Lesson 1: Introduction to the (New) LSAT

Hello there, and welcome to the new and improved Insight LSAT prep course for the Law School Admission Test. My name is Albert, and I'm going to be your instructor for the course. This new set of eight videos is the updated version of what has become the most watched series of LSAT videos in the world. It's true. With over a million views, the original Insight prep course has become the most watched LSAT preparation series on YouTube. Now, this new series has everything you loved from the originals, but I've updated things to reflect some major changes to the test. Back then, the LSAT was administered in person, on pencil and paper. It's not how it is anymore. Plus, as many of you know, the LSAT is undergoing a major structural change as of August 2024. The Logic Games section, hated by many, beloved by a few, is going away. The Logic Games section, technically called Analytical Reasoning, was that section that gave you these little scenarios, like five Alberts are lining up left to right in a row. The Albert with the hat has to stand to the left of the Albert with the mask, and the Albert with the guitar has to be to the right of the Albert with the cat, and so on. And then you had to make these inferences about all the different ways you could arrange things. It was fun, I swear. But alas, it is no more. Enough about the past, though. This is a new course for a new test. Let's talk about how it can help you today. The Insight LSAT Prep Course is an eight-video series designed to prepare you for the Law School Admission Test, the LSAT, or the LSAT for short. In this course, we'll cover all aspects of the test, from the basics, what it is and why it matters, to the fundamental skills you'll need to practice in order to succeed, to timing and test-taking strategies that will ensure that you perform at the top of your game on test day. As you'll see, the course stands alone and serves to provide you with the main toolkit that you'll draw from in your preparation. But it also serves as a companion to a new training platform that I'm happy to announce here for the first time. Drawing from everything I learned over the years as a tutor, and from my own time preparing for the test, I designed what I have dubbed the Insight Training Platform. Available at our website, insightlsat.com, the Insight Training Platform is an exciting new way to prepare for the test. It is a streamlined program of videos and exercises, along with algorithmically generated personal recommendations that take into account your current skill level and suggest precisely what you need to focus on at any given moment in order to make the biggest gains. Of course, I hope and recommend that you give the Insight Training Platform a try, but I want to stress that this YouTube series can be used with or without it. Throughout, I will provide suggestions for how you can build on the material presented here on your own through self-study, and for how you can develop your skills if you're following the new training program on the platform. For now, let's dive right in. In this first video, we'll start with an introduction to the test and a preview of what you should expect from the rest of the course. Okay, so what is the LSAT anyway? The LSAT, short for Law School Admission Test, is a standardized test that you'll need to take in order to secure admission to a U.S. law school. Now technically, you don't need it, at least not anymore. In the past, pretty much every school required it, but in recent years, some schools, including some of the very best in the country, have waived this requirement, and they'll accept a GRE score instead. Because this change is relatively new, it's still really hard to say whether or not it's wise to give the LSAT the snub, and frankly, right now it looks like a pretty bad idea. The vast, vast majority of successful law applicants still take the LSAT. For example, in 2022, only 57 of the 564 first-year JD students at Harvard got in with a GRE. At Stanford, only 21 of 178 did. And at UC Berkeley, out of a class of 384 first-years, only 4 got in with a GRE. So while it's not technically required, at least at some schools, it still seems like a pretty good idea to take the LSAT when applying to law school. And this isn't just about admissions. Let's not forget about scholarship money. Your LSAT score will be a major determinant in how much you will have to pay to go to law school, where just a few extra points can mean thousands of dollars of debt that you do not need to be in. When I took the test, I scored 179, and this allowed me to go to NYU Law School for free. I also received an offer from the University of Chicago for full tuition plus $15,000 per year in stipend money. Yes, they offered to pay me to attend. Of course, these were extraordinary results, and I was very, very fortunate. But often, a higher LSAT score is the pathway to a very auspicious start to a legal career. There's a lot that you can do with a law degree, but there's a lot less that you can do with a law degree if you graduate with a quarter million dollars of debt to pay back. If you take the LSAT seriously now, you will have the freedom to follow your dreams and not just follow the money when you emerge after three grueling years of law school with your newly minted JD in hand. The LSAT is so important for law school admission that it typically counts more than all of the other application elements combined. Yes, I know you spent four years of your life taking dozens of undergraduate classes and participating in extracurriculars and doing internships, and yes, I know the LSAT is a test that takes less than three hours to complete, but we can't change the facts. Law schools have a hard time comparing GPAs from different undergraduate institutions or between applicants with different majors. The LSAT, on the other hand, is standardized. It's a quick way of comparing you to thousands of other applicants before they decide whether or not to even look at the rest of your materials. It's just the way it is. The LSAT matters a lot. Put in the effort now