A year ago, I took the LSAT for the very first time. The LSAT is an exam which you are required to take if you want to apply to law school, and has a range of scores starting at 120 and ending at 180. When I took the exam, there were 4 different sections of the exam (3 graded and one experimental one that isn’t graded but stylistically is a repeat of one of the other 3), and you had 35 minutes to complete each section. The first section was Logical Reasoning, which requires you to read short passages and asks you to either evaluate the arguments being made, make inferences based on the short passages, or find common ground between two people having a debate. The second was Reading Comprehension, which requires you to read short passages and then asks you questions about what you read. The third, which they are removing from the exam starting in this August, was the Logic Games section, which required you to make inferences based on some general information that the test gave you. Studying for this exam taught me a lot about my study habits and even more about myself. So, here are some of the things that I learned from taking this exam, which I hope can help you if you are planning to take this test yourself one day.
1. Make sure to give yourself time to take this exam.
One thing I realized early on was that the LSAT, unlike some other professional school admissions tests like the MCAT or even GRE, is a very learnable exam. Rather than testing you on concepts, you are being tested on your abilities to analyze passages and use logic. This is in a way a double edged sword; while you don’t have to memorize and study a lot of concepts, if you want to do well, you need to give yourself time to practice your skills. I personally started studying for the LSAT in January 2022, and ended up taking it for the first time in February 2023, which means I spent a year and a month before my test studying for it. Now, I did study for this exam while also taking 3-4 classes on a quarter system and working, which may have led me to needing more time. However, even peers of mine that took gap years in between their graduation and applying for law school gave me a wide range of times it took them to study: some only studied for five months while others took the entire year off before their first take. So, my advice is that the exact amount of time you need really depends on you— but make sure to give yourself more time rather than less.
2. Find resources that make you feel confident that you will do well on the exam.
Something that was really challenging for me in the beginning was the sheer amount of resources available online to help someone study for the LSAT. In hindsight, I wasted a big chunk of time just going through all the different resources available and it was not until I started using a few recommended by an LSAT tutor that I started seeing some progress. Therefore, my advice is to not spend too much time shopping through all the different options: either choose a couple of resources and be diligent about using them or find a guide/tutor who will make choices for you. My personal favorite resources were the Loophole by Ellen Cassidy for Logical Reasoning, 7sage for the Logic Games section, the LSAT lab video series on Youtube for reading comprehension, and my amazing tutor @LSATRIGHT on instagram. On the other hand, I would personally stay away from places like Kaplan, Princeton Review, and the Blueprint courses, which I feel are much more expensive and less helpful than they should be for their price. I am also just in favor of getting a tutor, especially if you are someone who finds it difficult to create your own guidelines for studying/figuring out what you need to do to improve. In fact, I really only saw improvement after getting a tutor that helped me create study guides that included proper breaks and weekly timed tests. But of course, the overarching piece of advice I have is to find what works best for you and find it early on in your study prep so you can save yourself some time and frustration.
3. Take practice tests and keep track of your mistakes!
One habit I was recommended to do was to start taking practice tests weekly under timed conditions, and then reviewing them fully by keeping a wrong answer journal, trying to understand why I got things wrong, and creating plans so that I would not get them wrong in the future. This was super helpful as it helped me to become more comfortable with the timed aspects of the exams and forced me to really evaluate why I was making certain mistakes, which of course led to better performances on the exam as time went on.
4. Take the LSAT seriously, but not THAT seriously.
From this article, you can probably tell that the LSAT requires a lot of effort on the front end from choosing good resources for studying, diligently taking practice tests, and giving yourself time to do all of those things. However, one thing I wished that I didn’t do on test day was worry so much about making sure all of the preparation I had done needed to be “worth it.” Going into the exam, I had a lot of self destructive thoughts. Some of these thoughts included things like, “I was getting X score in practice so I NEED to get the exact same score on the real thing or otherwise all of my effort in studying was useless,” and “I need to get X score so I have a good chance of getting into my dream school and since I got X score in practice, I need to do it now,” and “You got X score on your first attempt, so you need to do better since it’s your 2nd/3rd time!” Unfortunately, this led to some self-destructive performances and poor scores, mainly in my second and third attempts of the exam (luckily, if you pay an extra 75 dollars when you register for the exam, you can actually cancel the score and act like it never happened, which was nice and something I took advantage of). Therefore, my advice is if you can, do not take the LSAT so seriously to the point where it becomes something that takes over your life and makes you cry “as if you got dumped” (my mom’s words after my breakdown over one of my LSAT attempts). Instead, my advice is to treat it as something that must be done and to not have too many overarching expectations for yourself, as that will lead to you doing your best.
And those are just some (of the very many) pieces of advice I have for the LSAT. Remember, the LSAT is only one small part of your law school application, and after you get a score you’re satisfied with, you’ll never have to worry about it ever again! So, treat it as a small thing you need to do in order to reach your dreams and know that it will never define how amazing you really are, both as an individual and as a future attorney.