The question of when to take the PMBR 3-day

Depending on where you live and/or are taking the bar, PMBR offers its 3-day course roughly once a week from the end of June to mid-July. As you PMBR takers are aware, there is also another full length MBE in the back of the blue book. PMBR suggests you take 3 full-length MBEs prior to taking the real thing (theirs, Barbri's and the one in the back of the blue book). I tend to think this is good advice, regardless of the crappiness of some of their questions and the rumors I keep hearing that the PMBR test is harder than the real thing. As I will reemphasize in the end, doing more problems probably isn't a bad thing.

When should you take PMBR 6-day or the PMBR 3-day or both. As far as the 6-day, my comments on this subject have been exhausted. Know thyself and don't be suckered if you don't need to be. I think the 3-day is enough, if not more than enough.

The 3-day is probably just as worthless as the 6-day, but may be worth the 200 bucks or so nonetheless because you will get all the materials and a little simulated practice won't hurt. Whether you should take it early or around the 4th or later again depends on how well you think you are prepared. Taking it in June may be tricky because I think this is only offered in very few places then, and you may not have covered all the multistate materials. At the same time, it may be a good gauge to see where you are at.

I think taking it in July early or even at the end (with most everybody else - I think July 13-15 or something like that is the latest and most commonly available) is okay also. By then you probably would have had Barbri's 3-day, which I suspect is equally as helpful. The point is that you are sitting down through a mock simulation and doing 200 problems over 6 hours. Whether the other two days are worth it depend on your study style.

So, I wouldn't let PMBR scare you into thinking the 6-day is worth it, unless you probably need the reinforcement or a kick in the gears to shift into "bar study" mode. For that matter, the 3-day may be excessive if your bar course doesn't plan around it, and if you're disciplined and already are doing well or don't feel you need the extra practice, it's probably not worth it. But then again, a few more problems never hurts either.

Tags: pmbr 3-day, timing of pmbr, pmbr