10. Skip an occasional class: I had classmates during fall semester that prided themselves on attending every single class session. This is not elementary school and you will not be given a certificate for the Perfect Attendance Award. You will get burned out and that will start to happen towards the end of the semester when you approach finals. The adage is true: law school is a marathon and not a sprint. If you take some time off throughout the semester, you will go into finals feeling saner, healthier, and happier than many of your classmates. And since it’s graded on a curve…you win!

9. Do not date someone in your section: You look around during orientation and think “My God, what did I get myself in to? Where’s the brooding hipster hottie or the pastel-clad preppy that I’m used to seeing in undergrad?” But, law school is also like being in a war together; you’re battling in the trenches with your section-mates against the Socratic method and against the work load that comes with law school. Inevitably you see them at their worst (coming to class having not showered, hair not brushed, clothes disheveled, and embarrassingly stuttering their way through an answer in class) and vice versa. You start to lament the fact that you haven’t hooked up with anyone in a while. One day, that objective 5 from across the room lends you his or her notes from a class you skipped (see point 10). Suddenly, this five is now looking like an 8-9. Resist the urge. It does not end well. Of the couples that we had in our section from first semester, only one still remains. There has been drama including, but not limited to, one couple breaking up and the guy “generously” bringing the girl’s clothes to class that she’d left over his apartment. And when you start to cry your eyes out, almost the entire class will know your story in about five minutes (see point 7).

8. Make time for the gym: law school organizations are deceptive and nefarious. They woo you with offers of free pizza, burritos, and Thai food just to go hear a speaker or learn about some campus club. You think, “Hey, I’m in law school, so the more money I save, the better!” After lunch and classes, you’re tired, so maybe you go take a nap. After two hours, you wake up frazzled, realizing that it’s late and you have a lot of reading to do, so you start to read. But maybe you’ll have dinner first…except you didn’t have time to go grocery shopping, so you order pizza and tell yourself you will be on an all-salad diet next week. Rinse and repeat for all of fall semester. Then winter comes and the top button of your jeans starts to press uncomfortably into your gut. The gym not only will help you keep in shape, but also give you more of a school/personal balance that you need. Not all of law school can be spent working on law-related matters – it gets horribly depressing if that’s all you do. Plus, you’ll probably need the gym to burn off some of your sexual frustration (see point 9).

7. GChat in class: Yes, I said it. And for those who have visited other schools and seen people Gchatting and rather sanctimoniously thought “I would NEVER do such a thing when I’m a law student,” you need to get over yourself. Immediately. Gchatting has saved my ass on a couple of occasions when I’m just plain underprepared for a class. Although it has distracted me beyond measure in some classes, it has been invaluable when some kind souls have sent me answers to get the professor to move on from me. Plus, you get to stay abreast of section gossip!

6. Moderate yourself: Nobody likes the gunner who speaks in every class, every day. Nobody. I realize you had a life-changing experience when you were a Resident Assistant that you feel would be invaluable to the study of Civil Procedure. It’s not. And no one cares. The snickers and sighs you start to hear when your chair rockets backward and your hand flies into the air at warp speed aren’t coincidental. Even if you feel your commentary isn’t as banal as my example, consider the fact that your classmates aren’t taking out tens of thousands of dollars per year to hear your take on some rule. I know that as Millenials, we’ve all grown up hearing that we’re special and unique snowflakes and that every pearl of wisdom that drops from our mouths is just the smartest, wittiest thing that others have heard. Realize that your law school class is full of those types of people (with a handful of whackjobs, no doubt), so your take is likely pedestrian. If you have deep, burning questions or, bless your heart, hypotheticals you’d like to pose, please do so during office hours.

5. Make friends outside of your section: This also helps with point 9, in some respects (e.g. you’re not as desperate to substantially lower your standards for a “law school hot” person). You will see the same people all day every day for an entire school year. Please trust me when I say that after a couple of months in fall semester, you will be sick to death of seeing their pallid, computer-screen-tanned faces and hearing their same, boring stories. People from other sections are like a new toy you get at Christmas – shiny, new, and they take your mind off the other old junk strewn about the room. Plus, it will seriously reduce how much you talk about law school since they don’t know your section-mates or professors, so it forces you to be an actual human being and have real interests outside of law school.

