Law School News and LSAT Strategy

Self-study and private tutoring are excellent companions. Struggling with the questions on your own teaches you intangibles about your unique way of thinking and the test-taking process, while tutoring gives you the precise tools you need to compete with other smarties in the standardized exam Hunger Games. They are often pitted against each other, but the truth is that self-study and private tutoring are like peanut butter and jelly—successful separately but even better when combined. (If you don’t like the combination of peanut butter and jelly, I’m sorry to say, you can’t be helped.)

There’s no shortage of advice on how to improve your LSAT score. A fair number of score improvement methods tend toward the draconian, from “take two practice tests every single day” to “create a Kafkaesque reward-punishment system” to “start studying four years before we started having this conversation.” That sort of attitude might work—I have no idea, and I will, thankfully, never need to find out.

Every good tutor you ask will tell you that it’s essential to incorporate practice tests into your LSAT study routine. Taking a practice test can be revealing whether you take it before you study or after you’ve gotten some context. You might be the type of person who wants to maximize your self-study before you look to a tutor for help. Alternatively, you might have a throwing-spaghetti-at-the-wall approach, and you are looking to get started yesterday.

Studying for the LSAT can be depressing and draining, especially when you’re studying without a tutor to keep you motivated. Here are some quotes to uplift you when your quest to improve your score feels hopeless.

In teacher Kelly Gallagher’s acclaimed book Readicide (2009), he warns against what he candidly and unsparingly defines as “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.” Many of us who grew up in the early-aughts post-NCLB standardized-testing era in America were young victims of readicide (NCLB is short for the “No Child Left Behind” Act signed by President Bush in 2002). 

In a sea of study-related services & products vying for our attention, it’s difficult to tell what’s going to best help any particular one of us get the most out of the test prep experience. Some of us swear by flashcards, while others live by the practice test; some of us think that we learn better visually, others by ear, others yet by mnemonic device.