About the LSAT

I'm going to talk first briefly about the purpose of the LSAT, what it's meant to do, and why. Then I'm going to spend quite a bit of time talking about the format and content of the LSAT. And then finally, at the end, I will talk about how to prepare for the LSAT. I'm going to give you some suggestions for what I think is a good method to prepare for the LSAT, starting with the purpose of the LSAT, to provide a standard measure of the acquired reasoning and reading skills of law school applicants. These skills are extremely important for success in law school. Now let's talk a little bit about the format. The basics are, it's 3 and 1 half hours long, so it is a grueling testing session. That's a long time to be sitting and taking a test. In that 3 and 1 half hours, what you're going to do is you're going to take four scored multiple choice sections. These sections are 35 minutes each. On those four sections, then, you'll do a total of 100 to 102 multiple choice questions that are scored. In addition to those four scored multiple choice sections, you will take one unscored multiple choice section. And we do that so that we can try out new questions and get information on how they work, how difficult they are, and so on, or how easy they are. And you, of course, won't know which section is the unscored section. Then, in addition to those five now, five multiple choice sections, one not scored, four scored, you will also do an unscored writing exercise. You're given a prompt, which I'll talk about briefly later. And you have 35 minutes to write a brief essay in response to that prompt. Again, it's not scored, but the important thing for you to bear in mind is that a copy of your essay is sent to every law school that you apply to. The LSAT is scored on a scale from 120 to 180. The midpoint of that scale, 150, is about the average. There is no such thing as a pass-fail score on the LSAT. The scores are used by the schools, again, to compare applicants to each other. But there is no such thing as failing the LSAT, or there's no minimum cut score that you need to get in order to get into a law school. OK. Another important thing to keep in mind is that, remember, again, there are 100 questions, roughly, 101, 102. The average number correct turns out to be about 58. That's important to bear in mind because I think most people who apply to law school tend to be good students. They're ambitious, they work hard, and they tend to do well in school. This is a very different experience. And getting 58 right is about average for this very ambitious and very able group of students. The thing to keep in mind is if you start practicing and you find that you get a lot of questions wrong on the LSAT, it's not that you're doing badly. The test is designed that way so that we get everyone who's applying to law school spread out on the scale that I was talking about before. All right, so in reading comprehension, what you're going to do is you're going to read a short text, but it's a fairly complex text. And it usually involves argument or other kinds of logically complex writing. That's about 450 words long, that text. Or another variant is that you will also be asked one time to read two related texts instead of just one text. And those two texts together also are roughly 450 words long. On the basis of that reading, you're going to answer five to eight questions. So each reading passage or a pair of passages has five to eight questions associated with it. You're going to do that four times in the RC section, the reading comp section. So you'll have four of these reading passages or pairs, and you'll answer, again, a total of 26 to 28 questions. The passages cover a whole wide variety of topics, but they do fall into four basic categories. They fall into the humanities, the natural sciences, the social sciences, and law-related. Law-related, by the way, just means that it's something, obviously, to do with the law, but at a level that's accessible to the general population. These are some examples of the types of questions that you'll answer in the reading comprehension section. This is not an exhaustive list, but it's a representative short list of what you'll be asked to say to answer in response to the passage. What is the main point? That's an important one, by the way, because almost all of our passages have a main point question associated with them. So that's something to bear in mind as you prepare, and also as you read the passage on test day. What can be inferred from what the author says? Which principle does the author's argument rely on? Which function does the third paragraph perform in the passage? Very briefly, there is a new type of reading comprehension, and I've alluded to it in general a moment ago. It's called comparative reading. Instead of having one passage, on the basis of which you'll answer questions, this has two shorter passages. Again, the same total length, roughly, as one passage. The two passages cover related topics, but they typically approach a topic from different angles or have different things to say about the passage. To give you an idea of what it's like, this is one, it's about global warming. Passage A basically says the Earth is getting warmer, and it's because of human activity, primarily burning of fossil fuels. Passage B says, well, yes, the Earth is getting warmer, apparently, but the evidence isn't there to say that it's because of human activity. So that's the point of disagreement between them. Here are some sample questions, again, not of an exhaustive, but a representative list. What is the central topic of each passage? In the example we just talked about, that would be global warming, or maybe more specifically, the cause of global warming. The authors would be most likely to agree about which one of the following. In that example, you might say that they agree that the Earth is getting warmer. Conversely, we might ask what they would disagree about, and then that would be what causes the warming trend. Which one of the following best characterizes the relationship between the two passages? Now we'll move on to logical reasoning. In logical reasoning, you read a short, argumentative text, short being about 20 to 100 words, and you will generally answer one question on the basis of that short text. Again, there are roughly 25 questions per logical reasoning section, for a total of about 50. So again, it's