It’s obviously different for everyone, some of us can ace the test with little or no preparation while others might take months of dedicated study to see significant improvements in their score.

We’ve put together an LSAT Study Schedule as a guideline for your LSAT studies. This is just a guide and you may require much more or less time than is laid out here. But it’s a great place to start.

Before you charge into the LSAT study schedule, there are a couple of quick things you should consider. Namely, Diagnostic Exams and Goals.

Diagnostic Exam – generally I recommend that students take a diagnostic LSAT to begin with, with two big warnings (we’ll get to those in a moment). Taking a diagnostic LSAT allows you to set a baseline score and to build your goals upon that. You can then track your progress from this base score. If you’re looking for an official LSAT to start with, there’s one in our trial LSAT course. Here’s the caveats on the diagnostic LSAT:

WARNING #1 – many successful students with high LSAT scores, did not score high on their diagnostic, there is lots to learn about the particulars of the LSAT, how they ask the questions and what methods you can use to get to the answers quickly. If you are the type of person who is demoralized easily with low test scores, skip the diagnostic and move into studying. When you’ve prepared a bit more then take an exam.

WARNING #2 – staring off with a full LSAT exam is often daunting and becomes a mental block to getting your LSAT studies started, if you find yourself more than a few days past your planned start date and you still haven’t written the diagnostic exam, skip it and just get started. You can start with a simple lesson on one topic and spend 20-30 minutes learning one thing. Much less intimidating than a 4 hour exam to start. You can always come back and do lots of practice exams later.

Set your Goals!

Essential for any study program, and especially for the LSAT. Set your goals early and review them often.

Goals should include:

• a final score (check what your hopeful law schools require for an idea of what you might require)
• hours per week – determine how much time you are willing to dedicate per week and stick to it
• that’s it. You can add in your school of choice but  too many goals and some start to slip. Stick to these two and you’ll stay focused.

You may also want to consider where you’ll be studying. It’s best to set a place, be consistent and visit it often.

Here’s a few good places:

• a school library or other library
• an office

And some bad places:

• home study or bedroom (maybe, see below)
• park bench – it may be sunny but you won’t get much work done

Studying at home – some people can, but most of us can’t. If you’re going to study at home make sure you eliminate all distractions and ensure that no one will be coming in to disturb you. Try this once or twice and if you find yourself taking a nap, watching TV or constantly being interrupted then you need to find somewhere else to study and stick to it.

Once you’ve got your place and goals set you’ll need a study plan. You can put your own together or use our suggestions here. This LSAT study guide will take you through all aspects of the LSAT in approximately 70 hours, plus a few more for extra practice and review. You can supplement it with official LSAT practice exams at any point in the study plan. We’d suggest you fit in at least 5 full length practice exams under timed conditions and include some time to review them after each exam. Total study time in this plan including 5 exams and review time is approximately 90-100 hours. At 10-12 hours per week that’s about 10 weeks, or at 20 hours per week it’s about 5 weeks. You can condense it down further by studying more often or by cutting down on some areas that you find easier. Often students will find a few topics that come easily to them and you can reduce your study time on these.

When you’re ready, get started with the LSAT Study Schedule here.

Since Miley Cyrus would never date a boy who did not believe in marriage, and anyone who truly understands romance believes in marriage, only a boy who truly understands romance would have any chance of dating Miley Cyrus.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument ignores the possibility that some people who

(A) have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus do not truly understand romance
(B) truly understand romance have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus
(C) truly understand romance do not believe in marriage
(D) believe in marriage have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus
(E) believe in marriage do not truly understand romance

Read on for the explanation and answer…
This is a great example of a flaw LSAT question with formal logic or conditional reasoning. You’re looking to identify what’s wrong with the argument but first you’ll need to breakdown the conditional reasoning. Let’s start by drawing out our basic if-then statements:

We start with a couple of premises:

“Since Miley Cyrus would never date a boy who did not believe in marriage…”
and
“anyone who truly understands romance believes in marriage”

With any LSAT question involving conditional reasoning you want to turn the statements into basic IF-THEN statements. Our premises then become:

IF a boy does not believe in marriage THEN he cannot date Miley Cyrus
and
IF you understand romance THEN you believe in marriage

You can represent these graphically as follows:

Usually you would use just the letters B and D or BM and DM to represent belief in marriage and dating Miley Cyrus but we’ve used the full words here for ease of explanation. When you do this yourself on the actual or practice LSAT exams you should use only a single letter, it will speed things up.

These two IF-THEN statements are our premises and are known to be true for sure. We then have our conclusion which is suspect as it makes a conclusion that cannot be drawn on the basis of the two premises provided.