4. Avoid classmates during finals: this has been the secret to my success. During finals I think I saw a handful of people in my section who were either 1) stressing out every day, 2) crying every day, 3) throwing up every day, or 4) a combination of the first three. It starts to wear on you. Your meals start to come from vending machines and the librarian starts to know your name. When it’s dark outside, you’re not sure if it’s day or night because you’ve been in the library for nearly 24 hours anyway. Don’t do this. As I said in Point 10, law school is a marathon, not a sprint. The final you have at the end of exam period is probably worth just as much as the first final. Pace yourself.

3. Work smarter, not harder: there are still some people I know who, in the second semester of law school, still brief every case. It’s a phenomenal waste of time and leads to pretty extreme cases of burnout. You shouldn’t need to brief every case. If you feel like you need to brief, try to limit it to at least just book briefing (as described in Law School Confidential). Truthfully, I find it much more illuminating to buy and read commercial briefs, then read the case (highlighting or underlining particular facts) and then go into class with that knowledge. An addendum to this tenet is that when the exam comes around, professors aren’t really testing how well you remember the details from Bell Atlantic v. Twombly as much as they’re testing the rule. In the end, your class preparedness and knowing the intricacies of cases doesn’t necessarily translate into a good grade. I got one of my best grades last semester in a class where I spent the majority of the time on GChat, reading Above the Law, and doing online shopping.

2. Don’t discuss your grades with classmates: Nobody likes a braggart. Similarly, no one likes someone who is just full of self-pity. Similarly, please do NOT rehash the final exams afterward. This is outrageous and really, we need to stand up as law students and say “ENOUGH!” Look, we all miss issues on an exam. I don’t think I’ve ever had a professor who has said that people caught every issue that was possible on a test. And yet, there are still people who get Honors or A+ or whatever your school gives out. Rehashing it afterward is cruel and unusual punishment (haven’t taken Constitutional Law, so don’t quote me).

1. Ignore all advice you’re given: OK, so I didn’t type this treatise to be completely ignored. These are some things that either work(ed) well for me or that I wish I had done. You might get advice that completely contradicts everything I just wrote. That’s OK, too. Try out some of these things and see what works best for you. Law school is strange in that it’s such a personal experience and I don’t think any two people feel the exact same way about it. Do what you can to make this experience the most enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, worthwhile thing you could have done with three years and tens of thousands of dollars!

Anastasia is a 1L at a T-14 law school, so she’s a baller.

Mother****ers are filling up. Fast.

In fact, if one were to use a word to describe them, if one really wanted to hit the nail on its head, as it were, one might use the word “full”.

This obviously presents a bevy of problems for the average test-taker in Manhattan (i.e. you) but you do have a couple of options.

Option numero uno: Jump on the LSAC waitlist. Give LSAC a call, because their website is lacking in functionality (it sucks, and right now there is no mention of a waitlist on there) and tell them your situation. The word we’ve gotten is they are going to construct a waitlist for the test centers, in the very likely event that they add more test centers in the Manhattan/New York area.

Option numero dos: Take the LSAT miles upon miles from your home. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys a good road trip, we heard there was a test center in New Brunswick that is still open. If you think it might be best to distance yourself from the distraction of every day life, this might be a good option for you.

Option numero tres: Be completely insane. Anecdotally, we already have reports of New Yorkers who just constantly refreshed the LSAC page until test centers opened up (as people cancelled or moved their locations). This is a definite option for all obsessives.

I should let you know that the situation is not as dire as it initially appears. Ever since LSAC pushed the deadline for canceling the LSAT to three weeks before the test, there have been a lot of cancellations in that period about a month before the test. So, get on the waitlist, and also keep your eye out for early May for signing up.

