YouCanLSAT

I’m really going for broke here and giving you my best reading comprehension advice right out of the gate: 

You’re probably not taking it seriously enough. 

I’m sure some of you laughed when you read that, but I mean it. If you’re struggling to answer reading comprehension questions on the LSAT, it’s almost certainly not an issue of the passage being beyond your reading ability. For example, I took all the reading comprehension (or RC as I like to call it so it sounds like a toy car) passages from the June 2007 LSAT and plugged them into the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Calculator. The passages all scored at either a 10-12 grade level or a college reading level. 

In other words, you can read these. They are not beyond your ability. 

However, the LSAT makers have done something quite smart in designing those passages: they’ve made them intentionally boring and poorly written. The LSAT writers will take well-written passages from books or magazines and “adapt” them so they’re the right length and terribly organized and boring. Woo!

Now, before you write off the whole RC section as a waste of time, consider the reading lawyers have to do all the time. Sure, some documents you’ll slog through in your career will have been written with care and attention to detail, but the vast majority will be a little less polished. 

So with that in mind, you need to approach this section as being two things: fundamentally do-able and fundamentally designed to test your ability to read like a lawyer. 

You need to approach each reading passage for what it is: the answers to every question you’re about to take on. You might think that really good LSAT takers are the ones who read the passage really quickly, but the opposite is true. If you wanna do well on the questions, you have to wring all the information out of the passage itself before you even get started on the questions. Check out the video explanation of how to read an RC passage to see what I mean.

So slow down, take it seriously, and get in touch with me if you’re hitting a wall.

Okay, raise your hand if you suddenly have a lot of “sitting around at home” to do.

Now wash that hand and use it to pick up a PrepTest or two.

This is your chance, pals - if you’ve got a little free time you’d otherwise be using at a restaurant or the gym (remember that? We used to go out and be around people...it was kinda terrible at the time, but we miss it now), why not devote it to LSAT prep? Real talk: millions of people are quarantined or self-isolating right now, and thousands of them are studying for the LSAT. If you aren’t using this time to kick some LSAT butt, others are, and they’re going to kick your butt in turn when it comes to the next admissions cycle. 

See, it’s like a butt-kicking carousel. Either kick the LSAT’s butt or have your own kicked.

So here’s a potential study schedule I’d like you to try and let me know how it goes. This is assuming you’ve got an hour a day, plus 4 hours once a week, to devote to studying.

DISCLAIMER: I know a lot of you genuinely don’t have that time. If that’s you, don’t feel bad about it, just pare this down to the time you do have and make it work. On the other hand, if you’re telling me you don’t have time while you’re binging the Office for the eighteenth time, get ready to be the butt kickee, not the butt kicker. Get in contact with me if you want a personalized study schedule!

Okay, let’s try this on for size. It doesn’t matter what day of the week you’re starting, so I’ve just numbered the days. All that does matter is that you start now.

Day 1:

PrepTest (any test will do) Section 1 - Timed section 1

Whenever you’re completing a “timed section,” I want you to set two timers on your phone or whatever. One will be for 30 minutes to serve as your 5-minute warning, and the second will be for 35 minutes to tell you when you’re really done. At the five-minute warning, fill in the rest of the answer choices with the same letter (there is no advantage to any particular letter; just use the same one to simplify your life), then go back to whatever question you left off at and try to answer a few more.

When you’ve finished the time, mark how many questions you actually answered (for example, you might make a line under #21 if that was the last one you completed), and go through and try all the rest of them, untimed. These questions won’t count toward your score for the section, but you’d be crazy to miss out on the practice they can give you!

Now score the section, only counting the questions you’d actually attempted in the 35 minutes. You can see how many you magically guessed right for fun, but don’t count those as points you earned. Unfortunately, you only have a 20% each question when you guess (which is still a hell of a lot better than 0%), so I don’t want you counting those toward your score since you can’t really depend on those points.

