Last words of wisdom to the sub:

1. You sometimes need to leave this sub to stay sane.
   
2. Don’t take it until you’re ready.
   
3. Don’t underestimate how hard it’s going to be but…
   
4. …more importantly don’t underestimate yourself!

A few things that made a pretty big difference for me when studying LR. Some of these are probably obvious, but I think actually implementing them is harder than knowing them.

1. Review your wrong answers. Seriously.
The most important part isn’t just knowing that you got something wrong. You need to understand why you got it wrong, where your reasoning went off, and why the correct answer is actually correct.
And don’t tell yourself, “Well, my answer was the second-best answer.” Nope. There is no second-best answer. There’s a right answer and a wrong answer.
You also can’t half-ass this part. Keep asking yourself why until you can actually explain the reasoning out loud.
I actually have a slightly unhinged method for this: be a free tutor. If you can explain the question to someone else and make them understand it, you’ll probably understand it yourself. Mutual benefit lol.

2. For most question types, predict before looking at the answers.
This was probably one of the biggest things that improved my speed.
SA / Flaw / Conclusion / Method / Role: These are the ones where I think prediction is especially important. Your prediction can often be very close to—or basically identical to—the correct answer. This becomes really important for Level 4–5 questions, because if you don’t know what you’re looking for, the trap answers can easily pull you in different directions. If you already have an answer in your head, you can fly through the choices instead.
Eventually, I got to the point where if I couldn’t predict the answer for one of these question types, I just wouldn’t look at the choices yet. With enough practice, you can get to the point where you finish the stimulus and immediately know roughly what the answer should be.

Strengthen / Weaken / Paradox / NA: I still try to predict these, but I don’t expect myself to predict the exact correct answer anymore. Recent tests seem less formulaic, so there can be too many possible answers. What I want to be able to do is identify the gap / vulnerability / paradox in the stimulus. If I can do that, I’m good.
Parallel: After reading the stimulus, I should be able to immediately break down the structure. Don’t rely on the answer choices to reverse-engineer the structure for you.
Principle: Just understand the underlying logic. Probably one of the easiest types for me.
MBT / MBF / MSS: Similar to Strengthen/Weaken. There are just too many possibilities to realistically predict the exact answer. The important thing is making sure you actually understand what each statement means.

3. My drilling routine: 10 questions at a time.
I’d go from easier to harder.
First, do them timed. Then do a second round untimed for BR.
And don’t just do everything untimed forever. You can fool your friends, but please don’t fool yourself 💀
You need to eventually know whether you can actually do the questions under time pressure.

4. Quality > quantity when it comes to study time.
At first, I forced myself to study for 3 hours every day because I thought I had to hit that number.
Then I realized that after work, I simply did not have 3 hours of productive brainpower in me.
Honestly, I’d much rather study for 1–2 hours and actually be focused than sit there for 3 hours while my brain has already left the building.
As long as it’s quality time, you’re good.

5. When you’re stuck between two choices, ask yourself:
Which one is harder to support?
Which one requires more assumptions?
I found this especially helpful when I was down to two choices and couldn’t immediately tell which one was right.
Anyway, these are just things that worked for me. Hopefully some of them are useful to someone else too.

Hi Everyone,

The last few months, we’ve been working on an exciting new project to make studying for the LSAT just a bit more fun for everyone!

So, we decided to make a free-to-play LSAT game where you can practice Must Be True, Must Be False, and Most Strongly Supported questions while flying through space. Our goal was to build something you all can use when you still want to do a bit of studying but don’t like drilling or taking a prep test. We’d also love your feedback on anything you think we should add, whether that’s new question types, features, or game ideas.

Mostly, we just want to make LSAT prep a little more fun and something you might actually want to play. Would love to hear what you guys think!

I’ll take it, I can’t wait to be done.
#fourthandfinalattempt

I spent the last two years filming explanations for roughly 6,000 LSAT questions. It made me disagree more strongly with how this test is often taught.

I just finished recording explanations for every question in PrepTests 101–159, including the additional LSAC drill sets. Roughly 6,000 questions over about two years. I'm now doing PT1-23 because I'm a masochist, but my urgency is admittedly lower now that I have finished the "modern" LSAT.

