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finished with exams and want to put my free time to use to start bar prep and having a hard time figuring out the most efficient way to start. Throughout law school I made flashcards and that always worked well for me - though I'm wondering if its unrealistic of me to think I can make flash cards for every single rule of law.

Has anyone (1) been successful in doing so even though it may have been extremely time consuming or (2) discovered an alternative memorization technique that works just as well?

I used flashcards for the bar. Worked well for me. Stick with whatever worked for you in law school.

There's no way to make a flashcard for everything. But if you're doing BARBRI or Themis or some other course, at the end of each lecture make flashcards for the 5-10 most important things you need to memorize. That's what I did and it worked well for me. At night, before I went to bed, I would run through the deck I had amassed so far for about 30 minutes or so.

I think you'll quickly find that there is simply too much information to be able to write flashcards for all of the law that you need to know for the bar exam. Certainly everyone learns differently, but I'd advise to instead just read (and re-read, and re-read again) the outlines that are provided to you until you feel that you have adequately learned the material. And most importantly, keep in mind that learning the law for the bar exam doesn't necessarily mean memorizing it; it means knowing it well enough to apply it to the fact patterns on the MBE and to the fact patterns on the essays. This is where practice comes in and it is truly as important if not more important than merely memorizing the law. Memorizing the law does, however, build the necessary foundation for later applying it.

--Sean