Do NOT mark the correct answers as you score the section, only mark the ones you got wrong. Circle the number or whatever, just don’t write in the correct answer. If you knew what the answer was supposed to be, it’d really shoot you in the foot for the next step, which is reviewing your answers.

Go back to all the questions you got wrong and try them again. Often, you’ll be able to noodle your way to the right answer now that the pressure’s off. Great! Ask yourself: do I understand why this was wrong? If you don’t get why your answer was wrong and can’t find the correct answer, that’s where a tutor like me comes in. The LSAT isn’t easy, folks, and you can’t be surprised when some of the questions throw you for a loop! As a tutor, I can help you work through those questions and see what you’re missing.

Since a section will take at least 35 minutes to complete (and often much longer, if you’re taking your time to answer questions you didn’t get through in the 35 minutes), plus at least 5 minutes or so grading, plus at least 15 minutes or so reviewing incorrect answers, one hour is a conservative estimate for how long a timed section should really take you.

However, doing full sections and seriously reviewing them is the best way for you to gain the two biggest strengths you’ll need on the LSAT: comprehension of the material and mental stamina.

Okay, so that’s Day 1. Guess what you’re doing on Day 2:

Day 2:

Section 2 of yesterday’s PrepTest - timed section and review

Day 3: 

Section 3 of PrepTest - timed section and review

Day 4:

Section 4 of PrepTest - timed section and review

After this section, you can score the whole test to see how you did overall. You should record your scores somewhere so you can see your trends as you study! I provide my tutoring students with a handy spreadsheet they can plug their scores into.

Day 5: Drill, listen to podcast, etc. 

If you’ve subscribed to something awesome like the LSAT Demon, you can spend some time just drilling the sections or question types you know you struggle with. Listen to a podcast episode, etc. Don’t do nothing today, but take it easy for a day.

Day 6:

Full test, timed (at least 2.5 hours).

Same idea as before - set your 30- and 35-minute timers, and mark what questions you’ve actually finished at the end of 35 minutes, then attempt the rest untimed for practice.

But don’t review in the middle of the test - don’t check your answers or anything, just move on to the next section. If possible, don’t take a break between sections 1 & 2 and sections 3 & 4 to somewhat simulate the reality of test day where you’ll be stuck except for a 15-minute break in between (feel free to break for 15 minutes between sections 2 & 3).

When you’ve finished all four sections, score the whole test. If you have time today, it’s great to review while the questions are still fresher in your mind. If you can’t, which I don’t find hard to believe with busy at-home work schedules and whatnot, make sure you review tomorrow so you’re not coming back to the questions totally cold. When you go back to the questions quickly, you can remember what you were thinking and perhaps how you made the mistakes that lead you to the wrong answer. However, I’d take cold review over no review, so I’m not gonna get too picky.

Day 7: 

Review from the day before if necessary, or take another “rest day” where you drill questions or listen to a podcast episode. 

This is just a basic schedule I want you to try. It’s not magic. It’s not guaranteed to raise your score by 15 points in 2 months. It’s just based on what I know really, really works: intentional, frequent practice and meaningful review.

You have 35 minutes and a crap load of questions. So, what are you gonna do?

It’s tempting to just say, “Okay, how many questions can I possibly get through before time is up?”

It’s not a stupid idea by any means: you’re thinkin’, I can’t possibly get these right if I don’t attempt the question.

But here’s the problem - you stretch yourself so thin that you don’t get the questions you probably could have.

You need to slow down and remember that every question gives you enough information to find the correct answer. If you’re only answering 18-20 questions per section but you’re answering them correctly, you’re looking at a score in the mid-160s. 

So here’s what you do: completely ignore the timer. I mean it - don’t speed up or slow down, just go at a pace where you know you’re answering each question you attempt correctly. When you get to the five minute warning, bubble in all the remaining answer choices the same letter (that’s just to save time - it doesn’t matter at all what letter you pick). After that, go back where you left off and answer a couple more questions if you can. 

Remember, the questions in each section tend to get harder as you go. But you get the exact same amount of credit (one point) for each question, whether it’s number one or number 25. You’ll do better overall if you extend the effort on earlier, easier questions that you know you’ll get right, and then any of the last handful of questions are just icing on the cake.