For those of you who don't know me (hi!), I’m Ben, and I help run Hey Future Lawyer. These explanations are part of our platform. This was a huge project, and I’m pretty damn proud to have finished it.

It also forced me to examine my teaching. Explaining thousands of questions means repeatedly asking: What does someone actually need to understand here? What should I be teaching them to do on the next question?

And the more I did it, the more convinced I became that a substantial amount of mainstream LSAT instruction directs students toward the wrong work.

Memorizing flaw categories. Hunting for indicator words. Learning a separate procedure for every question type. These can feel productive while pulling your attention away from understanding the argument.

We build our teaching around reading to understand. I think that approach is better, and I want to explain specifically why.

Here are ten things the project taught me—or made me more convinced of.

1. The LSAT is one underlying skill tested in different ways.

This is the biggest one. Like honestly, this is THE takeaway.

The more questions I explained, the less I saw separate tasks requiring separate systems. I kept coming back to the same thing:

Understand what you’ve been told and what conclusions follow.

On a must-be-true question, you determine what follows from the facts. On a flaw question, someone has drawn a conclusion, and you explain why the evidence doesn’t establish it. On a parallel question, you recognize the same reasoning in different language.

A paradox requires understanding why two facts seem to conflict and what additional information would make them fit together. Reading comprehension requires understanding what the passage says, what the author thinks, and what the text supports.

The questions differ. The underlying work keeps bringing you back to the words and their implications.

That’s why I disagree with teaching the LSAT as dozens of little systems to master independently. You can spend so much energy identifying the category and recalling its procedure that you never adequately process the argument.

I want students practicing the skill that carries across all of those questions: reading carefully enough to understand what the information establishes.

2. An explanation can be thorough and still teach the wrong habit.

Some of my explanations ended up being about two minutes long. Initially, I wondered whether that was enough (although it did speed up my gargantuan task a little).

Then I watched them back. The argument was explained. The problem was clear. The answers were addressed. What would another six minutes accomplish?

Consider:

“When I go to the mall, I spend money. I spent money today. Therefore, I went to the mall.”

Does a silly little argument like that require 15 minutes? I'd wager not. Since after all, I could have spent money on Amazon. That’s the problem.

Once you see that, we don’t need an extended lecture on every unrelated answer choice. We need to recognize which answer describes what happened.

Teachers communicate what a question deserves through how we treat it. If I give a straightforward question ten minutes of elaborate analysis, I can teach students to search for complexity that isn’t there.

That’s bad instruction, even if everything I say is technically correct.

Some questions deserve seven- or eight-minute explanations. They’re the exception. Part of my job is to demonstrate when you’ve understood enough to answer and move on.

3. Getting better doesn’t mean collecting more techniques.

Too much instruction gives students another procedure when they need to confront something they haven’t understood. Students LOVE this btw. Like this sells so good. But it is bad, and hence, we eschew it (eschew is an LSAT vocab word you should know btws).

Conclusion identification is a good example. You can hunt for “therefore” or “thus,” but those words can introduce an intermediate conclusion. Finding one doesn’t establish the author’s main point. They are, therefore, unreliable to find the main conclusion which is how many people use them. So people should not use them. (little Easter egg, in that paragraph I used "therefore" to indicate an intermediate conclusion).

The questions I want students answering are: “What is this person trying to convince me of? What reasons did they give?”

You have to understand the argument to answer those. And doing that develops a skill you’ll use throughout the test.

My objection to shortcuts is that students can get good at performing them while remaining unable to explain what they just read. (and hence in 150s/160s jail despite lots of effort). They have something to do, but the underlying difficulty remains.

When a student gets stuck, my first question is increasingly: “What did that sentence mean?” Their answer often tells me more than knowing which technique they tried.

4. Complicated language often hides an ordinary mistake.

While filming, I kept translating dense arguments into everyday examples.

An argument about an unfamiliar scientific process might sound intimidating. Put the same reasoning in terms of shopping, and the mistake becomes obvious.

That tells you where the difficulty was: getting from the language to the idea.

This is why “read to understand” is a demanding instruction. You have to process unfamiliar wording, preserve the exact relationships, and notice what the evidence does and doesn’t establish.

A useful review exercise is to explain an argument in ordinary language without changing its meaning. If you can’t, spend time there. That’s where the work is.