This is a situation that was destined to arise now that literally everyone graduating with a liberal arts degree from a university is taking the LSAT, but it is still lamentable. What we recommend is that everyone sign up as early as possible. If you’re in California, sign up now. If you’re in Montana, sign up now. If you’re in Japan, sign up now. More people are taking the test than ever before, and it’s an open question whether LSAC currently has the infrastructure to deal with it.

But still, Don’t Panic.

I’m not sure if it’s that I like a good challenge or that I can’t stand to be on the winning side of an issue, or simply that I don’t want to have friends, but I’d like to take on the whole world in this debate. I think they’re a bit myopic and unduly alarmist about the relative state of the legal profession.

First disclaimer: This won’t live up to it’s billing, because I have a high regard for Ashby Jones at the WSJ Legal Blog and Ellie Mystal and David Lat, the editors of Above the Law. Collectively, they’ve subjected the business of law (especially larger firms) to public scrutiny for the first time. Whereas in days past, layoffs and bonus patterns were only anecdotally known, these blogs have exhaustively chronicled firm behavior, and in the process, literally changed the legal profession. I have no doubt the world’s better off with these blogs, and it’s not that I think they exaggerate or fabricate their statistics. It’s rather that I think they’ve allowed a certain set of phenomena to lull them into myopia.

Second disclaimer: I’m co-owner of the nation’s best LSAT prep company by far, and so it’s natural to think I’m drumming up business. It’s a fair charge, but we at MSS and Blueprint have been far more critical of increasing law school enrollments than any other test prep company, and I’d argue, as critical as ATL and the WSJ. We broke the widely reported story about the record number LSAT takers in September of 2009, we’ve urged students to attend less expensive law schools, and featured stories by law students about how living on loans has changed their lives. I, myself, believe that too many people attend law school and that many attend for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless…

The current legal climate
So much has been written that I’d need far more space than I currently have to take on the brunt of it. In this post, I just want to reexamine the following story:

“…with law schools accepting as many (or more) students as ever in a severely contracting professional market, graduating law school students will be saddled with record high tuition that they’ll have little way to pay back, creating a generational crisis.”

I think that’s just silly, though I agree with all but the last clause. It’s true that while the number of legal jobs is contracting, law schools continue to accept and graduate as many (or more) students as ever. It’s also true that tuition and average student loan debt have reached all times highs and law school graduates will be saddled with this debt for years to come despite their increasingly poor job prospects (unless they’re rescued by some future student-loan, debt relief legislation). Nevertheless, I’m not sure why any of this is really newsworthy. In fact, law school still strikes me as one of the better deals in town.

Law school still a better bang for your buck. Comparatively.
Let’s allow that top paying jobs (those starting anywhere near $160,000) will be largely restricted to students who graduate from top 20 schools (in the top half of their class or better). Let’s also assume that (1) students from third tier law schools might have difficulty finding jobs at any pay rate, and that (2) the great majority of students who fall between these two groups will have some difficulty finding jobs and will generally earn somewhere between 50k and 120k depending factors such as location, practice area, and a substantial measure of luck.

What’s striking about that picture is how much better this situation is than most other graduate-trained professions. Doctoral students in the humanities would commit unspeakably hideous acts for such a rosy professional landscape. It’s similar throughout the humanities, but I know a bit about the job market for Ph.D.s in Philosophy, so allow me to share.

Why there aren’t thousands of professional philosophers
The market for Ph.D.s in philosophy of the mid 1990s was far better than it is currently, but still was far worse that the legal market of today. One widely reported study (from the Review of Metaphysics, September of 1996) showed that of 341 Ph.D.s granted in 1995-1996, only 6 had secured tenure track jobs in top 15 ranked philosophy departments by 1998 and only 11 more had landed jobs anywhere in the top 50 departments. So, of 341 Ph.D.s, only 26 found tenure-track positions within two years of graduation, or a whopping 7.6% placement rate. Put another way, 92% of Ph.D.s in philosophy failed to find tenure-track positions during this period.

