diff --git a/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py b/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
index 9d4f90a..09da233 100644
--- a/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
+++ b/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ def batch_to_device(batch, target_device: str):
     return batch
 
 
-class InstructorPooling(nn.Module):
+class INSTRUCTOR_Pooling(nn.Module):
     """Performs pooling (max or mean) on the token embeddings.
 
     Using pooling, it generates from a variable sized sentence a fixed sized sentence embedding.
@@ -245,7 +245,7 @@ def load(input_path):
         ) as config_file:
             config = json.load(config_file)
 
-        return InstructorPooling(**config)
+        return INSTRUCTOR_Pooling(**config)
 
 
 def import_from_string(dotted_path):
@@ -271,7 +271,7 @@ def import_from_string(dotted_path):
         raise ImportError(msg)
 
 
-class InstructorTransformer(Transformer):
+class INSTRUCTORTransformer(Transformer):
     def __init__(
         self,
         model_name_or_path: str,
@@ -378,7 +378,7 @@ def load(input_path: str):
 
         with open(sbert_config_path, encoding="UTF-8") as config_file:
             config = json.load(config_file)
-        return InstructorTransformer(model_name_or_path=input_path, **config)
+        return INSTRUCTORTransformer(model_name_or_path=input_path, **config)
 
     def tokenize(self, texts):
         """
@@ -395,7 +395,7 @@ def tokenize(self, texts):
 
             input_features = self.tokenizer(
                 *to_tokenize,
-                padding="max_length",
+                padding=True,
                 truncation="longest_first",
                 return_tensors="pt",
                 max_length=self.max_seq_length,
@@ -420,7 +420,7 @@ def tokenize(self, texts):
 
             input_features = self.tokenize(instruction_prepended_input_texts)
             instruction_features = self.tokenize(instructions)
-            input_features = Instructor.prepare_input_features(
+            input_features = INSTRUCTOR.prepare_input_features(
                 input_features, instruction_features
             )
         else:
@@ -430,7 +430,7 @@ def tokenize(self, texts):
         return output
 
 
-class Instructor(SentenceTransformer):
+class INSTRUCTOR(SentenceTransformer):
     @staticmethod
     def prepare_input_features(
         input_features, instruction_features, return_data_type: str = "pt"
@@ -510,27 +510,39 @@ def smart_batching_collate(self, batch):
 
             input_features = self.tokenize(instruction_prepended_input_texts)
             instruction_features = self.tokenize(instructions)
-            input_features = Instructor.prepare_input_features(
+            input_features = INSTRUCTOR.prepare_input_features(
                 input_features, instruction_features
             )
             batched_input_features.append(input_features)
 
         return batched_input_features, labels
 
-    def _load_sbert_model(self, model_path, token = None, cache_folder = None, revision = None, trust_remote_code = False):
+    def _load_sbert_model(self, model_path, token=None, cache_folder=None, revision=None, trust_remote_code=False, local_files_only=False, model_kwargs=None, tokenizer_kwargs=None, config_kwargs=None):
         """
         Loads a full sentence-transformers model
         """
-        # Taken mostly from: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/blob/66e0ee30843dd411c64f37f65447bb38c7bf857a/sentence_transformers/util.py#L544
-        download_kwargs = {
-            "repo_id": model_path,
-            "revision": revision,
-            "library_name": "sentence-transformers",
-            "token": token,
-            "cache_dir": cache_folder,
-            "tqdm_class": disabled_tqdm,
-        }
-        model_path = snapshot_download(**download_kwargs)
+        # copied from https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/blob/66e0ee30843dd411c64f37f65447bb38c7bf857a/sentence_transformers/util.py#L559
+        # because we need to get files outside of the allow_patterns too
+        # If file is local
+        if os.path.isdir(model_path):
+            model_path = str(model_path)
+        else:
+            # If model_path is a Hugging Face repository ID, download the model
+            download_kwargs = {
+                "repo_id": model_path,
+                "revision": revision,
+                "library_name": "InstructorEmbedding",
+                "token": token,
+                "cache_dir": cache_folder,
+                "tqdm_class": disabled_tqdm,
+            }
+            # Try to download from the remote
+            try:
+                model_path = snapshot_download(**download_kwargs)
+            except Exception:
+                # Otherwise, try local (i.e. cache) only
+                download_kwargs["local_files_only"] = True
+                model_path = snapshot_download(**download_kwargs)
 
         # Check if the config_sentence_transformers.json file exists (exists since v2 of the framework)
         config_sentence_transformers_json_path = os.path.join(
@@ -559,9 +571,9 @@ def _load_sbert_model(self, model_path, token = None, cache_folder = None, revis
         modules = OrderedDict()
         for module_config in modules_config:
             if module_config["idx"] == 0:
-                module_class = InstructorTransformer
+                module_class = INSTRUCTORTransformer
             elif module_config["idx"] == 1:
-                module_class = InstructorPooling
+                module_class = INSTRUCTOR_Pooling
             else:
                 module_class = import_from_string(module_config["type"])
             module = module_class.load(os.path.join(model_path, module_config["path"]))
@@ -619,7 +631,7 @@ def encode(
             input_was_string = True
 
         if device is None:
-            device = self._target_device
+            device = self.device
 
         self.to(device)
 
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index a7fe466..410b6c3 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ numpy
 requests>=2.26.0
 scikit_learn>=1.0.2
 scipy
-sentence_transformers>=2.2.0
+sentence_transformers>=2.3.0
 torch
 tqdm
 rich
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 311e732..6f17fb0 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 setup(
     name='InstructorEmbedding',
     packages=['InstructorEmbedding'],
-    version='1.0.1',
+    version='1.0.2',
     license='Apache License 2.0',
     description='Text embedding tool',
     long_description=readme,