Our conclusion is a bit tricky as it’s an “ONLY IF” statement. The easy trick for these statements is to remember that you reverse the order of the statement when you turn it into a basic IF-THEN statement. e.g. ONLY IF A THEN B becomes
IF B THEN A or IF B –> A

Our conclusion was “only a boy who truly understands romance would have any chance of dating Miley Cyrus” or in IF-THEN terms:

ONLY IF understand romance THEN date Miley Cyrus
and reversing that to a basic IF-THEN statement we get:

IF Dating Miley Cyrus THEN understand romance

We can represent this graphically as:

So now we have our premises and conclusion expressed as IF-THEN statements. You can answer the question from here or you can go on to add some additional information by taking the contra-positives of each IF-THEN statement. For a detailed explanation of how to set up the contra-positive and IF-THEN statements check out this article, or try our LSAT Prep Course Online.

So here’s our complete story including contra-positives:

Premise 1:


Premise 2:

Conclusion:

So what’s wrong with our conclusion?  Our conclusion starts with the information on the left side of the IF THEN statement. Which is either “If you are dating Miley Cyrus” or from the contra-positive “If you don’t understand romance”

Let’s start with the first one: “If you are dating Miley Cyrus” – what do we know about someone who is dating Miley Cyrus? The way to find out is to skim read down the left side of all your equations in the premises. The premises are our facts so what we have there is known to be true. We skim the left side for something about a person “dating Miley” and we can then follow it to the right to find out more information. So we find the statement:

So we can conclude that if you’re dating Miley Cyrus, you believe in marriage. But our conclusion takes this further and concludes that you also understand romance. Can we go this far?  You can find out by continuing to follow the chain of logic in your premises, we’ve gone from dating Miley, to believing in marriage – what next? Nothing comes next! We have no statement that starts with belief in marriage on the left side and so we can draw no conclusions on this basis. So our conclusion went to far. It should have stopped with “Anyone who dates Miley Cyrus must believe in marriage.”  and not gone on to conclude they also understand marriage. So the error here is that the argument assumes that if you believe in marriage you also understand romance, or in other words and in the words of our question stem, it ignores the possibility that some people who believe in marriage do not truly understand romance.

With the information in our premises it’s possible that we have someone who dates Miley, believes in marriage but does not truly understand romance. This possibility was overlooked or ignored and so (E) is our correct answer.

Take a look at some ways to improve your reading abilities in this video, or in the article below:

There are a number of ways to do this in the short term and these are addressed in full in our online LSAT prep course. For the purpose of this article I am going to take a look at some longer term solutions. If you only have a few weeks to go until your LSAT these solutions probably will not help you much, but if you have a month or more you can definitely make use of these techniques to improve your score on the reading comprehension section of the LSAT.

1. Practice Reading

The best thing you can do to improve your reading abilities and speed is to practice. This does not mean reading like you normally do. You need to focus. And you should focus on short articles of complex subject matter, similar to that which you will find on the LSAT. Grab a newspaper or a copy of The Economist magazine and read and article. Personally I like The Economist as it has short articles just like the LSAT with topics ranging from economics to social sciences or biological sciences and the arts just like your reading passages on the actual LSAT. You should be reading at least a few articles a day. This gives you a bit of a break from your LSAT studies and you can do it on the bus, in the library, in class (if it’s boring), or pretty much anywhere.

2. Focus

When you read a novel in bed or an article in a trashy magazine you will sometimes find that your mind is wandering. Ever read a page and then stopped only to realize you have no idea what you just read? It happens to all of us. You cannot let this happen on the LSAT. You must devote all of your efforts into focusing on what you are reading. There is not time to go back and re-read because you were daydreaming.

3. Use the other half of your brain

One way to maintain focus is to employ the other half of your brain while you read. That’s the half that’s usually daydreaming about lunch or your date last night. Put it to work. You can do this by forcing yourself to not just read but to analyze as well. While you read you should be thinking about what you are reading. Think about what the text means, try to create a basic summary that simplifies what you are reading as you read it. Is the argument flawed? What statistics are they relying on? Does the way they use the statistics or supporting data make sense? Think about what the author’s view point is, is there a view point? Think about what other view points are expressed in the article. What is the main point or purpose of the article? Follow and make note of transitions in the article. If the article starts off in one direction supporting a proposition and then changes to address critiques of this view, make note of this change in direction. Thinking about these elements of the article will help you stay focused and will dramatically improve your comprehension and ability to recall the article.