and try to do your best. So far, we've talked a lot about why the LSAT matters. Now let's talk about the test itself. The LSAT is a digitally administered test, which you can take at home or at a testing center. It's offered frequently, most months of the year, but only on specific days, and registration closes typically about six weeks before test day, so you're going to want to stay updated with the latest information about upcoming tests so you can plan ahead. The test itself consists of four 35-minute sections, each with roughly 25 multiple-choice questions, with a 10-minute break in the middle. Now, two of these sections will focus on what's called logical reasoning, or LR. Questions in this section, sometimes described erroneously as the argument section, consist of a small passage, usually one to three sentences, a question about that passage, and then five answer choices, from which you'll have to pick the best one. We'll go into a lot more detail about this section in Lessons 3 through 5, so just hang tight for now. A third section will focus on reading comprehension, or RC. This time, the section will consist of four longer passages with multiple questions for each one. There will still be five answer choices for each question, though. We will cover RC in Lessons 6 and 7. Generally speaking, it's better to work on logical reasoning before reading comprehension, because many of the skills that you hone in LR can be applied in RC as well. Now, the fourth section on any given LSAT will either be a third LR section, or a second RC, and it's going to be what's called an experimental section. Your performance on this section will not count toward your score. It's just an opportunity for the test creators to experiment with different ways of asking questions, like a sort of quality assurance mechanism. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean you can just sort of chill out during your experimental section, you know, maybe take a nap or something. The reason is, you won't be told which of your sections it is. These four sections make up every test, but the order is randomized, and the experimental section is not marked, so you have to treat every section like it's real, and give it your best shot. Finally, there is also an unscored writing section, which you take at a separate time, up to eight days before the main exam, or afterward. It is an additional 35-minute section in which you write a short, persuasive essay based on a prompt that will be given to you. The LSAT writing section is kind of a weird part of the test. Conventional wisdom is that, while law schools do receive the essay that you write for this section, they don't really care about it. It's totally unscored, and it seems like its main function is just to demonstrate some minimal ability to write in English. We'll cover this section briefly in Lesson 8, but you can mostly just forget about it for now. Ultimately, preparing for the writing section will take just a couple of hours of your time, a fraction of what you will spend on your overall preparation. One more important point. There is no penalty for guessing on the LSAT. Your responses to questions are either right or wrong. An unanswered question is always marked wrong. So if you run out of time, or you just can't figure out a question, simply guess. That gives you at least a 20% chance of getting that point. Speaking of points, let's talk about scoring. Of the roughly 75 to 80 questions that actually count, you'll get what's called a raw score. This is then converted on a test-by-test basis to your actual score, a scaled score, which will be between 120 and 180. These scores are standardized such that they allow law schools to compare applicants. Here is a rough breakdown of the percentiles that the scaled scores correspond to. Scaled scores are on the left. The numbers on the right are percentiles. They indicate the percentage of test-takers that you'll have done better than if you get the score on the left. When beginning your LSAT journey, it's a good idea to take a look at some of the schools that you might want to attend, and see what LSAT score you'll need in order to have a good chance at admission. Some people just want to reach their LSAT potential, maximize their score, and see where they'll be competitive. Others have a specific school, or a set of schools, in mind from the very beginning, and this allows them to set their target score accordingly. Generally speaking, you're going to want a score of at least 150 in order to get accepted into one of the top 200 ranked schools in the US. Within that range, here's a breakdown to give you a better sense of things. This table gives you a list of law schools and the LSAT scores for students in the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of the admitted class. Although of course the ranges extend a bit lower and a bit higher, you should aim to be within this middle range, and preferably as high as possible within it, to have a good chance of attending the school in question. Your GPA, the second most important part of your application, matters here as well. A higher GPA can help you if your LSAT score is toward the low end of the range, while a lower GPA will probably need to be offset by an impressive LSAT score. As you can see, you'll pretty much need to score in the mid to high 160s to have a chance at a school in the top tier, typically referred to as the T14. At the highest ranked schools, it's going to be tough without breaking 170. If you can score 170 or higher, though, and this is no small feat, you'll have an alright chance at any school in the nation. If you're in the high 170s, you're competitive pretty much everywhere, and serious scholarship money may be offered at any school except for Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, who simply don't give out merit-based aid. If we go down in ranking a bit, we enter the range of what are typically considered Tier 2 law schools. According to law school data, schools in this tier offer strong employment opportunities, though graduates, especially near the lower end of the