Let’s all just agree that if only 7.6% of law graduates had found associate level employment within 2 years of graduation, there would be rioting in the streets. Moreover, those Ph.D. numbers are from the mid-1990’s days of wine and roses. Today it’s far worse. Duke University, a top-30 philosophy department, announced that they’re not accepting students into their Ph.D. program next year (presumably because of the current economic climate). Indiana University of Pennsylvania is requiring its faculty to explain why they shouldn’t eliminate their philosophy major altogether. Anecdotally, I know quite a few recent Ph.D.s from top 15 schools, and the vast majority of them are either severely underemployed or have left the job market all together.

And this isn’t restricted to philosophy either. In History, English and other disciplines in the humanities, the market for tenure-track posts has been extremely constrained for years. With dramatic cuts in government educational spending and corresponding cutbacks in private institutions, market conditions have become downright harrowing. Graduates of institutions outside the top twenty are likely to never find a tenure-track position at all, and even graduates from top 10 schools are likely to spend years on the market taking adjunct and terminal positions as they wait for a tenure-track position to open. Even when you get one, jobs are apparently never safe in academia. Kings College (London) is forcing all of its humanities professors to reapply for their jobs in the coming year, and the same is being required by a small university in Texas.

How many languages did YOU learn for your JD?
Just so we can calibrate the various rigor of these pursuits, I’d like to commend all my friends who rocked the LSAT and then went on to place well at top tier schools. You’re smart, accomplished people who have a lot to be proud of. But let’s not get so confused as to think that this begins to compare to what your counterparts in top-tier Ph.D programs have experienced.

These programs almost always take at least six years, but often upwards of a decade, to complete. It’s common that students learn two foreign languages, though students are required to learn as many as four (e.g. Classic programs frequently require two modern and two ancient languages). By their graduation, it’s expected that students will have a distinguished record of presenting papers in professional conferences and publishing articles in professional journals, in addition, of course, to writing a dissertation which is supposed to be an original contribution to their field. These expectations are part of the reason that so few students actually complete their programs. Whereas almost everyone who enters a top-tier law school graduates, top Ph.D. programs in the humanities often have attrition rates of 50% or more. And again, among these noble few, 92% will fail to find tenure-track jobs. It’s fully expected that a Ph.D. candidate who has any hope of gaining employment anywhere should have a command of her subject that will rival junior professors in her department. How many 3Ls have a command of the law school curriculum rivaling that of junior professors at their law schools? I’m going to go with very, very few.

It’s not uncommon for applications for entry level, tenure-track positions to include five or more published articles and a dissertation published by a noted press (such as Cambridge or Oxford) that’s been reviewed by the leading scholars in the field. And we’re talking about hundreds of these applications for a single job that might pay $40,000 to $60,000. If it ever, ever got this bad for law school graduates, every law school in the country, save a precious few household names, would be burned to the ground.

The contrast grows ever starker
Whereas graduates from top law schools can frequently pick the city in which they’d like to live, even the top ranking Ph.D. applicants from the top schools apply nationally and often internationally. I actually know people, who after years of study at top schools, ended up in Singapore and rural Canada simply because those were the best offers that came in during the years they were on the market. And remember, whereas law students upon graduation are essentially unable to perform almost any task required by their profession, emerging Ph.D.s in the humanities have generally taught a number of undergraduate courses (typically graduate students teach for five or so years as part of their fellowships), published papers, and often books.

The dollars and cents
So, I hear you saying, maybe the jobs are hard to get but the Ph.D.’s debt burden is a fraction of the law school graduate’s. That’s true, but only superficially so. Humanities graduate fellowships are quite modest (tuition + $15,000 a year for a good fellowship) and almost inevitably require students to take out loans or work second jobs to make ends meet (as teaching and/or grading is typically required for the fellowship). Students who take out loans will often borrow $5,000 to $10,000 a year simply to scrape by for as many as 6 to 10 years. It’s therefore common for humanities Ph.D.s to leave with $50,000-$100,000 in total educational debt, and that’s after living close to the poverty line for as much as a decade.

While this total amount is lower than corresponding law school students, this debt looms even larger for these people than law school debt because humanities salaries start off as a fraction of law salaries and never come close to catching up. If you think that owing 200k is a big deal when your salary is $120,000-$180,000 over the course of the next 7 years, think about owing 75k or more when your salary will be limited to $40,000 to $60,000 for the same period.