You have to approach the test this way because you’ll never make progress if you’re not striving for comprehension above all else. The speed will come as you continue practicing and studying, don’t worry. Isn’t that how everything goes? 

Remember the last skill you learned (and remember, the LSAT is a skills test). Maybe it was cooking or knitting or whatever. You were slow at first, right? But if you focus on doing it right, you will eventually get faster just by practice.

If you’re shooting for a score in the 170s, this still applies, but you’ll have to practice to the point where you’re consistently getting to at least the last two or three questions. Don’t forget, though, that you can miss up to 14 questions and still score a 170 on many tests! That means you could randomly guess on the last 3-4 questions on every section and still score in that upper echelon. 

If you, like everyone who has ever LSATted, think Parallel Reasoning questions are a little challenging, check this video out to see how to master them. Use the June 2007 LSAT to try this question yourself first (Section 2, Question 2). Let me know what questions you want to see explained!

This is one of those awkward questions to ask. Let’s say you just took a cold LSAT diagnostic (meaning you took an LSAT with no prep or study beforehand) and got a score that you feel is “terrible.” 

Of course, I use quotes around “terrible” because your “terrible” might be someone else’s “progress.” But I digress.

You’ve scored poorly, and you’re wondering:

Is it possible to make it to my goal score from this starting line?

I have two answers to that question: Absolutely, unreservedly yes, and also very possibly no.

Here’s what I mean by “yes:” 

The LSAT is learnable. You could absolutely go from a 120 to a 180. That’s how learning works. But when I say a person can go from a 120 to a 180, I am living in a fantasy world where they have unlimited time to study. Here’s a potential example:

An English Language Learner moves to America and learns English pretty fluently. They decide they want to be a lawyer, so they hear they should take the LSAT. Well, the LSAT doesn’t really play to their strengths in the English language yet, so they bomb it and score a 120.

Undeterred, they continue studying the English language for a couple more years. They take a couple extra English writing and literature classes as they’re finishing their undergrad. When they graduate, they work for a couple years and start studying. They study a few hours a week for nine months, reviewing carefully and seeking out tutoring. Eventually, after some serious work, they have so totally mastered the test that they score a 180. 

But here’s what I mean by very possibly “no:”

Are you willing and able to put in the work it will take to get to your goal score? Maybe you’re not talking 120-180, but you still need to jump 25 points or so to get in or get scholarships. 

You can absolutely do it, but it might take longer than you want or take more time per day than you have (or both). Can you delay attending law school for one year? You might be able to study the LSAT, get some work experience in, and grow up a little before you start law school. 

But if you don’t have time to wait, you really gotta make your studying count. If for some reason, you can’t wait a year and you need to make some serious LSAT improvement, you need to devote serious time every day to the LSAT and reviewing what you’ve missed, as well as taking whole PrepTests regularly. Do you have at least 8-10 hours a week to devote to totally focused study? If not, you need to reconsider why you have to apply this year.

Maybe you were looking for some specific numbers and timelines here. Perhaps you thought I’d say, “If your starting score was a 145, it will take you 6 months of studying for 5 hours a week to gain 10 points.” I can’t possibly make that kind of guess until I know you and see where you are at individually. And even then, my best estimate means nothing without you backing it up with the work.

How the heck do you read these things so you understand what you read without spending a million years reading? How do you keep engaged and focused on the world’s most boring reading passages?

This may be the world’s hardest reading and logic test. The LSAT asks you to take in information, analyze it, and apply your analysis quickly and logically. Once you really start to understand it, you’ll see that it is a very well-designed test (as far as standardized tests go), and it is very consistent. Love it or hate it, the LSAT follows its own rules.

You probably already know that the test you’ll take will consist of five sections, each 35 minutes long. At least two will be logical reasoning, at least one reading comprehension, and at least one logic games (also known as analytical reasoning). You’ll take three sections in a row, break for 15 minutes, then finish the remaining two sections. The whole ordeal will take less than three hours if everything goes smoothly.