range, often have an easier time finding opportunities near the school's geographic location. In this tier, there is more variety when it comes to LSAT score, so I've provided some selections to give you a sense of what you'll need. The fuller list is easy to find online if you just search for law school LSAT scores, but I'll just say for now that scoring in the high 150s or low 160s puts you in the running for at least some Tier 2 schools, though things are much safer once you're well into the 160s. The next 100 or so ranked schools comprise Tier 3. Again, there's a lot of variety, but you're going to want to score at least 150 in order to be competitive here. Finally, the last 50 or so schools ranked by US News and World Report are not actually given individual rankings. Instead, they are grouped together in what is typically considered Tier 4. An LSAT score in the high 140s will put you in the running for these schools. So far, we've talked about what the LSAT is, how it's structured, and why it matters for law school admission. Now let's shift to talking about preparation. How should you go about preparing for the LSAT? The first thing to understand is that the LSAT is a self-contained skills test. What I mean by this is that it's not really a test of what you know, as much as it is a test of what you can do. There are concepts to be learned, certainly, but the emphasis when it comes to LSAT preparation is on practice. I cannot stress this enough. Preparing for this test is a matter of developing certain skills, and you need to practice those skills in order to improve them. Let's compare the LSAT for a moment to the MCAT, which you would need to take if you, as an indecisive overachiever, wanted to become a doctor instead of a lawyer. Here is how the makers of the MCAT describe their test. In order to solve these problems, students need content from introductory biology, chemistry, and physics, and first semester biochemistry, psychology, and sociology. That's a lot of material. Before taking the MCAT, test takers learn this material through many hours of coursework and studying, over years of poring through textbooks and watching lectures. The LSAT is not like this at all. There are no facts to regurgitate on the LSAT. Rather, you'll have to demonstrate your proficiency with certain skills that are valuable in the legal profession. These are, first and foremost, the ability to parse and understand complex bits of English language, and the ability to analyze and evaluate arguments. And this makes sense. Think about what lawyers do. They navigate a vast body of law, which is written in very precise, but very complex language, and then they make arguments on behalf of their clients. They also try to defeat arguments made by the opposition. Now is your chance to begin honing these skills. Skills. This is a word we'll be coming back to time and time again. Even more than in the original videos, I have organized the material in this updated series around skill development. Whenever possible, I will not just explain concepts to you, but link them to specific skills that you can develop over time through practice, practice, practice. There are things to learn for the LSAT, certainly. But you can get that basic information, more or less, from any course or textbook. Approaches differ, no doubt, and in this course, I will give you my version of things, which I have thought about and carefully developed over time. But no matter which educational sources you go with, learning can only take you so far with the LSAT. And honestly, it's not that far. I cannot stress enough that you have to practice. With nearly a decade of tutoring experience under my belt, one of the most common mistakes that I see people make is putting off practice and instead just passively taking in more and more information. There is more instructional material out there now than ever before. Books and videos abound. Don't drown in them. At best, you'll waste time exposing yourself to redundant material. But more likely, you'll just confuse yourself. I can't tell you how often I see people spend months reading book after book, taking this course and that, watching countless hours of videos, just to see their scores plateau or even go down. At the end of the day, taking the LSAT is a performance, almost like in music or in sports. You have to learn the basics, sure, but then it's all about practice. Practice, feedback, slight modification, rinse and repeat. As a result, I have two major pieces of advice for thinking about your preparation as a whole. The first is that you should root yourself in real LSAT material as presented in previously administered tests. These past LSAT exams, commonly referred to as practice tests, prep tests, or PTs, are available in digital format on a platform currently called Law Hub Advantage and put out there by the test creators, the Law School Admission Council. As far as I'm concerned, signing up for Law Hub is a non-negotiable when it comes to preparing for today's test. There you will find all of the previously administered LSATs. Think of it as your treasure trove, your body of source material that you can draw from not just when taking practice tests, but also when drilling question types and working on sections. My second piece of advice is to think of your preparation as progressing along a path, moving from learning to practicing. You have to start by learning the material on the test. This is mostly a matter of understanding some fundamental aspects of logic as it functions on the LSAT, and how to analyze and evaluate arguments. You'll also need to learn about the types of questions that feature on the exam. This is especially the case in the LR section, where, in this course, I identify 11 distinct types of questions and provide specific strategies for dealing with each of them. Finally, you need to understand how to read for arguments in the RC section, and how the questions in that section relate to the longer passages. Once you have these basics, you need to practice what you've learned. I recommend spending between 3 and 6 months preparing for