Initially, you might think that the respective debt to annual salary ratio is similar in both cases. The difference is that the Ph.D.’s pay scale is so low that it allows for virtually no dispensable income, so the percentage of the Ph.D.s salary she can put toward her debt is far lower. This is one of the reasons a relatively lower amount of debt can still shackle a Ph.D. for far longer than the law student. If law school graduates have golden handcuffs, the Ph.D.’s are lead.

(Admission: Because humanities Ph.D.’s are borrowing less money per year (though for many more years) a greater proportion of theirs will be subsidized (Stafford or Perkins loans) and therefore at lower interest rates. Nevertheless, this is little consolation for such blighted souls.)

If we’re concerned with employment prospects, relative debt burden, and the temporal investment in the respective degrees, law is still a cakewalk compared to a Ph.D. in the humanities. The relative debt burden and likelihood of employment both strongly favor law jobs, even though it’s clear that the Ph.D. candidate has invested significantly more time and effort.

And you thought Ph.D. programs sounded bad…
Moreover, the Ph.D.’s aren’t even the worst off. Apparently, and I find this shocking, universities have not yet shut down their journalism departments. You can still go to Columbia or Northwestern and pay law school level tuition (albeit for fewer years) and then try to procure a job in an industry that barely exists any longer. Amidst the dying cries of daily newspapers and weekly news magazines, it’s profoundly hard to understand how one could justify graduate school in journalism, especially since, unlike law and academia, graduate training is not a precondition for a career in the field. And yet, there stand Columbia and Northwestern with their doors still open.

What the hell is an MFA?
If you think that’s bad, there’s a group that’s still worse off (though I do think this is the end of the line). Allegedly, there are these Masters of Fine Arts degrees, which come primarily in two varieties: the artistic and the literary. What they have in common is that each prepares students for jobs that don’t currently exist and have, in fact, more or less never existed. You can still get an MFA in poetry in this country, which prepares you to be… well, a poet laureate and not much else. They also give MFAs in short story writing, modern sculpture, ceramics and, yes, the cherished and ever-relevant printmaking. Top-tier MFA programs cost as much as top law schools (though, again, these are generally two year degrees) and their graduate’s job prospects are among the poorest in the world. Yet, these programs continue to be incredibly competitive, with RISD and Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop easily rivaling top law schools in their selectivity.

Surely, if the current plight of law constitutes a generational crisis, the state of academic Ph.Ds, graduate school in journalism, and MFAs should be nothing short of global cataclysm. Yet oddly, you dear reader, probably don’t think so. Perhaps this is because you believe the law school graduate’s plight affects more people than any of the more exotic pursuits discussed above. But taken as a whole, the number of students graduating from the variety of graduate programs whose plight is worse than law school graduates might well rival or exceed the number of people coming out of law schools. So it can’t be the sheer number of people affected.

Why we don’t hear about the plights of Ph.D. students
Another, more subtle but perhaps more accurate, explanation of our greater concern with law school students’ plight is the sense that these other groups ought to have a tougher road. While reading about these other graduate programs, perhaps you thought, however fleetingly, sure, it’s tough for them, but they love what they do and that should make up for some of this. Presumably people are in these fields, the thinking goes, because they’re pursuing a deep passion, whereas people in law just chose that path because it was an reliable route to wealth and status. A comfortable life, on this view, should be easier for the lawyer than the artist or scholar. After all, if it weren’t, we’d all be artists and scholars…

When the lawyer’s prospects of wealth are severely diminished, we cry injustice because his expectation of wealth was (1) reasonable and (2) a principle part of his motivation for pursuing the career in the first place. The reason that we don’t have similar feelings about the Ph.D. is presumably that that we think (1) he could never really have had a reasonable expectation of wealth and (2) we expect that he must have had different motives for embarking upon the profession. Injustice for the Ph.D., on this view, would occur if he couldn’t pursue his chosen passion. If, for example, he wasn’t afforded conditions that allowed scholarly reflection and time to read. But relative poverty seems to an expected part of the deal for people who indulge such passions.