One of those sections will be the “experimental” section that isn’t fully LSAC approved but in its final trial run stage. You won’t know exactly which one that is, but you’d be able to tell which type of section it was. For example, if you have three logical reasoning sections, one will be the experimental section. The LSAC will analyze the data from test takers and decide which of those questions should be included on subsequent tests.

You can check out Part One: Take a Dang LSAT here!

So, you’ve taken your first LSAT! I’m sure you missed some questions - probably a lot. Don’t be surprised, and don’t be discouraged. Tough love: this test is hard. Did you really think you were going to do perfectly the first time? 

By the way, if you do score perfectly the first time, you do not need this LSAT blog and should immediately sign up to donate your brain to science.

Anyway, you missed some questions. Maybe you had no stinking idea what was happening with the logic games or didn’t even get to the third or fourth reading comprehension passages. You’d be in good company if that’s the case!

The most important thing to do is make sure that you take the time to review what you missed - if you missed the question and review it until you understand it completely, you will be so much more likely to kick butt on the next question like that one.

That’s what’s kinda “breakable” about the LSAT - the questions have a lot of similarities. You’re using the same basic skill when answering any question, from any PrepTest. That’s what makes quality review so valuable!

How to review well:

First, don’t rush it. You need to accept that studying for the LSAT is going to cut into your time in a big way. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to review your answers if you’re still watching two hours of Netflix or sleeping in for an extra hour every morning. 

Those of you who have a lot of responsibilities might really need to move things around in your life. You might be hiring a babysitter or taking on fewer hours at work. The LSAT is worth doing only if you’re going to do it right. Otherwise, you’re just giving LSAC $200 to take a test you didn’t prepare for.

So let’s say you took a Logical Reasoning section with 25 questions. You timed yourself (35 minutes) and only finished 21 of the questions. What do you do now?

Well, the first thing you should do is mark what questions you completed within the timespan. In other words, don’t count any of the questions past number 21 as correct. However, since you got those bonus questions for practice, you should go ahead and attempt them now, untimed. 

Once you’ve answered all 25, you can check your answers. You’ll probably find you missed fewer questions toward the beginning of the section and more toward the end. This is for two main reasons:

First, the questions in all sections (Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, and Logic Games/“Analytical Reasoning”) tend to get harder as you go on. This is why anyone who tells you that you should attempt some of the last questions in the section first is a ding-dong and should not be listened to. You want to take advantage of the easier questions, because they’re worth the exact same amount (one point each) as the harder ones.

Second, you might find that your brain starts to fatigue at the end of the section. Focusing for 35 minutes on an LSAT section is actually fairly taxing for the vast majority of people. I’m planning a little video on avoiding brain fatigue that I’ll link here, but the best thing you can do is practice 35-minute timed sections and build that stamina.

So at this point, you’ve got a list of questions you got wrong - I want you to look back at the question without the correct answer. You’ll learn a lot more by figuring it out yourself than just being told, “It was B!” and pretending you made that connection. 

You’ll read the simulus again, but this time you won’t be reading it as part of this stressful, timed-test situation. This time, you can take as long as you want. Your only goal is to see what they’re talking about. 

Pretty frequently, you might notice that you just straight-up missed a word or misread a part of the stimulus. If that’s the case, see if you can answer it correctly and make a mental note to slow down with your reading. 

But on the other hand, you’ll have plenty of questions you really struggle with and can’t figure out. You might not be able to see why your answer was wrong, or what other answer could possibly be right. You might even peek to see what the right answer is and be totally unsure why it’s supposed to be right. 

I want you to really lean into these moments, because this is when you’re going to make the most progress. Grinding through these challenging questions is how you eventually make some awesome breakthroughs.

This is also where having a tutor comes in handy (shameless self-promotion!). Sometimes, you just need another person to show you how the question and answer really work, or help it all connect. Especially when you’re new to the test, you’ll hit a few brick walls. Those are the times you tend to really make the most progress, because you’re really learning as opposed to just skating by on what you could already do.