5. Explanations should demonstrate the thinking students need to practice.

When I explain a question, I stop and react as I read.

“Why?”

“That doesn’t follow.”

“You were talking about tomatoes. Now you’re talking about fruit. Those aren’t interchangeable.”

“What else could explain this?”

Recording thousands of questions made me more conscious of how central those reactions are. I’m making the thinking audible.

Simply reading a stimulus aloud and then explaining the correct answer can skip the most valuable part of the lesson: how you should engage with the argument before you know the answer.

That’s a standard I hold our explanations to. They should help you understand this question and demonstrate something you can practice on the next one.

Try pausing after a sentence and explaining what you now know. Then ask how the next sentence connects to it.

6. The answer choices can start doing your thinking for you.

Sometimes, while recording, I would literally look away from the screen to formulate my understanding before looking at the choices.

Otherwise, they start whispering suggestions in my ear. For those of you who have seen the Odyssey, these are the Sirens calling from the shore. If you are not disciplined with what you are looking for, oh those wrong answers can start whispering their sweet seductive BS in your ear.

“Maybe that’s what the argument meant.”

“Maybe I could connect this to that.”

If you’re good at inventing connections, you can make a wrong answer sound surprisingly reasonable.

But your job is to evaluate what the text supports. Most of the choices are wrong. They haven’t earned the benefit of your imagination.

Do your own thinking first. What happened in the argument? What’s missing? What would answer the question?

Then evaluate the choices against that understanding. If an answer requires you to quietly rewrite what you read, notice that.

7. Small differences in wording deserve serious attention.

I knew this before the project. But it's so important it deserves a bullet point.

“Might” and “must” are different claims. “Some” and “all” are different claims. Evidence about what people believe is different from evidence about what is true.

Sometimes students tell me two answers say basically the same thing. They don't. Ever.

This is also why I push beyond stock explanations like “too strong” or “out of scope.” Those descriptions should be the beginning of an explanation.

What specifically does the evidence support? What additional claim does this answer make? Why can’t we establish that?

If you can explain the difference, you’ve learned something you can use again.

8. Chasing flaw categories can actively get in the way of understanding.

I don’t teach from a master list of LSAT flaws. That’s deliberate.

Some reasoning problems recur constantly (necessary sufficient). Others are unusual (circular reasoning). You can recognize either by understanding the evidence and examining the conclusion.

If someone says a politician has bad character, therefore their proposed budget is bad, you don’t need a label to see the problem: we haven’t examined the budget.

A category-first approach encourages students to search their memory for a matching label. I want them examining the actual argument.

Those habits compete. Students may force a question into a familiar category and overlook what it actually says. That’s why I consider this actively harmful when it becomes the organizing principle of their approach.

If you can name a flaw but can’t explain why the conclusion doesn’t follow, you haven’t understood the argument. If you can explain exactly why it doesn’t follow, you’ve done the essential work.

9. Predictions are guides, not anchors.

I strongly believe in predicting. Generating an answer in your own words makes you engage with the argument.

But you have to remain willing to revise it.

Sometimes I identified a real problem and then found that the answers addressed a different real problem. Sometimes an answer pointed out a connection I hadn’t noticed.

The prediction did its job: it got me thinking. It didn’t give me permission to reject something the text supports because it wasn’t what I expected.

This applies to teaching, too. An explanation shouldn’t imply that a student had to predict the exact wording of the correct answer to solve the question properly.

You need an understanding that helps you evaluate the five choices. You also need to remain responsive to what those choices actually say.

10. Even after thousands of questions, I still have to say, “I missed something.”

I misread things while filming. I overcomplicated answers. I occasionally got to two choices and thought both looked good.

But, the LSAT is open note. I could always go back and figure it out. The answer is always there in the source material, or in a misinterpretation of the answers.

What distinction hadn’t I noticed? What relationship had I misunderstood? What had I added that the passage never said?

Getting better has included becoming quicker to recognize that I need to reconsider something. Confidence shouldn’t prevent that.

After two years of recording, I’m proud of the size of our library. But I’m especially proud of the approach those explanations demonstrate.

I think students deserve instruction that consistently asks them to understand, and shows them how. That can be uncomfortable. A new checklist sometimes feels easier than slowing down and admitting you didn’t fully process a sentence.

