After you have taken the test, you will know 3 things.
1.) You’ll have a score. Therefore, you will know where you are in terms of the admission requirements of the law schools to which you want to apply. Remember this chart: http://officialguide.lsac.org/UGPASearch/Search3.aspx
2.) The second thing that you’ll have is an understanding of what you do well.
3.) The third thing that you’ll have is a decision to make.
If your score is adequate to meet the admission requirements at the law school that you want to attend, you may not need to do much at all. I recommend that everyone at least sit down and do 3-4 timed practice tests. There are books of old exams that you can work through under timed conditions. Start out doing one timed exam section per day. Then work up to taking a day and doing a simulated exam. This is the minimum that everyone should do.
Training under conditions that simulate the test in terms of time pressure and length or exhaustion is important. Most people don’t rise to the occasion on the LSAT. They revert to their level of training. So, do timed tests to get yourself ready to take a timed test. And do those timed tests in an uncomfortable chair. If you train like you plan to fight, you’ll fight like you trained.
If your score on the diagnostic test isn’t as good as you’d like, and you need specific help in one area of the test, seek private tutoring. Having a human being focus his or her efforts on raising your score in one area of the test is incredibly time and cost efficient. It worked really well for me. The tutor was able to zero in on the help that I needed and explain things in ways that stuck with me.
Having a tutor will keep you accountable to actually do the work. Unless your life really sucks, the LSAT will be the least interesting thing that you are doing life, but it may be one of the most important in determining the future of your legal career. So, you need someone who will keep you accountable for doing the work that you need to do to get ready for the test, and this person will also be able to teach you useful tricks.
Now, it’s possible that your score isn’t as good as you’d like and you may need help in a range of areas. Take the course. I recommend Princeton Review because my results with them were highly satisfactory to me.
You may be worried about the money. Don’t sweat it, even if it means you have to work at a job you hate to raise the money. This is about your future, and you need to understand that the LSAT is a place where a small investment of a couple of grand now can be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the other side of graduation.
There are too many lawyers. The law is competitive. There are plenty of crappy jobs in the law, and, worse yet, there are plenty of guys with no job at all and $100k in student debt. The way that you avoid being one of those guys with no job and $100k in student loan debt is to go to a really good law school. The way that you get into a good law school is to get a great LSAT score. The way that you get a great LSAT score is to take a review course.
At the end of the day, if the difference between a $40,000.00/year job and a $165,000.00/year job is the investment of $2,000.00 in an LSAT course, you’re a fool if you don’t spend the money on the course.
The guys who run the courses have specific expertise in 2 things. The first thing that they understand is how to do well on the LSAT. The second thing that they understand is how to communicate that information to people with a wide range of learning styles.
They have some other advantages, as well. They’re live people. They can answer questions and provide interim diagnostic tests.
The reason that review courses and tutoring businesses for the LSAT make money is that they deliver the goods. You can expect to raise your score 5 points if you take a course and bust your ass. This may be the difference between meeting the requirements for admission at Stanford Law School, admission at Harvard Law School, and admission at some crappy online law school that I’ve never heard of.
You may be a self-starter and you may do well enough with just the books. That’s great, but I wouldn’t bet my future on it. Life is too long to go through it with a crappy JD.
So, get the free diagnostic test.
Figure out if your diagnostic score is good enough to meet the requirements for admission to the law school that you want to attend.
If your diagnostic score is good enough to meet the requirements for admission to the law school that you want to attend, practice… practice… practice, so that you’re sharp and automatic on game day.
If your diagnostic score is not good enough to meet the requirements for admission to the law school that you want, get tutoring or take a course to learn the things that you need to learn.
This LSAT thing is simple. And it is a huge part of the requirements for admission to law school. Do the work. Win.
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