So, salient points?

1. Set aside at least an hour to take a 35 minute section, grade it, and go over the questions you missed. It’s not worth rushing this, because if you just take the section and don’t review what you missed, you’ll only learn what you might have accidentally taken in from attempting the questions. It’s thoroughly reviewing the answers that will get you the improvement you need.

2. Embrace the struggle. You can learn a little when things are easy; you’ll make small improvements just by showing up. But when you’re hitting the wall and learning to scale it, you’ll be making big gains. That’s the grind that will give you a ten-point increase after a few months.

3. Don’t be surprised when it’s hard, and don’t forget to seek help when you need it. 

Start Studying, Step One: 

Find about three hours you can spend alone in a quiet-ish room and take a timed LSAT at home. Here’s how you do that: 

1. Either go to the digital LSAT tool or print out the June 2007 LSAT. 

I highly suggest using the June 2007 LSAT, especially if you’re going to work with me, because it’s a really familiar starting point for me to help you with! A lot of those questions have become iconic in their own way because so many people have taken this same test.

2. Set a timer for 35 minutes per section, and stop when time is up. No cheating - you’d only hurt yourself.

If you do the digital version, you’ll just need to follow instructions - it’s already timed.

3. Add up your “raw score,” which is the total number of questions you got correct. 

You’ll have to check your answers on the paper test (the answer key is at the end of the document), while the digital LSAT will automatically total your score for you.

4. Compare your “raw score” to the “scaled score” on the chart for the PrepTest you took. 

Each test gets its own “scaled score,” or SS, because some are slightly easier or harder than others. Because of this, you can’t just say, “Okay, great, I got 75 right, which is a 158.” On some tests, 75 correct answers might get you a higher or lower SS than 158. The July 2007 LSAT has the score conversion chart right at the end of the document, as with any book of past PrepTests you buy. You’ll can also Google the score conversion chart for the PrepTest you took.

5. Don’t freak out, don’t get too excited, don’t give up, don’t decide you’re a genius - just take your starting point for what it is: the very first data point in your LSAT Domination (insert flexing motions here).

You can find tons of people who will tell you what the ideal starting score is (I guess probably a 180, right?), but I think that’s all baloney. 

I started out with a 163 in March-ish of 2019, and I ended with a 176 in September 2019. A 13-point increase is quite a bit, and I was really happy with it - but I had to work hard! If you start much lower or higher than 163, though, that doesn’t mean you can’t go up by a bunch.

It all depends on how long you’re willing to study, how much time you’re willing to put in per day, and how quality you’re going to make your study time. If you started with a 120 but were willing to work at it long enough, you could get there eventually. Some folks like to make themselves feel elite by pretending there’s a cutoff score below which you shouldn’t even try to study for the LSAT - and that sounds like someone who is either a jagweed or a crappy teacher. 

Let’s be clear: there could certainly be students who might need years to get to a very high score. If you don’t have that kind of time, we’ll have to make a different plan and goal. But if you understand that this is a learnable test, not just some magical roulette wheel, you’ll see why I believe everyone can make it eventually.

Check out Part One: Conclusion and Premise and Part Three: Answering the Question

It does not matter at all if you remember that the stimulus is called a “stimulus.” You will get no points on the LSAT for memorizing vocabulary words someone else made up to describe the test. All you really need to know here is that you need to read that paragraph, sentence, or short dialogue that precedes the answer choices - that’s the “stimulus” - and you need to read it slowly and carefully. 

Step One: I want you to read the first sentence and stop. What is this stimulus going to be about? Is this paragraph introducing an issue in the world? Is this a dialogue between different people? Perhaps it’s a person expressing their opinion on a topic. Whatever it is, do not go on to the second sentence if you don’t understand the first.