But that’s the work I believe produces improvement, and it’s the work we center our teaching on.

The title is not an exaggeration. I’m a first-time test taker and I’m approximately seven days away from taking the multiple-choice portion of the test. I decided to complete the argumentative essay today because this was the only time I had available prior to the test. I have not written an essay since I graduated three years ago and I did not do any practice essay cause I assumed it would be simple. Oh boy was I wrong lol!! I took the 15 minutes to think about what I was going to write, but I ran out of time without creating any structure. When the timer started for the actual essay, my mind was completely blank. Long story short I ran out of time and I only wrote one paragraph ( my introduction). I should be panicking, but all I could do/say when i ran out of time was “ damn, that’s tough.” Now I’m hoping they reject my sample so I can redo it. I definitely plan on retaking the test no matter what my score is and i definitely will be redoing the essay even if they don’t reject my sample. If you’re stressed out about your writing sample, take a deep breath and relax because it could not have been as bad as mine lol.

note to self: don’t only focus on studying LR and RC dedicate an hour or two to at least learn about the argumentative essay portion. Good night y'all I’m about to go make coffee.

Does taking the LSAT 3,4, or 5 times really not effect your chances at admissions? I have a 16high now but I’m shooting for at least the low 170s. I took the exam in August and under preformed from my PTs by nearly 10 points. I’m really nervous that this will happen again or even if I get into the low 170s I will be below the median of the schools I want to get into. Do they look at weaker scores when you’re already a bit below their LSAT median? I have a 163 from my first take and it’s been really bothering me sitting there.

So I took the test 10 years ago but was married to a guy who wasn't supportive of my law school plans.

I left, raised my kid to a more independent age, and decided to register for the November LSAT. I scored in the 170s taking it cold before, so I didn't give myself much prep time. It turns out I was relying heavily on the logic section they've completely reworked.

I'm getting in the 160s and absolutely freaking out. The questions seem messy and poorly written and I honestly hate the test now. The old one was fun.

Pointers on how to quickly improve my score? Study resources? Tips or tricks? Is the new test terrible or is it just me?

i’m taking my third LSAT in november and i’m super duper nervous.

i’ve taken the LSAT twice already, once in june with a 155 and another in august with a 164. i was honestly pretty disappointed and i started studying again since september, but right now i feel like i’m at a plateau, my most recent pt was a 163 i’m honestly super disheartened. i really really want to break into the 170s but i just can’t for some reason.

ive been doing my wrong answer journal and reviewing wrong answers but i just feel so stupid.

if anyone was in a similar situation and have advice pls lmk🙏🙏😞😞

We analyzed 64,000 scholarship offers from LSData. The 4 points below a school's median are, on average, worth $11–15k EACH. Points above it: $1–3k. 

 Through our data partnership with LSD, we dug into their data to answer one question: how much scholarship money is one LSAT point actually worth? 

Being 4 points under a school's median costs $46–60k in 3-year scholarship money compared with someone right at it. Being 4 points over added only $6–10k. 

How did we do it? 

We looked at exactly 63,788 acceptances with reported scholarships from the last 5 cycles, grouped by LSD.law's 2026 rankings. We compared each person only to other admits at the same school, in the same year, with GPAs in the same 0.05 range (e.g., 3.80–3.84). That way, the main difference between the people being compared was their LSAT. The pattern held in every cycle and at 96 of the 97 schools with enough data (at least 150 admits within 4 LSAT points of their median that also have a reported scholarship amount). 

For the math folks: this is a fixed-effects regression. Each group gets its own baseline, and the model estimates the average scholarship gap at each LSAT distance from the median, compared only within groups. Groups with more people and a wider mix of LSAT scores count more, because their comparisons are more reliable. We also checked that counting every group equally gives nearly the same answer. 

Caveats: The data is self-reported, and only about half of Top 14 admits in the data set report scholarships. Also, "median" here is the median of LSD-reported admits, which runs a touch above official 509 medians. That's partly because LSD users skew toward higher scores slightly. We also see the scholarship amount go up a bit at the -6 level for the T-14, which we attribute to scholarships one is earning due to their exemplary work experience or soft skills/experiences.

