I began to feel better about my score on the Crim Law practice test as I sat in the forum (which is the common area of the law school) waiting for the next session to start. I was hearing others saying they didn't do too well -- to wit, they got scores like mine. In law school, it's not so much whether you're smart, but whether you're smarter than everyone else, or at least, not dumber than everyone else. It was appearing, from the discussion of my classmates, I had reason to believe I was at least not dumber than everyone else.

I returned to Room 1013 to find the heat problem had not abated in the least. (They did tell us they turned off the heat, which was darned nice of them, considering it's May 9!!!!) Things were actually, I believe, worse, which is to say warmer.

Anyway, Mr. Inoffensive PMBR Rep began the DVD. That this DVD is being played at all may be a source of surprise to you, but PMBR will, of course, find it incredibly effective for them, as they only have to pay one guy, a videographer and Mr. and Ms. Inoffensive PMBR Reps across the fruited plain to put in the videotapes of said guy. Meanwhile, we get to sit in sweltering rooms watching these videotapes. Think of it like a really bad movie in a theater with no a/c. Trust me, all, this is not the type of movie you want to bring a date for.

So, Guy on Videotape is Robert Feinberg, who I later would find out when I Googled him is the founder and CEO of PMBR. (In a way, this is comforting; I always like knowing where my $750 is going.) Anyway, Feinberg is a slightly-alarmed looking, professorial type with a beard.

"Now, I want to say a word about the scores," he said, and we all breathed a collective sigh of pleasetelluswedidn'tjustgothroughlawschooltodiscoverwe'retoodumbforthebar. "If you got around twenty of the questions right, you're doing just fine." This provoked huge sighs of relief. "If you got half right, you're doing very well." Judging from the laughter of my classmates, very few were doing particularly well.

Later on Feinberg returned to the issue of scores, and how he intends to raise them. As part of taking the class, we received 2,000 multichoice questions. By doing fifty of these a night, we should progress to getting about 60% of them right by the end of June and 65-70% of them right by the time of the bar exam, in late July.

PMBR boasts (or claims) a 97% pass rate for students in Ohio who take its class. As a result, I am reluctant to quarrel with his methods, but he does have some verbal instincts that make a person want to scream. First of all, I don't think he passed talking about a question without referring to his unseen audience at least once per question as "Gang." "Question 7, Gang..." "This is only spring training, Gang." "By game day [also known as the bar exam], Gang..." I realize there are people who think lawyers are all a bunch of crooks, but calling us a gang when we don't even have the degree (nay, we don't have physical possession of our diplomas!) seemed slightly unreasonable.

But beyond that was his singsong application to certain words, most particularly knowingly. "To commit this crime, you must act *tuneless tune* knooow-eeeeng-leeeee." Trust me, sit through this a few times and it's going to get old quickly. Not, apparently, to Bob, who also likes to emphasize his points by gushing...."I want to highlight it in yelllll-owww. I want to underline it in redddddddd. I want to circle it in black." Please, by all means, do it, and leave us in peace.

At one point, Professor Bob referred to someone who was in the alleged audience watching him live give this presentation. I don't want to call Professor Bob a liar, but I tend to believe we would have heard them, because we were all laughing at him. Note, I did not say we were laughing with him.

He also discussed the fact that two people who are relatively casual acquaintances have no responsibility to save the other one from bodily harm when they don't cause it. "So," he said, "if you walk out of here today and there's some who goes flying off his bicycle and lands in the gutter, breaking all his limbs and blood gushing from a head wound, and as he lays there in the gutter [gutter added for dramatic effect, I suppose], he looks at you and says, 'Please help me,' you can say, "Get out of my way, kid, I want to go home and study for PMBR." My friend Laura has identified said moment as the way they take the conscience out of lawyers.

We spent three and a half hours watching Professor Bob caterwaul and caper in a manner similar to what I've just described, and sweltering. He finally released us, and the rush from Room 1013 was something to behold.