The Grand Conclusion
There might well be something to this kind of story. But if it keeps us from crying for the Ph.D or MFA, it should also qualify our pity for the law school graduate. It’s not so much that the person who wanted to dedicate his life to representing disabled children, abused women, or indigenous people couldn’t find work. It’s more that the corporate transactional attorney is making less money than he expected.

But then this is less a generational crisis than it is the end of a reliable road to wealth. While certainly that isn’t good news, neither is it the human tragedy that someone seems to be selling every time we read a newspaper or a blog.

Technically you have four options, because you could take the February 2011 test and still apply for enrollment for Fall 11. But this really isn’t your best bet. A lot of schools won’t even allow you to apply, and those that do will generally say that it certainly lessens your chances of getting in and getting financial aid. You can make the February test work for you, but it is a last resort of sorts, so I’m going to take that off the table for this discussion (I should note, though, that if you’re not applying in the same year that you’re taking the test, then there is nothing wrong with the February test).

December isn’t perfect either, although it doesn’t have nearly as many disadvantages as February does. If you take the December test, you’ll be getting your score back around New Year’s 2011. You would want to have every other piece of application complete and submitted before you get your score back, so that as soon as you know the score, you’re submitting your applications. And if you submit your applications that first week of January, it’s not like you’ll be at the absolute end of the line. But there will definitely be quite a few people who have already applied, and that doesn’t work in your favor. Because of rolling admissions, it often tends to be the case that the later you apply, the more law schools rely on your numbers, and the less they really pore over your personal statement and the other “soft” aspects of your app.

So if it’s a possibility for you, you should really be taking the test in June or October. Doing this will allow you apply by December 1st, and if you do that your application will be reviewed before most others’. This is a good thing. Both admissions and financial aid are given out on a rolling basis, so sooner is better. If you take the June test you can even apply on the first day schools start accepting applications (generally September 1 – October 1), but that’s really not at all necessary. 12/1/10 is the date to beat.

Thus, it would seem that June and October are more or less equals. But this isn’t entirely true.

First of all, the June test is at 12:30 pm on a Monday, while October is at 8:30 AM on a Saturday. If you’re like me and hate the idea of getting up before 11 AM, then June definitely offers that big plus.

But if you were to take the test, do well, and get a score that you’re happy with, then June and October would be pretty much the same. But things don’t always go the way we want them to. So let’s say you choose a date, take a corresponding class, and start studying. But maybe you realize the LSAT is a lot harder than you thought it was (believe me, it is), and you didn’t study enough. Or you did study enough, but Mittens, your kitten, gets run over by a tricycle and you have to take her to the vet on LSAT morning. Or you get to the testing center and suddenly start simultaneously throwing up and pooping yourself. Or you have a panic attack and cancel your score. These things aren’t incredibly likely to happen, but believe me, they do. For one reason or another, you might not be able to take the test, or the test might go poorly and you cancel.

And that’s ok. One cancellation or absence on your record really doesn’t hurt you. But it’s what happens next that makes a difference. If you’re signed up for the June test and you can’t take it, then you just take the October test, applying early and everything is a-ok. But if you’re signed up for the October test and something happens, then you have to take the December test, and like I mentioned before, you would no longer be able to apply early. This isn’t the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not totally ideal. So, all other things being equal, June is a better option than October.

But of course, all other things are not equal. The LSAT is insanely hard and requires lots and lots of studying. If you’re in school right now, and the rest of your spring term is super nasty with lots of papers and finals, then studying for the June test might not be a good idea. If you take the October test, on the other hand, you probably wont have any major midterms or finals by test day, so you have more time for pure LSAT study (although you lose your summer). What is most important is getting the highest score possible, and if taking the test in October (or even December) is more likely to yield more study time, then that is really something to strongly consider.