the LSAT. You should start practicing in untimed conditions. Allow yourself to get a feel for things without the pressure of time. You'll begin to really apply what you've learned, and you'll start to improve. Eventually, you can move to timed work and practice performing under pressure. You'll focus less on learning new strategies, and much more on executing them. The closer you get to your actual test day, the less you're going to want to add new strategies or methods. It's execution time now. Rather than trying new stuff, make sure you can consistently perform using the tools you've already taken on board. Of course, if you postpone your test, or you take it again, you can revisit your strategies and try new things, but that's a bridge you cross when you get there. On the Insight training platform, I implement this way of thinking about preparation by separating your work into three stages. Stage 1, Learn. Stage 2, Practice. And Stage 3, Hone. The mix of videos, exercises, practice tests, and sections changes from stage to stage, as does the nature of the algorithm that determines your personal recommendations. I hope that those of you who are going through the program on the platform find that this approach balances progression with comprehensiveness. You can't prepare forever. Time marches on, and the test approaches, so you need to stay on track. At the same time, you want to make sure that your efforts are well spent at each step along the way. There's only so much LSAT material out there because the number of previously administered tests is limited. You're going to want to use your prep time and your prep materials efficiently, and this is a matter of making sure you know what stage you're at and what matters most at that stage. Okay, let's begin to wrap up now by summarizing what we talked about today and previewing what the rest of the course will look like. In summary, this is an eight-lesson video course for the LSAT, the single most important part of a law school application package. The LSAT is a skills-based exam, meaning practice is more important than learning. The major skills you'll need to develop involve understanding complex language as well as analyzing and evaluating arguments. Over the course of your preparation, you'll want to move progressively from learning to practice and from untimed work to timed work. Again, total preparation time will vary from individual to individual depending on a number of personal factors, but typically people prepare for between three and six months. And finally, this course can be used with or without the Insight training platform, which is available at insightlsat.com. And now, the plan going forward. We're just finishing up Lesson 1, an introduction to the test. In Lesson 2, we'll set down an important foundation by learning about LSAT logic and arguments. This extremely important lesson will introduce you to core concepts that matter on both the Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension sections, as well as in law school and your future career in law. We'll also do some exercises together in this section so that you can get a feel for things. In Lesson 3, we'll begin talking about Logical Reasoning in more depth. I'll make some general comments about the section as a whole and also introduce a major distinction between front-end questions, back-end questions, and questions without arguments. We'll then focus for the remainder of the lesson on front-end questions. I discuss each type, provide specific strategies for addressing the questions, and demonstrate those strategies with examples. I'll also provide homework for those of you following the self-study route. In Lesson 4, we'll move on to back-end LR questions. I'll discuss each one, provide strategies, and demonstrate with examples. In Lesson 5, we'll deal with three types of questions that don't have arguments. I'll discuss, provide strategies, and give examples. In Lesson 6, then, we'll move on to the Reading Comprehension section. I'll provide an overview of this section, discuss my general approach to improving at it, and also talk about some special challenges that people tend to face here. We'll spend the rest of the lesson focused on LSAT reading skills. I'll give you concrete tools for understanding and analyzing the passages, and this will prepare you for tackling the questions in a focused, efficient manner. In Lesson 7, we'll shift our RC focus from passages to questions. It turns out that there's a lot more to this section than meets the eye. There's a bit of a game involved in correctly answering questions, where the emphasis is on matching answer choices to very specific bits of text from the passage, almost like you are providing citations. Once you see the section this way, it'll change the way you approach it forever, and you can actually make progress on what can be the most frustrating portion of the test for so many people. Finally, in Lesson 8, we'll point our gaze outward toward the horizon, looking into the future beyond the content of the course. I'll discuss how to deal with time pressure on the exam, and also provide other, more global test-taking strategies that relate to your performance on the test as a whole. This is the lesson where we'll also briefly return to the writing section, and I'll give you advice for how to prepare for that. I'm looking forward to helping you along this journey. My mission with Insight has always been to provide high-quality LSAT instruction in as accessible a way as possible. There will be a lot of material going forward. I will try to explain things as clearly as I can. I will also take every opportunity to identify specific skills that you can practice going forward. We'll take things seriously, but not too seriously. The road to LSAT glory is a long one, and the legal system is a very important, consequential part of society. But I believe that a little levity goes a long way, so let's try to have some fun, too. Congratulations on taking this momentous first step. Next up in Lesson 2, we'll dive right in with LSAT logic and argumentation. I'll see you there.