Online LSAT Prep

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a norm-referenced, or standardized test that is administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) in the United States and Canada. It is intended to provide law schools with “a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants”. Formally, LSAC correlates LSAT performance with first year law school grades. The LSAT is administered four times per year, traditionally in February, June, October, and December, and scores are distributed on a scale of 120 to 180—with 180 the highest possible score, and 120 the lowest.

Test Composition

Logical Reasoning (LR)

There are two logical reasoning sections of 35 minutes each. Commonly known as “arguments” or “LR”, each question begins with a logical statement or argument, usually composing no more than a few short sentences (e.g. “A is B; therefore C must be D”), followed by a prompt asking the examinee to find the argument’s assumption, an alternate conclusion, logical omissions or errors in the argument, to choose another argument with parallel reasoning, or to identify a statement that would either weaken or strengthen the argument. Per argument, one or two questions are posed.

Logical reasoning sections will usually consist of 24-26 questions each. In its official LSAT Superprep, the LSAC scores questions on a difficulty scale from 1-5. Most logical reasoning sections contain 2-3 level-5 questions. The arguments section is somewhat difficulty-graded. While not directly graded like the SAT, the hardest questions tend to come toward the end of the section, while the first 10 often contain no questions above difficulty level 3.

Reading Comprehension (RC)

There is one 35-minute reading comprehension (“RC”) section consisting of four brief passages on a variety of topics with 5-8 follow-up questions per passage. The questions ask the examinee to distinguish the author’s main idea, intent, tone, attitude, and strategy for writing. Any given RC section will typically have one passage each related to the physical sciences, the social sciences, the arts and humanities, and one law passage. The passages usually employ an academic tone and contain more information than can be immediately retained by a typical reader, requiring frequent referral by the examinee. Through the 1990s, the reading sections have grown longer, and currently contain 26-28 questions, with the most recent LSATs having 28 questions.

Analytical reasoning

There is one analytical reasoning section of 35 minutes, informally known as the “logic games” section. The material generally involves grouping and/or ordering of elements whose number may or may not be known. The examinee is presented with a setup (“there are five people who might attend this afternoon’s meeting”) and set of condition statements (e.g. “if Amy is present, then Bob is not present; if Cathy is present, then Dan is present…”), and is then asked to derive various conclusions from the statements (e.g. “What is the largest number of people who could be present?”). The games often add or change rules in each question, requiring the examinee to reorganize information quickly.

Throughout the 1990s, these sections have become shorter, now often ranging from 21-22 questions instead of 22-24 as in the middle 1990s. This section is billed as the most coachable by most LSAT test prep materials and companies.

Experimental

There is one experimental section, which will be any one of the above types. Although the section is graded, the performance of the examinee on this section is not calculated or reported as part of the final score. The experimental section is used to field test new questions for future exams. The examinee is not told which section of the exam is experimental, in order to avoid the distorting effects of inattention or apathy. To reduce the impact of examinee fatigue on the score distribution of this section, it usually, but not always, appears as one of the first three sections of any given testing. Because multiple versions of the exam are issued, alert examinees who have two different versions of the test can trivially identify the experimental section by noting which sections they have had in common thus far.

The fairness of this section is often debated. The student does not know exactly which section is ungraded. Examinees can determine which type of section it was before the exam is over, but only after the examinee has already completed at least one such section. For example, if the student has already done two arguments sections and runs into a third one, then one of those three was the experimental section. Some examinations will include three arguments sections; others will have two games or reading sections. The order is also unpredictable, which allows for the possibility of, for example, three arguments sections in a row. Depending on ordering and where a given examinee’s weaknesses lie, an examinee can severely underperform (or overperform) on one specific testing. No formal examination of the impact of the experimental section has ever been done, and examinee scores tend to steadily rise with practice regardless. The experimental section also amounts to unpaid research being done on LSAC’s behalf by examinees who are already paying for the testing.

Writing sample

Finally, there is one writing sample, which is a brief essay that the examinee hand-writes at the end of the examination on lined paper that is provided with the test booklet. The writing sample is unique in that it is not scored and its order is known beforehand. The topic of the essay is given by either a Decision prompt or an Argument prompt. The Decision prompt provides the examinee with a problem and two positions on what decision should be made to solve it. The examinee is challenged to write a brief essay in support of one position. The decision generally does not involve a controversial subject, but rather something mundane about which the examinee likely has no strong bias, such as where to locate a new restaurant. For the Argument prompt, the examinee is given an argument and then asked to critique that argument. The time limit for either prompt is 35 minutes. The writing sample is essentially an extemporaneous essay, hand-written in pencil at the conclusion of a four- to five-hour examination. This essay is then photocopied and sent to admission offices along with the LSAT score. Between the quality of the handwriting and that of the photocopy, the readability and usefulness of the writing sample can be marginal. Additionally, most programs require that applicants submit a “personal statement” of some kind. These factors sometimes result in the writing sample portion being ignored completely by admission boards. Regardless, most prep materials and courses encourage practice on the writing sample; a handful recommend that examinees ignore it and focus on improving their performance on the graded portions of the exam.