At some point in your third year of law school, you have to start shelling out big bucks for bar review courses (and the firms will either pay it for you up front or reimburse you later on, if you go that route). As of the time of this writing, there are two major professional bar review courses: PMBR and Barbri (and since they suck enough money out of law students, there's no need to link them here for more free advertising). Because BarBri may be broken up as a monopoly, who knows how this is going to play out next year. These past couple of years have been exciting for the bar testing world.
Last year, PMBR was sued and slapped with an injunction because they were found to have infringed on several of the MBE's copyrights (essentially they would send people in to take the MBE, each would strategically memorize five or six specific questions (e.g., #s 1-5, 6-10, etc.) and then either leave or figure out some way to carry away crib notes with the questions. This is how PMBR would run their course. The opinion, in all its hilarity, can be found here: National Conference of Bar Examiners v. Multistate Legal Studies, Inc..
Obviously because they had to change their format last year, and the bar examiners had to scrap years of questions (presumably), I am left to wonder whether the summer 2006 course was effective or not and whether it was worth the $800 or so to take one or both of their courses. I know people that did both and passed and failed the 2006 bar (with 2007 bar results to be determined), so my sample size is obviously worthless.
Despite this, I'm still going to take both PMBR courses. Even if the questions are wrong, the law will still generally be the same (I would hope). We shall see come July, I guess. Obviously my summer entries will be much more entertaining when I give my thoughts on how good or bad barbri and pmbr are.
And no, I don't work for PMBR. Or BarBri.
Other bloggers have also listed similar concerns:
PMBR Gets Nailed
PMBR Sucks (making me wish I hadn't already paid for this stupid thing)
Sunday, March 25, 2007
PMBR & the July 2007 bar
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8 comments:
I am a lawyer and passed NJ and NY bars in 2001. Got a high enough score on MBE to waive into DC and Mnn (not that I'd ever go to Mnn).
I took bar bri and pmbr and found then helpful.
Doesn't matter - if you do not meet the age (young), school (elite) or scholastic (top 10%) requirements of firms that pay a living wage, you might as well get a job in another field.
Yeah, I've somewhat re-evaluated my position since this entry. I took both the 6-day PMBR (and plan to take the 3-day PMBR) and am in the midst of Barbri's review now. I figure I can just waive into DC if my job takes me there.
The caveat to your comment re: living wage is largely dependent on the cost of living. But generally you are absolutely right.
Don't discount Pieper... he's got a decent program going.
Better/Worse? This is something the individual must decide upon. I took Pieper for the Feb 07 bar and found it a decent course to take as a prep.
My thoughts on the PMBR 6-day can be found here: 6-day evaluation and PMBR concluding thoughts.
I have yet to take the 3-day, but one of my friends has clued me into its worth. My comments can be found here.
I took the PMBR 3-day (finally) and my thoughts after a day of sitting through stupid multiple choice questions can be found here.
I fixed the link to the PMBR opinion. Not sure why it wasn't working.
Here is my immediate entry regarding how PMBR compares to the real 2007 MBE.
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