three days into the PMBR six day

When I was young, we had a German Shepard who loved tennis balls. She was a champion tennis ball catcher and could carry two or three at a time. One day, my parents came home with a whole shopping bag full of dead tennis balls. We dumped them out on the living room floor. There were so many tennis balls bouncing everywhere that she couldn't catch any of them because everywhere she looked there was another tennis ball!

That's roughly what this bar review process feels like.

I'm in the midst of the PMBR 6-day. In the morning, we take a two hour practice exam from 9-11, one subject per day. In the afternoon, from 12-3:30, we go over the fifty multiple choice questions on the practice exam, which essentially amounts to a capsule review of the subject in 3.5 hours. The review goes quickly enough that I've abandoned trying to take notes using pen and paper and have switched to the laptop. After 3:30 and my head's cleared a bit, I start reading the outline and reviewing the next day's subject.

The process seems effective, at least in teaching test taking skills for the MBE: I've gotten better at sniffing out answers that look right but feel wrong, and the class covers techniques to boost your performance on each subject. As for the substantive law, well, it's giving me a new appreciation for how much of it we didn't cover in class. The PMBR folks do give you a huge pile of flash cards when you sign up, but I haven't cracked them yet. The next couple months are going to see a serious attempt to soak up a lot of law.