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LSAT Guide

The Law School Admission Test® (LSAT®) is a standardized test that law schools use to help assess the qualifications of applicants. The test is designed to measure the logical and verbal reasoning skills required for success in law school. There are no questions testing your legal knowledge; the test measures aptitude for legal training and practice.

Administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), the LSAT is a required exam for all 196 American Bar Association-approved law schools. Raw scores are converted to a scaled score from 120 to 180, with the median at about 151. There are five 35-minute multiple choice sections, one of which is an unscored experimental section. There are two scored logical reasoning sections, one scored reading comprehension section, and one scored analytical reasoning section—informally known as the "logic games" section. The LSAT also includes a 35-minute long writing sample based on a decision prompt. The writing sample is unscored but is included in your score report to schools.

The LSAT costs $132. The test is administered four times per year, in June, September/October, December, and February, mostly at schools and other education centers. You should take the LSAT as early as possible before law school application deadlines. Law schools often request that applicants take the test by December for admission in the following fall's entering class.

You can take the LSAT only three times in a two-year period without obtaining an exemption from a law school. If you think you may want to repeat the test after getting your initial score, plan to take the LSAT first in either June or September. Be aware that when you apply to law school, all of your scores from the past five years are reported.

Quick LSAT Facts:

• Last year, 241,000 people took the LSAT in the US. The number of test-takers is trending steadily upward, in keeping with the growing number of law school applicants.
• LSAT-takers are almost equally split by gender, though slightly fewer women are admitted to law schools.
• About half of the 2006 LSAT-takers were between the ages of 22 and 24, with nearly another third aged 25-29. Almost twenty percent of 2006 applicants were over the age of 30, and five percent were 40 or older. Male applicants aged 25-39 have been increasingly in the majority since 2000, while female applicants make up the majority of applicants age 24 and younger.

What's on the LSAT?

The LSAT consists of five 35-minute sections designed to test your reading, reasoning, and critical thinking skills. Four of these sections are scored: two sections of Logical Reasoning sections, one of Analytical Reasoning, and one of Reading Comprehension. The fifth section is unscored; it's usually used to test new questions or formats for future tests. You won't know which part is unscored, though, so it's important to treat each section as the real thing.

At the end of the test is a 35-minute writing section. This section isn't scored either, but it is sent along to law schools with the rest of your application materials. For the rest of the sections, you'll receive a raw point for every correct answer (there's no penalty for wrong answer choices), and your final score is scaled from 120 to 180.

The LSAT score is one of the most important components of a law school application. Since the exam doesn't test your knowledge of facts, LSAT prep should involve more than studying a particular body of knowledge. Instead, it's important to prepare for the LSAT by sharpening the skills it assesses—through targeted lessons, drills, and practice tests.

Here's a rundown of the LSAT question types:

Logical Reasoning

There are two Logical Reasoning sections on every test, so this is the most important LSAT question type to master. Each section contains 24 to 26 questions that measure your ability to manipulate logical arguments. Skills tested include identifying assumptions, making inferences, and describing flaws in reasoning.

Analytical Reasoning (Logic Games)

This section appears once on each test, with 22 to 24 questions based on four different "games." To tackle these problems, you'll have to break down logical rules, identify question set-ups, and make deductions based on a series of constraints. The games section is often the most daunting for test-takers, but it's also the section with the most potential for improvement.

Reading Comprehension

The Reading Comp section consists of 27 to 28 questions based on four passages—three single passages and one set of paired passages. This section requires you to read quickly and thoroughly while noting the author's views, tracking themes, and analyzing the argument structure.