Law school students or Lawyers, how did you study for the LSAT?

I took the class and tons of practice test. Think the class was Princeton review but that was 15 years ago.


I did really well on lsat but decided against law school

Practice tests abound, and so do quality paper and online study guides. If you lack the self discipline and comprehension skills to prep for the test yourself, then you should probably forget law school. Just my two cents, but it's not like you're 14 and taking the SATs for the first time. Law school is a long, tedious slog...if you can't prep for the test on your own, you will struggle mightily.

NB If you've never taken symbolic logic or a similar formal logic class, definitely brush up cause it will be Greek to you otherwise.

Thank you Rabid. How do you think the powers core trilogy compares to the Princeton review course?

quote:

---

logic games is the most learnable section, followed by logical reasoning.

---

I took the Princeton review class solely to learn the games section. In theory that was a wise decision, in practice not so much. Everyone in my class was an idiot. More than half would cause the class to come to a grinding halt by asking dumb questions. Furthermore, there was so much class time that I was too burnt out to study much on my own. I did great in every section... except for games. Long story short: buy some practice books, ease into it and reserve lots of study time.

quote:

---

How do you think the powers core trilogy compares to the Princeton review course?

---

The powerscore trilogy is much better. I think generally dedicated self study is better than taking a course, but that is dependent upon the individual.

Having said that, the Princeton Review and Kaplan methods are plainly inferior to Powerscore and testmasters.

I would spend some time on the aforementioned forum here if you are serious. Check out some of the guides. It looks like there are more resources and companies available now than when I took it 7 or 8 years ago.

I took a couple of practice tests and my score improved 3 points there wasn't a whole lot of room left though

With regard to curricula, there's basically a whole "branch" of LSAT courses that descend from Testmasters. Both Powerscore and Blueprint are former Testmasters and having read PS books and gone through instructor training with the other two I can vouch for their approaches all being very similar. I think BP's games book is better than the PS games book, but BP doesn't have materials for arguments and PS does (I don't think TM sells their stuff standalone yet). Or you could ask around and see whose local instructor comes recommended , since it might be worth getting a few hours of tutoring in lieu of a class (which has all the pitfalls mentioned above).

The LSAT reading comp and GRE reading comp are similar, but the arguments and especially the games are their own animals so you can't rely on GRE experience.

Also, I know you already rejected these replies, but don't go to law school. (If you can break 170, do teach the LSAT, it's a fun job and I wish I'd done it longer).

Have you taken a practice test yet, if so what was your score and best/worst sections?

Take a practice test cold as soon as you can. That will let you know first of all if 165 is realistic (it's rare even with serious effort to get a 15+ rise) and also let you know where your weaknesses are. I assume that won't be reading comp because you're in grad school

There is only so much you can do to improve your reading comp. How much you can improve your logic is based on how much logic you already have (I took an Intro to Logic course in college which far outstripped the rudimentary logic needed on the LSAT). Logic games is where you need to put in the work. There are some "tricks" to learn, but most importantly, you just have to do a metric frickton of them in practice. I didn't practice them nearly enough, so when I took the LSAT, I got every single question correct on the Games section I answered... but didn't get to 8-10 questions because I was simply taking too damned long. With more practice, I would have been much quicker.

With that said, my score was still good enough to get a partial scholarship at LSU (I destroyed the other three sections of the LSAT) and had I received any better of a scholarship I would have lost it because of the silly-high GPA requirement to maintain, so I suppose all's well that ends well

quote:

---

That will let you know first of all if 165 is realistic (it's rare even with serious effort to get a 15+ rise) and also let you know where your weaknesses are.

---

To OP -- don't let a bad cold first-run score get you down.

I dated a girl in college who took the LSAT on the old scoring system (48 being a perfect score). She took a cold test and scored a 30 (approx. 50th percentile). She then took Kaplan and got a 44 (approx. 95th percentile) when it mattered. She went to Columbia Law.