LSAT & Law School Blog

Today’s guest post comes from Ann Levine, president and chief consultant at Law School Expert. Ann is the former director of law school admissions at two ABA-approved law schools and the nation’s leading law school admission consultant. Law School Expert provides hourly and beginning-to-end consulting, and Ann has personally guided over 2,000 law school applicants through the law school admission process. Ann is also the author of the bestselling law school admission guidebook The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert.

The LSAT is a difficult exam and most students agree that the most intimidating part of the exam is the logic games section. Good news, the logic games are also the easiest part of the test for students to improve on. The more comfortable you get with the logic games, the less scary they seem. In fact, as you improve, you may even find the games to be fun!

1. Don’t ignore reading comprehension!

Students are often tempted to overlook reading comprehension on the LSAT. It feels familiar. You had reading comprehension on the PSAT, the SAT, and every other standardized test you’ve ever taken. The LSAT can’t be any different. So why bother studying for it? My time is better spent on logic games or logical reasoning. I’ll wing reading comprehension.

There are three basic parts to the LSAT Logical Reasoning question:

There are many ways to study for the LSAT effectively.  You can study on your own with prep books or online LSAT courses, take a prep class,  or hire a private LSAT tutor.  However, regardless of which option you choose, you should almost certainly be taking the below five steps to best prepare for the LSAT:

There are many ways to have a great experience with an LSAT tutor. The key is to decide what role you want the tutor to play in your LSAT preparation.  One sure-fire way to have a bad experience is to develop a certain set of expectations, not communicate those expectations to your tutor, and then become frustrated as the sessions come and go and you aren’t getting what you expected from the relationship.

The LSAT’s Writing Sample is the last section of the intellectual marathon.  After a day spent navigating Analytical Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension, many LSAT takers experience waning motivation.

Since the beginning of your education, you have had to read passages and then answer questions about them.  In that respect, the LSAT’s Reading Comprehension’s format will be familiar.

The LSAT’s Logical Reasoning is all about arguments and the test taker’s ability to evaluate them.  You’ll be given a short passage and a question stem.  It’s your job to select the right answer from five possibilities.

Law school students and lawyers make, evaluate, deconstruct, and refute arguments.  The LSAT’s Logical Reasoning is your introduction to this usage of critical thinking skills.  With time and practice, you will learn to identify and understand arguments, evidence, and conclusions.

Specifically, you will have questions about inferences which logically follow a passage:

• What would strengthen or support the argument?

By the time someone contemplates the LSAT, he or she has probably already had experience with standardized tests and entrance exams.  And yet, an encounter with the LSAT's Analytical Reasoning is unlike any other.