Career Center, Career Files, Pre-Law

How Not To Prepare for the LSAT

So, you want to be a lawyer. That means you’ve got an LSAT to take. Maybe not this month, maybe not this year, but at some point in your future, you’re going to be herded into a classroom in a college or law school in your town, given a bubble sheet and a stapled test booklet, and asked to sit down for 3­1/2 hours of testing that will determine the rest of your life.

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iStock_000003041694_SmallSo, you want to be a lawyer. That means you’ve got an LSAT to take. Maybe not this month, maybe not this year, but at some point in your future, you’re going to be herded into a classroom in a college or law school in your town, given a bubble sheet and a stapled test booklet, and asked to sit down for 3-­1/2 hours of testing that will determine the rest of your life.

For real. Your LSAT score will go a long way toward deciding where you go to school and how much you’ll pay for school, which also decides which city you’ll live in and which law firms you’ll meet on campus, which summer internships you’re most likely to get hired for, what job you’re likely to take, what kind of car you’ll drive, who you’ll marry, how many kids you’ll have, and whether or not there’ll be bagpipes at your funeral.

Uh. Wait a minute. We maybe got carried away a little bit there.

But the point remains; the LSAT is a huge determinant of so much about how your working life will begin. So you’re going to need to be ready for it. With that in mind, here are 7 ways that you should not try to prepare for the test:

1. Don’t just take a million practice tests. Think about it this way: when the army trains soldiers, it doesn’t give them guns and send them into battle (not even mock battles) and ask them to learn to shoot under those conditions. Instead, the army teaches soldiers to shoot on ranges under closed conditions, so that before they ever get into the heat of things, they have a thorough understanding of how their weapons work, how to use them, and what to do if they get in trouble. It’s the same thing here; you’re going into battle. If you want to be able to succeed, you’ve got to spend serious practice time understanding what the test questions want from you, developing replicable skills for dealing with those demands, and learning an attack plan for anything the test writers might ask. This means not just doing a bunch of practice questions, but doing intelligent, focused work.

2. Don’t avoid the Reading Comprehension. Look, I know that’s the least­ sexy, most­ boring part of your LSAT prep. It isn’t exciting or cool, it doesn’t make you more attractive to others, and you’ll never feel like a winner even if you’re really, really good at it. Still, Reading Comp comprises a quarter of your score, and the answer to every single question is literally right there on the page. That’s a lot of points to leave on the table, so don’t leave them on the table. Learn to read actively, to engage with a text so that once you’ve finished reading you can answer questions quickly and accurately. No fuss, no muss, just another 27 points in the bank.

3. Don’t work in bed. I mean, you can “do work” in bed all you want, but don’t try to do LSAT practice there. You won’t take the test in your bedroom with your special blankie wrapped around you; don’t practice for it that way. Go to the library, and sit in the open reading area. It’ll be quiet, but not silent. You’ll be able to read and think, but you won’t be in a cocoon of solitude. Just like test day. You want your practice to mirror your test day experience so that when it comes time, your test day can look just like your practice sessions.

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4. Don’t do all your work timed. It’s hard to improve at anything in life if every time you try it, you’re trying to do it as fast as you can. Think about it—what activity have you ever succeeded at by approaching it that way? Nope. You’ll succeed on the LSAT by doing slow careful thoughtful study that you can then put into practice on some dress­ rehearsal ­type timed tests. Sure, you’ll want to know that you can do the work
under timed conditions, but in order to do that, you’ll need to put in lots of untimed work aimed at getting better, not faster.

5. Don’t try to build Rome in a day. The LSAT is a difficult test, and for most of us, it takes serious calendar time to master. You can’t cram for it—you’re not going to memorize facts, names, or formulas that you can regurgitate. To prepare for the LSAT you’ll need to change your mode of thinking, to recalibrate in order to work in the ways that the test rewards. This takes time. Give yourself at least 10 weeks to prepare, and more if you know that you tend to be a slower learner. Take your time, but also…

6. Don’t spend a year prepping. Yes, I know; you’ve heard people, like old sailors at a dirty seaside tavern, telling tall tales of their years at work doing practice tests over and over every day, week after salty week, month after waterlogged month. This is not a method for success. This is the least­ efficient means of getting from Point A to Point B. I don’t question that it has produced results for some people; I question whether it was a good way of producing those results. Why do something the dumb way for 50 or 60 weeks if you can accomplish your goal the smart way in only 12? Set aside some limited, but serious calendar time, study smart and work hard for a couple of months, and put the LSAT behind you like a champ, not a chump (ha! See what I did there with the alliteration or whatever you call that?)

7. Don’t do it alone. Look, you can succeed all by yourself. You really can. But you’d be doing a lot of unnecessary work reinventing the wheel that way. Instead, get a coach. Use the awesome LSAT resources at VelocityLSAT.com, where there are completely free and open explanations for every right answer from every modern LSAT. Get some help so that you can do smarter, faster, more efficient work with the time you’ve got, avoid the pitfalls listed here, and you’ll go from LSAT zero to LSAT hero (ha! I did it again!).

Article by Dave Hall of Velocity Test Prep – Velocity offers an online LSAT prep course and a wide range of free LSAT prep resources.

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