Hi,

I am taking the TN July 09 bar, and have a couple of questions I would like to have some people respond to.

I am having a very difficult time switching back and forth between BarBri and PMBR practice questions. I am really clicking with the BarBri questions, while I am finding the PMBR questions to be eratic and the explanations very poor and based on different law than BarBri explanations. Does anyone else feel the same way?

I am following the BarBri syllabus verbatim and doing all the BarBri assigned questions. I did decent on the practice BarBri MBE test last week, scoring a 115/200.

I am somewhat nervous about stopping practicing the PMBR questions, but I think I may be better off if I do. Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance...

From what I hear from people taking only BarBri (since I take only PMBR), the PMBR ones are more like real bar questions. true or not I dont know. I suppose using both can't hurt since both reinforce knowing elements, etc. But as I said I have been told bby formwer bar takers as well that PMBR is more like questions we wil encounter on the bar.

PMBR sucks. Their questions are in fact more difficult, but the type of questions they have are at most 20% of the actual 200 questions you will get. Plus, their explanations are not thorough enough, and sometimes based on wrong principles of law.

BarBri questions are easier as a whole, but are more similar to the style and format of the actual MBE.

Adaptibar and Emmanuel are all based on actual former MBE questions, but they are also easy questions.

Get all the books used, do a little bit from each set, and you'll get acclimated to the whole array of style, form, and content that will be asked during the actual MBE.

Anyone else have any thoughts on my initial question posed above. I agree with blistceleb's post above wholeheartedly from what I have seen thus far.

I have taken ths CBX twice 7/08, and 2/09. Both times I passed the MBE, but failed on the essays. Overall I think that the PMBR questions are very close to the actual MBE's, I actually recall seeing many quations that I practiced in the PMBR books on the actual MBE.

The first time I took the MBE, I thought that doing Barbri had been a total waste. The second time Babri questions were somewhat usefull but still not even in the same league as PMBR.

What I have found in Barbri ( and by now I have done about 80% of the questions in their book) is that the emphasize elimination too much. In most of their q's even the hard ones, two choices can be eliminated rather easily, but on the MBE I found that very often all the choices seemed right, or they all seemed wrong. Also, the MBE especially in their new format ask a lot of deatailed q's where they test nuance, so you had to really remember all the little details of the law. PMBR questions did that much better than barbri.

This time I have also been using Emanuael's Rigos sereies. They also seem to be a good likeness to the MBE, except they are only meduim and easy quesions, not many hard questions. PMBR has by far the closest questions to the hard questions on the MBE. Althou, I must also add that if you get all the easy and meduim q's on the MBE right, you will easily pass.

On a scale of 1-10, (10 being th best) I would give PMBR a 9, Rigos a 6.5, and barbri a 5 (that is up from 3 which i would ahve given it after the July exam).

used them for ny in 07 - sucked, still passed. their whole schtick is nothing but hype. their questions are too long, convoluted, and test on esoteric areas of law. absolute waste of money
not using them for cali 09.

I did both PMBR and bar bri when studying for the CA bar in 2005.  I found the barbri questions way too easy, whereas the PMBR questions were tricky, and most of the answers "seemed" like they could be right - so I had to really know the rule of law to get the question right.

When confronted with the MBE, I was totally overwhelmed, and was grateful for the all the practice I did with PMBR, because I was exposed to many of the different ways the law could be tested in a fact pattern.  The MBE is hard, and you have to go in knowing the law and no rely on finding it in the answer choices.

My two bits - do both and do as many questions as possible. 
I am currently studying for the MI bar, and have to take the MBE again.  I bought some used PMBR books and am doing 50 questions a day. 

Good luck.

are the fact patterns as long, or longer on the real thing?

I'm concerned about length too, especially now that the MBE is supposedly having one fact pattern per question, rather than before with the occasional fact pattern with 2 or 3 questions attached. I hope the fact patterns are a bit shorter now to make up for it, or else I'll REALLY struggle with time.

I guess it would depend on what you're looking for. PMBR gives you practice with the format the questions will be in, but most of their answers are based on Restatements, which make no sense. BarBri questions seem easy to read, but the books rehash answer choices, wording them the same way so it reduces the need to really think about it once you've done a certain amount of questions. I have both books, and mix them up a bit, just to keep my brain active.