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Hoo, boy.  I disagree heartily.  Maybe his advice is true for a few brave and risk-taking souls, but I can't imagine wanting to take that type of risk with the one barrier to entry to practice that's given only twice a year that would stand between me and my ability to practice my choice of career.  

Full disclosure here:  I am a lecturer for a bar review course, which may taint my perspective, but I also sat for a state bar a year ago.  In order to prepare for the Nevada bar, I took a bar review course (not, BTW, the one for which I'm now a lecturer).  Let me say right now that I was extremely grateful that I had taken that course, could not possibly have passed the bar without having had that level of review, would not have had the stamina or sitzfleisch to have studied that intensely on my own, did not have the knowledge base in at least six of the Nevada subject areas being tested, and could not have imagined having the chutzpah to have risked my results with LESS study than I had given any of my law school courses.  Moreover, I did not need to pass the bar to keep my job.  I'm a law professor, not a lawyer.  I took the bar because my husband and I had an understanding that, if he had to take the Nevada bar when we moved here, I had to take the Nevada bar as well.

And the Nevada bar is HARD.  Hard as in H-A-R-D.  Hard as in "I sweated out waiting for my results" hard.  (We both passed, but we both worried about passing.)  

So, Prof. Somin, I respectfully disagree with your post.  (So, by the way, does Jim Chen--see his post here.)  THIS law professor wants to send out a different message about studying for the bar.  DON'T slack off.  Embrace the pain of studying.  Suck it up.  Work your butt off.  Face it:  you'd rather have three months of pain now than three months of pain now and then three more months of pain later, when you have to retake the bar.  Maybe you'll have wasted your effort and, looking back, you could have worked less hard.  But is it so bad that you worked hard to achieve a goal?  

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