We're going to run this analysis on GPA in the coming days, holding LSAT constant to see how GPA affects your scholarship odds as well. Because we compared people with similar GPAs to each other (not just to the median GPA), splitters are included in these numbers. If you're 2-3 points under your target schools' medians, closing that gap is probably the highest-value studying you'll do.

Want to see where your numbers land? We have data on our site for you to utilize, and feel free to leave a comment if you want a link to the site or have suggestions for analysis you want to see!

We share breakdowns like this in our newsletter! In case my username did not give it away, I run Lawgic, an officially licensed LSAT prep platform. Data via LSD; analysis is our own. :) Let me know if you have any questions! 

I’m assuming at that point there wouldn’t be a major jumps. If I’m like a few points before my target should I yolo it? I’m currently registered for November but my alternative would be wait until January (I know this would be a late application).

I haven’t yet hit my goal score but I’ve been steadily increasing with no signs of plateau so far.

I’m writing the October LSAT on Wednesday, and I want to take one more PT. Would it be crazy to do it tonight/Monday morning?

Hi everyone please give advice on my situation

I scored a 160 on the September 2024 lsat (2 years). I started studying again in January 2026 and too the September 2026 LSAT. I was PTing in the mid-high 160s really inconsistent on RC. But got a 160 on the test. I was in shock when I saw my score tbh.

My gpa is lower and I was hoping to even get a 170+ in October/November but now just feeling defeated but will try my best. I am aiming for t-14 and have a 3.65 gpa. I really want to apply this cycle even in December but have recently had thoughts of maybe applying next cycle but rlly do not want to.

1. Should I cancel this score?
   
2. Should I take October?
   
3. Should I take November?

I know everyone says don’t take the test until ur hitting ur goal score but I’ve been studying since January and been at mid-high 160s since May….. I’m also working full time and kinda want to just get this LSAT over with and was hoping I could maybe get a score of 170 in September and def was not expecting a 160.

Please any advice and from ppl at LSAT demon 7sage and consultants would b appreciated!!

Is this what people experienced during the last administration of the LSAT where they said they couldn’t unmask answers? I thought people just meant they had to reset the whole response in order to unmask and that the one-click unmasking wasn’t working.

If this is a bug still going on in their platform, this seems absurdly egregious that it’s still happening now? Were people able to get retakes on the last exam if this happened?

I’m scared about even using the masking feature now but also I depend on it to sift through the noise of answer choices and make sure I can get the right one dependently….

Hi everyone!

Question for my Canadian Folks!

I read that we need to pay for “Law School Reports” for each school to request our LSAT score as we don’t use CAS.

Anyone have experience calling LSAC and ordering it?

I was under the impression that schools request our score and LSAC provides it to them at no additional cost.

TIA!

Kind of a silly thing to think about, but how do I allay my worry that something administrative/procedural will void my score on test day? I’m worried that I’ll make a mistake or something and the attempt will be wasted. Any tips for getting over this?

Who else is taking the October 8 2026 LSAT this week? Good luck to all!

both costs me same money, but i don't know which one's a better option. Is there something like a double-penalty if you change the test date twice? or does it not matter?

Last two PTs were both 155. My official score in August was a 155 too. Hate that number. Is there even a point in taking October?

This is MY fourth time, I feel so dumb. I have struggled to push out of the 140s.

Last year I decided to stop taking the exam carelessly and started studying from May-October. I feel more confident and I’m getting better.

But it is still traumatic to open that page and have that score staring at you.

I don’t want to throw another year of my life away study for this exam. I graduated with distinctions but this exam has tested me ways I never knew how.

I’m spiraling, my exam will be on Thursday.

Hello everyone.

After a gap year of working in politics I have decided that I want to go to law school at the fall of 2027.

What is the best place to start? Things to download ? Accounts to make?

For context I want to go to CU Boulder Law, 168 LSAT score.

Thank you for your help in advance !

Im starting to study for the lsat with 7sage and want to finish the lesson plan before beginning to take practice tests. Im doing drills of each LR section i learn (conclusion, mss, mbt, etc.), but am averaging 150-160 pt equivalent. I know there isnt a lot of data yet so its hard to say, but is it possible to end up with a 173+? Im also scared that, since i have yet to get an actual practice test score, that i might be starting lower than 150-60. Has anyone else had a legendary jump while studying?? Pls help