One last thing: sign up for the test early. Like right now. In New York, all test centers for the June test are already totally full. This is insane. More people took the LSAT last year than in any other year, and that trend will likely continue in 2010. Because of this, testing centers are filling up at an alarming rate. If you want to take the June test and are in New York, don’t worry, you can get on a waiting list and will almost certainly get a spot somewhere, but you need to sign up right now. If you want to take the October test, you should still pretty much have the pick of the litter in terms of testing centers, so sign up now.

Let me explain. The contestants/designers on Project Runway are provided with your standard issue super thin model with a kilo-a-day coke habit and measurements around 34-24-34. However, every season involves at least one challenge where the contestants must design an outfit for a “real” woman—mothers, divorcees, and cancer survivors come to mind. These challenges are met with reactions that run the gamut from groans of disgust (“I can’t believe she weighs 140 pounds!”) to terror (“I’ve never done anything like this before!”) to condescension in the guise of acceptance (“It’s important to be able to design for real people, too”).

Which I think is just crazy. CRAZY. Who do you think you’re designing for if not “normal” people? The .01% of the population that eats only leafy vegetables and has perfected the art of purging without getting viscera on the lid? It’s like a dentist refusing to treat anyone with bad teeth.

The same idea pertains to the LSAT. When people learn LSAT skills, they tend to think it’s only for the test. But it’s not. It’s for REAL LIFE. Especially if your real life includes a job as a lawyer. After all, reading contracts and understanding them draws upon skills learned in reading comprehension, spotting logical fallacies is honed in logical reasoning, and figuring out how to seat 11 jury members into 5 courtroom seats is a page out of logic games. (This last one doesn’t really happen).

But even if you’re not a lawyer, the ability to spot fallacies is important. To illustrate my point, please watch the following commercial for Mountain Dew, made in 1966.

This ad exploits two pivotal parts of a redneck’s life: the hillbilly hottie and the coon rifle. Apparently, if you give a girl a Mountain Dew, she will bestow sexual favors upon you (note the animalistic growl Sal emits after Clem gives her a Dew). Moreover, it is apparently the case that if you drink a Mountain Dew, you will become a sharpshooter. One shot after a “nip” of Mountain Dew and Cousin Luke bags a veritable hailstorm of turkeys.

The fallacies in this particular ad have been multiply instantiated in various media outlets for years: drink Bud Light and get hot women. Drink Gatorade and have Michael Jordan’s jumpshot. Applying LSAT lessons, like how to spot a causal fallacy, can keep you from falling prey to the mindless consumerism that pervades American culture.

So the next time you study for the LSAT and wonder why you have to learn diagramming, the fundamentals of logical inferences, and huge loads of stinking fallacies, remember that the real life application is probably the most important. Afer all, in LSAT study, as in Project Runway, you have to Make It Work.

But rather than just share my method (much too practical and plain), I’d like to enliven the discussion (and simultaneously stroke my ego) by talking about the most interesting man in the world, myself (damn you, Dos Equis). I am going to share my story for the first time – a tale of luck, laziness, and determination – a trifecta of conditions that together wove their way into a perfect storm of LSAT mastery. That’s right, my score was more a product of circumstance, rather than a singular manifestation of my awesomeness.

What circumstances? Well, a month before the LSAT, I decided I didn’t want to go to law school (much to my parents’ dread). At Berkeley, I was a rhetoric major so I never learned how to successfully pull an all-nighter or engage in any sort of long study session (although I did watch the entire first season of Lost in one 30-hour period) like the other students who actually had to learn information and not just pretentiously pontificate. And I was just smart enough to realize how stupid I was in world of LSAT, so I got help.

Those are the cliff notes of the Nick Rey story. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, my life is awesome. Sadly, awesomeness is only contagious in person (all the more reason to take a class), so how will my story help you do better on the LSAT? Allow me to break it down for you, young grasshopper.

Lesson 1: RELAX. Stop biting your nails, grinding your teeth, losing sleep, and generally freaking out. All those people you hear about who go absolutely crazy on test day (eating their pencils, bashing their heads into their desks, and sobbing uncontrollably), they didn’t get 180s. No matter what you may believe (or your parents may have told you) this test is not the single defining moment of your life. And until you realize otherwise, you are going to stress about it uncontrollably.