4. Make notes on the article

As you read the article, mark it up. Circle, underline, box, draw arrows and stars. Develop your own system for how you will mark up an article or use ours (explained in full in the online LSAT prep course). Generally you want to be marking up your view point and key characters, the author’s views, the main point, transitions or changes in direction or tone and any key words that help you focus on the structure or content of the article.

5. Explain it to someone else

After you read, take the time to explain the article to someone else. This forces you to recall what you read, to summarize it in a meaningful way and to analyze it as you discuss and explain the article. This helps develop your memory as well as analytical skills that are so important on the LSAT.

Following these steps can help improve your reading abilities and have a direct impact on your LSAT score. But there is more to be gained from these exercises, developing these analytical reading skills will also help you in law school and in a career as a lawyer. Lawyers and law students are required to read with focus and to analyze complex text on a daily basis. So get started now, raise your LSAT score but also improve your overall analytical reading skills.

Step 1 – Take a Practice LSAT Test

Taking a practice LSAT test is an extremely important step for a number of different reasons.  You need to determine a baseline LSAT score, this will help guide you in how much you need to study to get the score you want.  Also, having a baseline score will help motivate you as you study by giving you a measure of your improvement. Motivation can be an extremely important factor in studying for the LSAT.

• To start your diagnostic exam you will can download a free LSAT practice test. You can also download and print LSAT practice tests in our LSAT Prep Course.
• Next, complete the practice LSAT under time constraints. I can’t emphasize this point enough, the LSAT is a timed exam and part of studying for the exam is about improving your time, so make sure you time your test.
• You can find instructions for timing your LSAT and a Virtual Proctor here.
• Finally, score your test to find out how you did. First, determine how many questions you got correct out of the total number of questions. This is your raw LSAT score and needs to be converted to a scaled score for comparison to other test results. Here is a full explanation of LSAT scores. To convert your raw score to a scaled and percentile use our LSAT score conversion chart.

Step 2 – Set Your Goals

Once you have your baseline scaled LSAT score ranging from 120 to180 from your diagnostic test you will have a better idea of how much studying you will need to do to get into your school of choice.

At this point, I’m assuming you’ve set your mind on a number of law schools and have reviewed their admission criteria. The admission criteria  is often based primarily on GPA and LSAT scores. Using your current or expected GPA you should be able to determine approximately how high you need to score on the LSAT in order to be accepted to a given law school.  If you haven’t reviewed the admissions criteria for the schools you want to go to you can review Alpha-Score’s guide to Canadian law schools or review LSAC’s UGPA/LSAT search for ABA approved law schools in the US.

By reviewing the admission criteria for the schools you are interested in you now have a better idea of the range of LSAT scores you will need.  This is your goal LSAT score and should be compared to your baseline LSAT score from your diagnostic practice test. The difference is a good indicator of how much work and time you will need to commit.

Step 3 – Determine Your Time Commitment

From my experience this is usually an important step that is skipped. You need to determine a realistic time commitment on a weekly basis. For example, “I plan to schedule 10-12 hours per week or at least 3-4 hours Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.”

By setting this timeline you should mentally commit yourself to a weekly schedule. In setting your study schedule keep two things in mind. 1. It should be realistically attainable. Will you have enough time to fit it in? If not then you may need to readjust the rest of your schedule, work less, or play less and make more time for LSAT studying. 2. It should be sufficient to meet your goals. There is no clear way to determine exactly.

How much is enough?

LSAT instructors are constantly asked, “How much time do I need to prepare for the LSAT?” Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. For some students no preparation is needed and for others 6 months of working 20 hours a week may not be enough to get into the school of their choice.

As a starting point, we suggest you dedicate 12 hours a week for the first month and then reassess.  Here’s a suggested schedule:

Try this schedule for one month and then check on how your LSAT scores are improving. The improvement should give you a guide to determine how much more time you need to put in. If you’re not improving as fast as you’d like, dedicate more time to your studies and add it to your study schedule.

Post your schedule on your fridge or next to your laptop or TV so you are constantly reminded of it. I used to have a saying on my wall across from my bed so I would see it every day that would say “carpe diem” or “seize the day” in Latin. Motivation is key when studying for the LSAT, do your best to stick to your commitment.

If you’d like some help developing your own schedule and setting some goals, shoot us an email at LSAThelp@alpha-score.com.

Step 4 – Choose Your Study Materials

There is a lot of options out there for studying for the LSAT, Alpha-Score has come up with a cost effective complete LSAT Prep course that we think is the best “bang for your buck” when it comes to LSAT Prep.  The course has helped many of our students get the LSAT scores they needed but we will leave it to you to make this decision.