If you’re new to LSAT-ing, you might think it sounds really silly to harp on this, but making sure you understand what you read before just barrelling ahead is critical, both in the Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension sections. You need to shift your brain from manic “I HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING DONE IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE” mode to the understanding that working slowly and steadily will get you a lot more questions right than rushing and hoping for the best. Your first priority has to be comprehension - that will give you the accuracy you need, and then the speed will come with practice.

Step Two: Once you’ve checked your comprehension of the first sentence, go on to read the rest of the stimulus (if there is more - every now and then, you get a really short one). Identify what the conclusion, or point, of the stimulus is. The vast majority of stimuli have a conclusion, but some don’t. You’ll know you’ve found the conclusion when you can say, “Therefore, [insert conclusion here].” If the sentence doesn’t really work after the word “therefore,” it’s probably a premise that leads to the conclusion.

If you’re not finding a conclusion, don’t freak out. Some stimuli don’t have one - every now and then, you have to make one yourself, or perhaps you have to see how the premises themselves work together. In other questions, you just see a little argument between two people, and those might have two conclusions.

We’ll see tons of examples of this, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed now. You just need to understand what you’re reading in the moment - that’s how you’ll be able to do any kind of question, from the easiest to the hardest.

If you feel that you don’t quite “get” the stimulus, do not move on to the answer choices and hope it’ll start making sense once you’re there. The answer choices are meant to be tricky and often close-to-right, and they’ll trip you up if you don’t know what the stimulus is really about before you read them. 

Step Three: Judge the stimulus. Be rude if you have to. Is this a crappy argument? Think about why! If you practice this enough, you’ll be able to predict what the question will be before you even read it. Let’s use my example from the conclusion and premise post: 

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

Get critical here - this argument sucks. You can’t be satisfied with saying that it sucks, though - you have to be able to say why it’s so unconvincing. What makes this such a weak conclusion? “The measure will not pass?” How do they know?

I wrote the argument, so I can easily see the huge hole I wrote into it: we don’t know how many city council members there are total, so we don’t know whether veteran members opposing the measure will preclude achieving six votes. If I read this stimulus, I’d be ready for a question asking me about the flaw in the argument or maybe asking me for an assumption the author is making behind the scenes.

For this argument to be correct, it would have to be true that there are fewer than six city council members who’ve served fewer than three years. If that was true and the author simply forgot to say it, then this argument would suddenly become convincing.

So let’s say I’m taking the LSAT for real: I’ve already anticipated the question and answer, and I’ve only read the stimulus itself. I’m setting myself up to succeed, big time.

Check out Part One: Conclusion and Premise and Part Two: Reading the Stimulus first.

So, we’ve read the stimulus itself and made sure we understood it inside and out. Remember the example stimulus we’ve been working with: 

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

We’ve already decided this argument is missing the explanation of how they know they won’t get six votes since the veteran council members won’t vote for it. I’m expecting that this question is going to say something like, “The argument is flawed in that it…” and then I’ll be able to express that it’s missing that important detail.

So let’s say I go on to read the question and I see this:

“Which of the following is an assumption required by the author’s argument?” 

At first, you might think, Oh crap. We did all that thinking for nothing - this isn’t even asking about the flaw in the argument! But guess what? The fact that I know the flaw also means I know the assumption they’re depending on.

The author is depending on the assumption that there are fewer than six members of the council who have served fewer than three years and will vote for the measure. I already know that before I even look at the answers, so I’m not really going to pay any attention to answer choices that don’t address that.

Let’s say these are the answer choices I’m given:

A. The road building project will not be funded by outside means and therefore succeed.

B. No city council member who has served more than three years will vote for the measure.

C. Of council members who have served fewer than three years, there are no more than six who will vote in favor of the measure.

D. The proposed roads in the project are necessary for the city and do not affect other municipalities.

E. The city council members who have served fewer than three years will not vote against the measure.

So here’s where my LSAT philosophy differs from many LSAT teachers. I don’t give a rip if you know all the different question types - that is all made-up LSAT dogma, and you’ll waste weeks studying “official” question types that some dude made up to sell books. If you were to see a question like this in one of those books, they’d call this a “necessary assumption” question and tell you that you need to approach it a specific way because of its type. 

