The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is an examination in the United States, Canada, and Australia administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) for prospective law school candidates. It is designed to assess logical and verbal reasoning skills.
Offered four times yearly, the LSAT is required for admission to all ABA-approved law schools.
The LSAT contains five 35-minute multiple choice sections, one of which is the unscored experimental section, followed by a 35-minute long writing sample.
Logical reasoning
The current test contains two logical reasoning sections, commonly known as “arguments” or “LR”. Each question begins with a paragraph that presents either an argument or a short set of facts. The paragraph is followed by a prompt asking the test taker to find the argument’s assumption, an alternate conclusion, logical omissions or errors in the argument, to choose another argument with parallel reasoning, or to identify a statement that would either weaken or strengthen the argument. Most paragraphs are followed by a single prompt, although a few are followed by two.
Reading comprehension
The current test contains one reading comprehension section. In recent exams, the section consists of four passages of 400–500 words, one passage each related to law, arts and humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences, with 5–8 questions per passage. The questions ask the examinee to determine the author’s main idea, find information in the passage, draw inferences from the text, and describe the structure of the passage.
In June 2007, a change was made to the test that replaced one of the four passages with a “comparative reading” question. Comparative reading presents the examinee with two short passages with differing perspectives on a topic.
Analytical reasoning
The current test contains one analytical reasoning section, informally known as the “logic games” section. Each test’s section contains four different “games”. The material generally involves grouping, matching, and ordering of elements. The examinee is presented with a setup (e.g. “there are five people who might attend this afternoon’s meeting”) and partial set of rules that govern the situation (e.g. “if Amy is present, then Bob is not present; if Cathy is present, then Dan is present…”), and is then asked to deduce conclusions from the statements (e.g. “What is the maximum number of people who could be present?”). Individual questions often add rules and occasionally modify existing rules, requiring the examinee to reorganize information quickly.
Unscored section
The current test contains one experimental section, used to test new questions for future exams. The performance of the examinee on this section is not reported as part of the final score. The examinee is not told which section of the exam is experimental, since doing so could skew the data. To reduce the impact of examinee fatigue on the experimental results, this section is always one of the first three sections of any given test.
Writing sample
The writing sample appears as the final section of the test. The writing sample is given in the form of a decision prompt, which provides the examinee with a problem and two criteria for making a decision. The examinee must then write an essay favoring one of two provided options over the other.
Contrary to popular opinion, the writing sample is an important part of your application. Indeed only 6.8% of 157 schools surveyed by LSAC in 2006 indicated that they “never” use the writing sample when evaluating an application. In contrast, 9.9% of the schools reported that they “always” use the sample; 25.3% reported that they “frequently” use the sample; 32.7% responded “occasionally”; and 25.3% reported “seldom” using the sample.
Scoring
The LSAT is standardized in that LSAC adjusts raw scores to fit an expected norm to overcome the likelihood that some administrations may be more difficult than others. Normalized scores are distributed on a scale from a low of 120 to a high of 180.
Examinees have the option of canceling their scores within six calendar days after the exam, before they get their scores. LSAC still reports to law schools that the student registered for and took the exam, but releases no score.
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