Step 5 – Start Your LSAT Prep

Once you have decided on your LSAT Prep study materials you can start your studying.  Start with the basic schedule outlined above and adjust as required based on your goals and improvement.

Remember that the LSAT has 3 sections in it so you need to decide on which section to start with. We generally recommend you start with logical reasoning as it makes up 50% of the test and much of what you learn applies to the other two sections. However, if you want a jump on the other sections you can do the following:

For reading comprehension – start reading the paper or The Economist magazine every day. Read an article or two. Do not just read. Analyze! Think about what the main point is; think about what the author’s views are, how is the article structured? Also after you read it try thinking back to the details, or better yet, try explaining it to someone else later in the day. This will start to improve your analytical reading skills which will help not only in reading comprehension on the LSAT but also in the practice of law. Whatever you do, do not allow your mind to wander while you read. If this happens, stop. Focus. Re-start. Use the analysis of the things we discussed above (e.g. main point, structure etc.) to help you focus.

For Analytical reasoning – take a basic lesson or tutorial on how to diagram the games. This will help you feel more confident when taking your practice LSATs. Then you can work on the advanced skills and advanced games later. Try our free introduction to logic games.

Step 5 – Review your Progress

Everyone is different and learns at a different pace. If you’re following the schedule above, you should be doing a timed test every week, this will help you gauge your success in studying and hopefully provide you with motivation to keep going.

Continue reviewing your progress at least every 2 weeks. Once you’ve done more than a month of studying you can start looking at your test results in more detail and determining which particular question types you need help with. When you identify particular problem areas you can focus on those by reviewing particular lessons or tutorials or getting in touch with your instructor or a private tutor. We’re always happy to help out, if you’ve got a quick question, you can reach us at LSAThelp@alpha-score.com

If you’re having trouble with the LSAT logic games, this method of studying often helps students break through into higher scores. The reason the repetition is effective is that there are only so many LSAT game constructions and this helps you become an expert at them. As you move on to other practice tests, and the real thing, the characters and story may change but the structure of the game will be very close to something you’ve done a dozen times and scored perfect on. Give it a shot and you might see a jump in your score on the games section.

For the games, try doing the same section over and over. It sounds strange but it works. You do the section in 35 minutes, score it. Review it. Really review it. Figure out exactly how to do the best diagram for the rules and game set up. Then make sure you know exactly why each answer is wrong and each right one is right. Also make sure you know how to answer each question. You should get to the point that when you see a “must be true” question with “additional information”, you know that you are going to plug the extra info into your diagram, apply all your rules, fill out the diagram as much as possible, then move on to the answer choices, for each answer choice plug them in somewhere other than where they say to go e.g. (A) Bob is 3rd. plug Bob in somewhere other than 3rd. If Bob only goes 3rd then the answer is correct, if Bob goes somewhere else and you can fill the diagram without violating any rules then you can cross this one off as wrong. You should be clear on this process (from the course) for each of the following:

- Must be true
- Must be false
- Could be True
- Could be false
- Cannot be True (same as must be false)
- Cannot be False (same as must be true)
- complete and accurate list questions
- additional information
- max/min questions

There are really two big hold ups on the games side that often hold students back.

1. Not being able to diagram properly, and
2. Not being clear on what the question is asking and how to get the right answer

Both these skills need to be so practiced to the point that you know exactly what to do immediately upon looking at the game setup or question. It will still take some time to go through the steps but at least you know you’re working towards the answer instead of wondering where to start.

The techniques mentioned here are all taught in Alpha-Score’s online LSAT prep course.

Regular registration closes May 4, 2010. If you miss this you can register late by mail from May 5-11. Note your application must be received by the 11th. It is also possible to register for the June 2010 LSAT online and by telephone between May 5th and May 14th, 2010.

Late Fees…

The LSAT Registration Fee is $136 USD ($141 CDN).
Late registration results in an additional $68 USD fee ($71 CDN).

Any registration received after May 4th is considered a late registration for the LSAT.

If you cancel your registration in writing and request a refund before May 14, 2010 you are entitled to the LSAT Registration Refund (Partial Refund only) $48 USD ($50 CDN).

If you have any questions about registering for the LSATyou can contact LSAC’s candidate service representatives at LSACinfo@LSAC.org or call weekdays at 215.968.1001 between 8:30 am and 7:00 pm ET, September-February, and between 8:30 am and 4:45 pm ET, March-August. LSAC’s busiest day is Monday, so you can avoid delays if you call later in the week.

This is part 3 of the series, beginning with – Reference Letters – Part 1

Schools often have their own list of who should write your reference letters. They may ask for two academic references, or some combination of academic and other references. Always make sure you meet the requirements of the school to which you are applying.