Nope. You just need to read the question. It’s in English. Just answer what they’re asking. Don’t waste time in the abstraction of translating a question into some made-up “type” so that you can supposedly answer the question better.

Now, a disclaimer here: once you’re further along in your LSAT studying journey, I actually might advise you to look at what question types you tend to miss most often - some folks certainly might benefit from specifically drilling a certain question type that gives them trouble (lookin’ at you, parallel reasoning). I’d just never suggest you spend time on that in the early days of your LSAT life, when you need to be more concerned about the actual work of understanding arguments.

So instead of drilling question types, what should you do when you get to the question stem and answers? Read them carefully. Of course, that’s a little over simplified, so let’s look at it together. They’re asking me what assumption the arguer is depending on, in other words, what little factoid or condition they need in order for their argument to actually make sense. 

And guess what? We already found that earlier. So let’s look through these answer choices and see what we can see. 

A. The road building project will not be funded by outside means and therefore succeed.

Nope, they’re not relying on this. It could happen, I guess, but it wouldn’t change their argument about the fact that the measure itself will not pass. If the roads still get built anyway, that’s great, I guess, but I don’t really care. 

B. No city council member who has served more than three years will vote for the measure.

 At first, this sounds a lot like our prediction, so you’ll probably initially want to pay a lot of attention to it. However, this is a classic LSAT fake-out. We’ve already been told in a premise that this is true, so it can’t be an assumption they’re making behind the scenes. For example, if you show me that you have a five dollar bill in your wallet, I’m not making an assumption that you have five bucks. That’s already granted. 

C. Of council members who have served fewer than three years, there are no more than six who will vote in favor of the measure.

Boom - this is exactly what we predicted. You might be thinking (and you probably should be thinking), Okay, cool, very impressive. You made your own argument so it magically had the answer you’d predicted as an answer choice. Real neat. But here’s the thing: we’re gonna look through a bunch of actual LSAT questions, and you’ll find that we are able to completely predict the answer to the question maybe half the time. You wanna talk about saving time in the Logical Reasoning sections? This is your guaranteed method: know what the answer is before you’ve even read the answers.

D. The proposed roads in the project are necessary for the city and do not affect other municipalities.

Yeah, no. Every now and then, the LSAT gives you an answer like this that’s just irrelevant. I just don’t care about this sort of information in context of the argument I’m actually looking at. It’s pretty tempting at first, because, as a person who lives in the real world, these kinds of considerations would usually be really important and interesting. However, in the made-up universe of this question, I don’t care if other towns even exist or if these roads serve literally no purpose.

E. The city council members who have served fewer than three years will not vote against the measure.

Another good fake-out: it’s very similar in some ways to the correct answer, but it doesn’t address the real issue: the author is assuming that we won’t be able to scrounge up enough votes because of the three-year veterans voting “nay.” The statement in E - that the newbies would vote for the measure - would actually weaken their conclusion. It’s a little hard to even understand that that’s what the author is saying because the answer choice is written with a double negative (“will not vote against”), which means you have to do some thinking to even understand what they’re saying.

This post is the first in a series about answering Logical Reasoning questions. Check out Part Two: Reading the Stimulus and Part Three: Question and Answer Choices here!

I’m not one for LSAT vocabulary drilling - I don’t care if you know some fancy shmancy words from a logic book to describe what kind of argument or style a question is employing (and, for what it’s worth, the LSAT doesn’t care, either). However, there are two words you’ve gotta understand for us to talk through Logical Reasoning questions:

Conclusion and Premise

The conclusion of an argument is what I call the “point” of the argument in layman’s terms. Let’s use this sample argument as our guide here.

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

If you’re feeling like this argument kind of sucks, you’re right. Lots of the arguments on the LSAT are very bad - in fact, some questions even ask you to determine exactly what makes them bad! But that’s not what we’re talking about right now. 

Look at the paragraph again and find the conclusion, or the judgment call that the rest of the paragraph is supporting.