about half the test. The topics include things like government, business, economics, health, psychology, the environment, and so on. And in terms of formats, you'll see things like letters to the editor, or dialogues, mock advertisements, any number of things like that. These are generally drawn, by the way, from published sources, as are the reading comprehension passages. This is very important to keep in mind with respect to logical reasoning. You don't need specialized training in logic to do well in logical reasoning. If you do take a logic course, it can hurt, and it may very well help you, but it's not necessary. That said, however, you do need to understand certain key terms that play very important roles in logical reasoning questions. On the left there, you see five of them that are terms that are used to identify parts of an argument and to discuss them. If you're not already familiar with all those terms, you really should familiarize yourself with them before you take the LSAT, because all of these terms are used in logical reasoning questions, and you need to understand what they're referring to in order to succeed in answering the questions. In addition, you should also pay close attention to and understand how quantifier words work in arguments. Quantifier words being things like some, all, any, every, many, most, none, or also words like sometimes, only, always, often, probably, et cetera. These are all extremely important. Here is a sample LR passage that was actually used in a test a number of years ago. I've highlighted a couple of those quantifier words that do play a key role in this one. Here are some other examples of logical reasoning questions that you'll see. What is the conclusion of the argument, or what conclusion does the argument support? So that's a brief introduction to logical reasoning. Now let's talk about analytical reasoning. This tends to be the section that people find most difficult. What you're going to be asked to do is to read a text of up to 120 words. And that text is going to describe a scenario and some rules that apply to the scenario. Then you're going to be asked to answer five to seven questions about what can be the case, or what must be the case, or what cannot be the case, given the scenario and the rules that apply to it. These scenarios involve relationships of various kinds. They can involve spatial relationships, what can be above something else or next to something else. They can involve temporal relationships, what must occur before something else or after something else. They involve things like group membership, assigning people to committees, and things like that. And then you're going to do this four times in the analytical reasoning section for a total of 22 to 24 questions. So here's an example. This, again, is one that was actually used on an LSAT a number of years ago. I've simplified it somewhat. I've reduced the number of rules just to make it easier to read. Basically, you have six persons, list of names. They're going rock climbing together. They're going to form two teams, each consisting of three persons. And then here are the rules that apply. Michael and Peng cannot be on the same team. And if Khalil is on a team, Lila must also be on that team. Now, one of the things that people tend to say about analytical reasoning is that they don't understand why it's on the test, because it seems like it's completely irrelevant to law school. This kind of thing, basically what it is, is what you could call a constraint problem. You have a situation, and you have some rules that apply to that situation. And then you have to draw conclusions about what can be done or cannot be done or must be done on the basis of those constraints. If you think about it, in a way, that's very analogous to, for example, tax law. In tax law, you have a scenario. It's a much larger and much more complex scenario, namely the economy and people's jobs and incomes and so on. And then that scenario has a huge number of rules that apply to it about what kinds of taxes must be paid or what kinds of deductions can be taken or cannot be taken. And on the basis of that scenario and those rules, if you're a tax attorney or a taxpayer, your job is to draw conclusions about what you have to do, what you can't do, what you can do, and so on. You'll be asked questions like these. Which one of the following could be true? Which one of the following cannot be true? If Irina is on the same team as Henry, which one of the following could be on the same team as Khalil? And so on. All right, and then very briefly, let's talk about the writing exercise. What you're going to be asked to do, you're given a prompt that describes a scenario. Someone is making a decision in this scenario, and they have two choices. And the choices are governed by two criteria that must be satisfied. And your job is going to be to argue for one choice or the other. And you can pick either. There is no correct answer. And your chances of performing well are equally good no matter which choice you pick. So you just pick whichever one strikes your fancy or whatever and write an argument in favor of the person picking the choice that you've chosen using the information in the prompt together with the criteria. The completed exercise, again, the writing sample is not scored. We don't score it. But again, a copy is sent to every law school that you apply to. The idea is that the law is a profession. You're applying for entry into that profession. And an important part of that profession is having a professional demeanor and behavior. And if you don't take the writing prompt seriously and you submit something frivolous or use it as an occasion to complain or whatever, then you've not demonstrated that you are someone who is ready to be a professional. I do want to dispel a few myths, things that you may have heard about the LSAT. First of all, our questions are not designed to trick people. We do not write questions to trick people. In fact, we go to great lengths, my colleagues and I who put the test together, to make sure that questions aren't tricky. A particular consequence of that is if you come across a question that seems very easy, if the answer seems so obvious that you can scarcely believe that it's the right answer, well, chances are that it is. We do have some very easy questions on the test. Every test has to have some easy questions on it. And so if