References should come from:

Someone who fits the requirements of your application package. E.g. don’t have an employer write your academic letter.

Someone who knows you well and has had some experience with your academic or other successes. References from Professors that hardly know you are not likely to be very effective.

A professor, academic supervisor or employer.

References should NOT come from:

A relative. No matter how much mom or uncle Bob thinks you are wonderful the admissions committee won’t care.

Politicians, clergy, celebrities, Judges, lawyers, or other authority figures that have no direct involvement in your education or employment. All too often students think that a positive letter from a figure of authority will carry great weight with admissions personnel.  Unless the person has direct knowledge or involvement in your employment or education leave them out. Law schools are looking for an honest appraisal of your abilities not a vote from a famous or powerful figure.

Teaching assistants – unfortunately while TAs may have a great perspective on your academic abilities most schools do not consider them to be sufficiently reliable objective sources for reference letters. If you are left with no other options you might fall back to a TA but it will not carry near the weight of a professor’s letter.

Quality vs. Authority

A reference letter from someone of greater reputation, position or power might seem great but quality comes before authority. It is far better to have a reference from your professor that sings your praises and clearly demonstrates personal experience with you and a great respect for your abilities and character strengths than it is to have a mediocre letter from the dean of a university or a supreme court judge saying they like you and they recommend you for admission to law school. While there is a minimum requirement for authority (TAs don’t usually make the cut) you should focus on quality over authority.

A quality reference has a good knowledge of you and has direct experience with your employment or academic activities and successes.

Your priorities for determining who to ask for a reference letter should be as follows (listed in order of importance)

1. Meet the requirements set out by the school to which you are applying
2. Know you and are able to write a well informed and positive reference
3. Are in a position of, or carry a title with, influence

“James is a pleasure to teach. He picks up new concepts faster than a waterfall picks up speed. If you don’t accept him into your law school the world may end.”

This is part 2 of the series. Starting with Reference Letters – Part 1
Professors or employers often claim to be too busy to write references and offer to let you write your own letter and submit it for them to sign and send under their letter head. At first this may seem like a wonderful plan, as whom better than you to sing your praises.

While this may seem enticing at first, don’t do it! Even if you’re a literary genius and a better wordsmith than Tolstoy, don’t do it!

It is better to have your reference person write the letter themselves. They likely think they are doing you a favor by letting you compose your own letter. If you are asked to write your own, politely let them know that it would be much more effective if the letter was in their words. You can offer to help them by providing some sample reference letters or coming in to meet with them and providing them with more information about you. But if they don’t already have some personal experiences with you, you may want to look elsewhere for a reference.

Writing your own letter is a bad idea for a number of reasons:

Most importantly, admissions officers review thousands of reference letters and personal statements. With all this experience they can very often pick out similar writing styles and identify when the author of your personal statement is the same as that of your reference letter.  Even without a personal statement it is often obvious when the letter was written by the candidate. If the admissions officer or committee picks up on this it will likely eliminate you from consideration even if your LSAT and GPA are excellent. Ethics are very important in the legal profession and law schools do not want to admit anyone who demonstrates questionable ethics in their application.

You may be an excellent student, writer and have great knowledge of your wonderful qualities and abilities, but you likely lack the experience and perspective to write a proper reference letter. Professors, supervisors and employers will not only have a difference perspective but often greater experience in providing references. In short, they are better able and better situated to write your letter.

So, when your professor, supervisor or employer says “write whatever you want and I’ll sign it” you say “I really appreciate the offer, but it’s very important to me that this letter is in your words.”

Continue to Reference Letters Part 3.

As part of most law school application packages you will be expected to submit one or more reference letters from professors, employers or other persons who can give some insight into your character, strengths and abilities.

Your entire law school application is intended to convince the admissions officer or committee that you should be given a spot in their first year law school class. This requires demonstrating your abilities, intelligence, commitment, desire, ethics and drive to succeed in the highly competitive law school environment.

Your LSAT and GPA demonstrate some of these aspects to the admissions team and with the addition of your personal statement you have the opportunity to sell yourself further. However, the reference letters play a unique role in the application, giving the admissions team insight from a 3^rd party perspective into your character, abilities, ethics and other less measureable traits. It can be an invaluable tool for you to grab up a spot that might otherwise be available to you, and if done poorly it could cost you your hard won seat at law school.

Compelling reference letters can and do make a difference in law school applications.

Over the next week we will take a closer look at reference letters, who should write them, how to ask for them, what they should include and other tips for how to get the most out of your references.

Continue to Reference Letters – Part 2