What is the author of this paragraph really trying to tell you? Is their main point that the council is voting on Wednesday? No, not really. That’s just a fact that is helping you understand what the argument is about. That’s called a premise, and you don’t have to personally agree with it, but you do have to treat it as true. We’ll talk about those more in a second. 

How about the second sentence, where the author is telling you how they’ll determine if the measure passes and who will vote for it? Ask yourself: Is the author trying to convince me of anything here? No, not really. The author is just telling you how the voting works and who’s voting for what - that’s another premise. Again, you don’t have to personally believe that the veteran members are actually going to vote against the project, but you do have to treat it as true in the little world of this argument.

Okay, so it’s obvious by now, but the conclusion of this argument is the last sentence: “So we know the measure will not pass.” An easy test is to try inserting the word “therefore” before the clause that you suspect is the conclusion. Try it here: read the paragraph again, and replace “So we know” with “therefore.” The fact that “therefore” makes sense shows you that the paragraph was building up to try and convince you of that point.

Therefore, the measure will not pass.

I made an example with a less-than-perfect argument here to show you that finding the conclusion has nothing to do with the argument being perfectly crafted or even vaguely convincing. As a lawyer, you’ll have to pick apart arguments and judgments all the time, so the LSAT is providing you with examples of logical reasoning (hey! That’s the name of the section!) that are often pretty vulnerable. 

Now, on the topic of premises, here’s what you need to know: Premises are statements offered in support of the conclusion. You don’t have to think the premise is really true - in the little fantasy world of the argument you’re reading, treat it as if it is. Here’s an example:

People who eat spinach eight times a day have been shown to have lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and certain kinds of cancer. However, doctors can see that there is a limit to these benefits, because no greater decrease in these diseases was noted among those who ate spinach more than ten times a day.

Look for the premises and conclusion. This time, I didn’t just tack the conclusion at the very end.

Do you believe that those who ate spinach that much really had lower risks of those diseases? Me either, but it doesn’t matter. That’s a premise, and I just have to say, “Well, okay! That is true to me as long as I’m reading this argument.” So what’s the conclusion? What are they trying to prove to you? Remember the “therefore” test, and feel free to move clauses (chunks of sentences) around. 

The conclusion of this argument is “doctors can see that there is a limit to these benefits.” I can scoot it to the end of the paragraph and say, “Among those who ate spinach more than ten times a day, no greater decrease in these diseases was noted. Therefore, doctors can see that there is a limit to these benefits.” 

The “therefore” test is just a cutesy little gimmick, though, and to be honest, I wouldn’t recommend it too highly. Make sure you understand how the word “therefore” signals the conclusion as the point or judgment call that the premises have been leading up to. Don’t let the “therefore” test be an excuse to ignore your responsibility to fully understand what’s going on in the argument. 

Do you see how the facts about “spinach research” combine to show that the benefits have a limit? Again, you don’t have to think it’s a great argument - it’s not great - but the conclusion is the conclusion because it’s what the author is presenting as the logical result of the facts they’ve shown you.

I wanted a catchy, cool name for my LSAT tutoring blog. Here were some of my rejected ideas: - I sat, you sat, we all sat for LSAT - LSAT for the Opposite of Dummies - LSATutor (try to pronounce this out loud. I couldn't figure it out either)

So how did "You Can LSAT" win?

Well, I'm a teacher. We like researching how people learn and what causes some students to succeed and some to fail. One of the most promising answers to that question is this: learners who think they can learn do learn.

I've heard so many people express hopelessness at their LSAT abilities, basically believing they can never improve or get the score they want. I don't buy it one bit - if you'll put in the time and use study methods that really work, you absolutely can get to the score you want. I absolutely believe that anyone could score a 180 with enough of the right kind of practice.

The biggest thing you have to believe if you're going to do well on this test is that you CAN learn it. I know it seems mysterious and unpredictable at first, but that's just because you don't know it well enough yet! It's a learnable test that is ultimately an opportunity to showcase the very kind of thinking you'll need as a lawyer.