1.1 - Intro to the LSAT

Welcome to the starting line of your law school admissions marathon—the Law School Admission Test (the LSAT).

Here we’ll discuss what the test is, how it’s scored, and why crushing it provides you your best opportunity at a debt-free legal education.

What’s the LSAT?

The LSAT is a standardized test of reading comprehension designed to assess your readiness for law school.

It’s not about memorizing legal terms or interpreting the law. You don’t need any outside knowledge aside from a solid English vocabulary.

The LSAT differs from other standardized tests you’ve probably taken in the past.

For example, you probably took the SAT® or ACT® to get into college. Those are knowledge tests—they test what you know. For example, If you took the SAT without a solid Geometry foundation, you probably struggled with the math section.

The LSAT is a skills test—rather than testing how well you know certain concepts, it tests how well you think.

Basketball Analogy

Imagine you had to take a test of basketball skills to get into law school.

Such a test might include shooting threes, free throws, and layups—each of which involves some variation of putting the ball in the hoop.

Now, imagine how you would prep for such a test. Would you go out and buy a copy of Steph Curry’s How to Ball Like a Future Hall-of-Famer? Of course not. You’d get out on the court and practice your shot until you couldn’t miss.

On the LSAT, the ball-in-hoop skill translates to understanding what you read. And you prepare for the LSAT much the same as you would for this hypothetical basketball exam—you practice real questions until your skills are sharp.

LSAT Anatomy

The LSAT is comprised of two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, and one unscored section of either LR or RC.

The unscored section, also know as the experimental section, is used to test new questions for future test administrations.

The test also involves an unscored writing sample, but you only have to write a single sample, even if you end up taking multiple LSATs.

What Each Section Tests

Logical Reasoning is all about arguments. You’ll spot their conclusions and evidence, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and determine whether or not their authors prove their points—essentially, you’ll think like a lawyer.

Reading Comprehension tasks you with reading and analyzing verbose passages on various topics. It assesses your ability to grasp main ideas, interpret tone and structure, and digest what you’ve read.

The writing sample gauges your ability to construct a coherent argument in response to a prompt. Again, it’s not score. But admissions officers will see it when they review your application, so don’t phone it in.

How the LSAT is Scored

The LSAT is scored on a scale from 120 to 180 based on how many questions you answer correctly. Each question counts equally and there’s no penalty for wrong answers.

Check out LSAC’s official scoring information to learn more.

Your job is to answer as many questions correctly as possible.

How to Study for the LSAT

Studying for the LSAT largely falls within four buckets: theory, drills, timed sections, and practice tests (PTs).

Theory

Right now you’re doing the theory bit. You’re getting some background know-how that’ll give you a leg up when you dive into real practice problems.

Use theory as your foundation and your reference material—maybe 5% of your total study.

Drilling

Drilling should make up the vast majority of your studies. It involves tackling one question or passage at a time and carefully reviewing each mistake in bite-sized fashion.

I’d argue drilling should comprise 75%-80% of your study time. You’ll master concepts faster simply by virtue of having fewer mistakes to review.

Timed Practice

Then there’s timed practice—meaning both timed sections and practice tests. These are for benchmarking your performance under timed conditions.

Timed practice should make up the other 15%-20% of your overall study. Sprinkle in a section or test every now and then to understand how you’re performing. I recommend favoring timed sections over practice test. You’ll have fewer mistakes to review.

And be careful not to overdo it. Doing too much timed practice—especially PTs—is one of the most common mistakes I see students make. I’ve seen 170+ scorers take only a handful of PTs and I’ve seen students run out of tests to take who can’t seem to break 160. Quality beats quantity.

The Benefits of a High LSAT Score

A high LSAT score is more than a bragging right. It opens doors to top law schools and major scholarships. A few points can be the difference between attending your dream school for free and paying to attend your fallbacks.

Each year, ABA-accredited law schools are required to publish consumer protection data, commonly referred to as a 509 report. These reports are chock full of information about each school, including the incoming 1L class’s LSAT and GPA percentiles.

These data heavily influence law school rankings and incentivize schools to admit students whose LSAT scores and GPAs improve the school’s medians in each category—generally speaking, the higher the medians, the higher-ranked the school.

This can work massively in your favor.

Because the LSAT is such a learnable test, you can create a ton of leverage for yourself as an applicant by scoring the highest you possibly can.

Schools only report each applicant’s highest score in their 509 reports, so take the test as many times as is necessary to maximize your score. You’ll reap the benefits in acceptance letters and scholarship offers.

How LSAT Performance Translates to Law School

Studies have shown a correlation between LSAT score and first-year law school performance.

That’s to say, how you perform on the LSAT helps admissions officers predict how well you’ll perform as a 1L at their school. It’s a sort of sneak peak at your 1L future, hence why higher-ranking schools tend to admit students with higher scores.

Some challenge the notion that LSAT translates to 1L performance, but generally speaking, the skills assessed in the LSAT are the ones you’ll use throughout your legal studies and beyond.

That’s it for our intro to the LSAT. Next, we’re outlining the foundational skills for your LSAT success.