the answer seems very obvious, I would say don't second guess yourself. Don't think that we're trying to trick you and that what looks like the obvious answer is actually wrong in some sneaky way. Just go with what looks like the right answer. Another thing that you may have heard is that the right answer is usually C or D, as the case may be. Don't waste any energy thinking about patterns of which letter is the correct response. The letters of the correct responses are allowed to fall out randomly. Also, the LSAT is not scored on a curve. Some people have heard that, for example, you should avoid taking the test in October because that's when all the really good test takers take it, or something like that. When your score is generated, you're not being compared only to the people who take it on the same day as you. You're being compared to people who've taken it over the years, over all the administrations, going way back to 1991. So for the purposes of your individual score, it doesn't matter when you take the test. The comparison is all test takers, not just the test takers on that one individual day. All right, so now let's talk about how to prepare. So you are already preparing, or if you've already graduated from your undergraduate program, then you have prepared. And as long as you keep reading advanced complex tests and using your reasoning skills, you will be preparing just in the course of doing those things. If you're still an undergraduate, one thing you can do is take challenging courses, especially those that require you to use these skills to a great extent. More specifically, though, assuming that you want to do some kind of preparation specifically for the LSAT, one question that you're probably wondering about is, should you take a commercial test prep course or not? My answer to that is that it doesn't hurt if you've got the money. It isn't necessary, however, to take one. And so you just have to decide for yourself as you prepare for the LSAT whether you're someone who can prepare on his own or her own, or whether you might be better off signing up for a course where they tell you specifically what you should do in order to prepare. If you do take one of these, though, one very important point is make sure they use actual LSATs. If a test prep company is making up their own material, you don't know whether it's really comparable to our test in terms of its difficulty or in terms of the specific distribution of easy questions versus hard questions versus medium questions. So it's important to use our material. So here's my suggested method for preparing on your own if that's what you're going to do. The first thing is take one or two tests, but not timed. I would recommend take one or two whole tests at a more leisurely pace just to get used to the question types if you're not used to them already and see which ones you find more difficult or less difficult to see if you have any particular strengths in a certain type of section or any section that's more challenging for you. On the basis of what you find out, you can start focusing especially on any sections that you find more difficult, assuming there are any. By the way, used LSATs are available from our website, www.lsac.org. They're sold in books called Prep Tests. I recommend then starting to take the test under timed conditions, but only one section at a time at first. Again, it gets you used to the pacing of taking a section in 35 minutes. And as you're doing that, focus on any sections that you find more difficult. It's very important as you're going through this process, if you get questions wrong, always review the questions that you got wrong and go back and see if you can figure out why the right answer is the best answer and why the answer that you picked was not the best answer. That's a very good way to familiarize yourself with the way that our questions work. After you've focused on individual sections under timed conditions, then I would finally start taking whole tests under timed conditions. Several benefits will flow from that. One, you can figure out what your optimal pace is and get a sense for how much time you should be spending on each question. You'll develop a sense for when it's beneficial for you as an individual to stick with a question that seems hard or when it's better to just skip that question and move on to the next one. These are things that you only can really get a sense for with practice. It'll also help you build the kind of mental stamina that you need to take a 3 and 1⁄2 hour test and do well all the way through. That's, again, something that you can build with practice. And finally, having been through whatever number of actual LSATs and having taken them under timed conditions, that's something that can help you avoid panic on the actual test day. Before wrapping up, I'm going to say a few words about the issue of fairness. There's a lot of talk out there about whether the LSAT and also other standardized tests like the SAT, for example, whether they're biased or unfair to certain groups, certain minority groups. And it is true, unfortunately, that certain minority groups don't perform as well on average on the test as other groups do. But what I want to say about that is a few things. One, we are aware of this issue. And we go to great lengths to avoid bias on the test as much as possible. All of us who work on the content of the test are trained in what kinds of things might cause bias on the test. And we're trained to look for them and take them out. In addition, every question is sent out to representatives of various groups. So every single question is seen by an outside expert who is an African-American or an Asian-American, Hispanic, Latino, Native American. Also, it's looked at by someone who is a Canadian, because we also do have Canadian test takers. And we have to be aware of biases that relate to the differences between US and Canadian culture. The other thing I wanted to say about that is, be that as it may, if you happen to belong to one of these groups that, on average, don't do as well on the test as other groups, I think the important thing to keep in mind is not to be intimidated by that. Because whatever is true of the group as a whole is not your fate as an individual. Every group has individuals who do very well. Whatever is true of a whole group is not necessarily going to be true of any particular individual in that group.