A month before I took the LSAT, I decided I didn’t want to go to law school (my quarter-life crisis if you will). The LSAT was no longer a huge deal (sure, I still wanted to do well, but it was just another test) so for the last month of my prep and on test day I was cool as a cucumber. And while I don’t think you need to swear off law school to do well, you do need to stop the stress. So, listen to music, exercise, meditate, do various questionable things in the eyes of the law. Just do whatever you need to calm down (you have to figure that out), and do your best to carry that calm into test day (hell, if nothing else, you’ll live longer).

Lesson 2: Know why you want to go to law school (or at least why you’re taking the LSAT). I’m not talking about some half-formed ghost of a hope of opening elusive doors or a desire to stave off the “real” world (you know, that scary place of 9 to 5 jobs, where Thursday night drinking is no longer a foregone conclusion) for three more years. You should have a definitive end in mind (bonus points if you can figure out why that is your goal). This is your motivation; use it to fuel your study. This may sound like some new-age, tree-hugging, vegan-soy-latte-sipping hippie-crap (I am from Berkeley), but reminding yourself why this test is important to you will help you focus on preparing. And when you’re trying to decide if going out to celebrate your roommate’s 21st birthday the night before the LSAT is a good idea, you can use this motivation to fill in the gap left by your dying social life.

I took the LSAT without wanting to go to law school. I had my eyes on loftier heights: a part-time job where people pay money to listen to me talk for hours at a time. I wanted to teach and I knew I needed a baller score to achieve it. That was my motivation. What’s yours?

Lesson 3: “Practice makes perfect” is rubbish. Why? Because quality trumps quantity (60% of the time, every time). If you practice, and practice, and practice some more, you’d expect to get better, significantly so – but that doesn’t always work. In fact, it only works if you’re practicing properly. The truth is perfect practice makes perfect. This means that all those marathon, 14 hour study sessions under the neon-white glow of the library lights, fueled by caffeine and desperation probably aren’t doing you all that much good (in fact they may even be detrimental – and no, I am not sanctioning a cease of studying).

The LSAT is not the MCAT (thank god) – you are tested on the application of basic rules, your skill in applying informal logic. The LSAT is fundamentally a skill based test, and skills are not well learned through mind-numbing, unengaged repetition. Rather, they are best learned with frequent sessions of fresh practice. The goal of LSAT preparation is to get better (more effective or more efficient) – if you overwork your capacity to learn, all those hours become pointless, and may actually reinforce bad LSAT habits. I prefer shorter sessions (~35 minutes) with breaks in between (and naps, lots of naps!).

Lesson 4: Take a Blueprint course For a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a prep class by any other name is pointless. Up to now I’ve just been addressing the mental side of test prep – the soft skills. Equally important, though, are the hard skills. Hard skill is the understanding of logic and possession of a method for addressing questions; soft skill is your ability to apply those skills effectively and efficiently. Each is important in its own right, but both are vital (just like the rugged strength of Brawny is good for some jobs, while the cuddly softness of Bounty is good for others).

If you’re serious about the LSAT, you should take a class (and if you’re not serious you should probably stop reading LSAT blogs). There is no better way to learn the skills behind the LSAT. You can’t replace the in-class experience with blog posts or books.

Lesson 5: Have fun. If you’re having fun you learn more easily. However, class time only makes up a part of your total prep time. You can make all of your self-study much more effective if you shift your mindset and fully embrace your nerdy pre-law side. Make studying into a game or prep with friends. Create a biography of Thurgood Marshall in your head from RC passages, annoy your friends by pointing out every flaw in their arguments (“Ted, your silly ad hominem attack again fails to prove I’m a loser, and your appeal to your own authority in the matter is misguided”), and play some logic games (they’re games, damn it). Do whatever you need to make the process more enjoyable.

That’s it. Now you have my personal blueprint for LSAT success. And while my methods may not satisfy your desire for instant results (especially in this world of fast food, immediate information, and instant miracle cures), properly applied, this advice can take you to new heights in the LSAT world. God speed and good luck.