000 law students and law school graduates who have suffered under the supra-competitive pricing regime of BAR/BRI[.]

John Shaughnessy, a spokesman for West Publishing, said Disner has brought similar litigation against BAR/BRI in the past, and has been defeated both in the trial court and on appeal.

BAR/BRI believes that the new claims are also without merit and intends to defend the case vigorously, he said.

Disner says the previous case, which he neither filed nor tried, focused on alleged steps that BAR/BRI took to keep a competitor, Bar Passers, out of the market. This case has better evidence, he said.

Dick Riley, a spokesman for Kaplan, said that company's only agreement with BAR/BRI is to market BAR/BRI material to Kaplan students.

Such agreements are commonplace and perfectly proper, he wrote in an e-mail.

'Outrageous'

Regardless of the outcome of the case, it's not hard to find a student to grumble about the price. A graduating student at the University of Maryland School of Law says he paid $2,200 or $2,300 to take BAR/BRI's bar review course.

It is outrageous, said the student, who did not wish to be identified. The fundamental problem with it, I feel like they extort the students to purchase their system, or else you don't pass the bar.

Some students, he said, have to take out an extra loan to foot the bill - adding to an already expensive three-year cruise through the law school system.

It furthers the spiral of this generation's debt, the student said. You don't know where to turn, other than to them, and they just kill you. It ain't cheap.

No one at the Baltimore office of BAR/BRI was unavailable for comment yesterday afternoon, as staffers were handing out materials at the University of Baltimore for the upcoming summer course. The Washington, D.C., office had no response to the student's comments.

The plaintiffs in the present litigation purchased their courses at prices ranging from $858 (Louisiana) to $2,775 (California), the complaint says.