10 Ways To Prep More Efficiently For The LSAT

When you decide that you will study for the LSAT, it’s a good time to take stock of your study habits. It takes most people A LOT of work to max out their score on the LSAT (click here for a full discussion of how long you should study).

Don’t take the LSAT if you aren’t prepared to put in a good amount of effort.

Experts, myself included, typically recommend you study for about 3 months to reach your full potential on the LSAT. This is a moderate-intensity study schedule, meaning probably 2-5 hours a day of study 5-6 days a week for that entire 3 months.

That’s the amount of prep that got me into UChicago, and when I talk to people who went on to T14 schools, that’s the amount of work that just about all of them did. Replicate this effort, and you’ve got a real shot at success.

That said, raw force alone isn’t enough to crack the LSAT. It’s going to help immensely if you are getting the most out of your prep time. With that in mind, we’ve got some tips on how to prep better for the LSAT. The tips here will help you avoid waking one day up mid-way through your prep and realizing you’ve been doing it wrong.

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1. Don’t Start Out Doing Timed Questions

I’ve heard some LSAT tutors claim something like, “the actual test is timed, so you should always make timing a factor when you are studying.” That’s the sort of advice you hear from people who are great LSAT takers but maybe not so great LSAT tutors.

That isn’t going to work for most people. Frankly, it’s not the best strategy even for the naturally good test takers either.

If you want to be a race car driver, you don’t start off racing in F1, do you? No, that’s the best way I can think of to end up dead. LSAT prep is the same way.

You have to learn how to do things right before you speed it up.

Here’s our study schedule that discusses when to add the time component.

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2. Always Review Every Difficult Question

When you do questions, always mark any that you find difficult. Then, BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE ANSWERS, review these questions. This means you carefully redo them and think about the best way to approach them. This may mean you have to go back in your prep books and relearn some techniques as needed.

Here’s why this is necessary? Look straight at the answers, and really you might as well be throwing darts at the answers. Yeah, sometimes you’ll get lucky on hard questions but did you really learn anything from it? Make sure for every difficult question you can tell yourself why you think each other answer is wrong and why the one you’ve chosen is better. THEN, AND ONLY THEN, LOOK AT THE ANSWERS.

RELATED: How To Review LSAT Questions and Practice Tests

Do this, and you’ll be getting twice as much out of each section you do. It will be time-consuming at first, but eventually, you will need to mark fewer and fewer questions as ‘difficult.’ Always review any question you got wrong, whether it was hard or not. You’ll start to see patterns and will learn to spot the traps that get you ahead of time.

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 3. Find Good Places To Study

Common advice is to find a place to study that mimics the testing room environment. That’s a great idea. However, for the first month, I think you are better off studying in absolute quiet, mostly free of distraction. A law school library is great if there is one near you. Any college library will have quiet floors and not-so-quiet floors. Start your prep on the quiet floors where you can focus.

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4. Take A Lot Of Small Breaks

Taking breaks is a necessary part of studying. Your brain, and along with it, your capacity for focus and attention, needs to recover. I played a lot of Guitar Hero in between LSAT sections because it was 2008, and that’s what people did back then.

The problem with guitar hero was that it’s a little tough to put down. You want breaks to stay short, not spin out into half-hour TV breaks every time. If I’m prepping for five hours, I’m going to try to take maybe 4 or 5 ten minute breaks.

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5. Read LSAT Prep Books BEFORE You Start Doing Practice Test Questions

This sounds obvious, but not everyone does it. Yes, it’s fully okay to try some questions out, and we do recommend doing a cold diagnostic as the first step in your prep. However, after that, hit the prep books before you do any more practice questions.

Don’t waste time with material from garbage prep companies, either. Here are my fully non-biased recommendations (I don’t get money from anybody for making these recommendations): PowerScore, Blueprint, Manhattan, and Fox Test Prep. These are all LSAT-only prep companies, or they started with the LSAT. That generally ensures they know what they are talking about. Avoid Kaplan and Princeton Review.

This post has the LSAT prep books that we think you’ll get the most out of.

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6. Study With A Friend Some Of The Time

I don’t think it’s a good idea to partner up for every LSAT study session–it’s too easy to lose focus. However, once a week or thereabouts, get together with someone else who is prepping. Together, you can go over a practice test or work on questions then review them.

It’s a great way to keep each other on task. Tell your buddy what you are planning to study each week, and you’ll be that much more likely to have done it when you meet up next time.

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7. When It’s Not Going Well, Drop It For The Day

We all have days where we can tell nothing productive is happening. If it’s clear you aren’t focused after you start prepping on a given day, just put it down. Improving on the LSAT requires focus and attention. Don’t waste good material working on it when you aren’t focused.

Sure on some days, you might need to push through even though you are feeling blasé, especially if it’s happening twice a week or more. Now, If you aren’t feeling focused 4 out of 5 days, we’ve got problems. That might indicate that your heart isn’t in this and you should postpone taking the LSAT.

The flip-side of this is that you will likely notice days where you are really on top of it, and studying might even feel “fun” (or something close to fun). These days, keep studying, even if you have already done what you planned to do that day. This can be a good way to develop the frame of mind you need to do your best on test day.

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8. Don’t Hesitate To Go Back To The Prep Books

Say you struggle with “Must Be True” questions, a type of question on the logical reasoning section. Unfortunately, it’s not very likely that there is some huge secret that you haven’t learned yet that will help you breakthrough and get all these right. More likely, the problem is that you just haven’t learned what you have already studied! Go back frequently to the prep books such as the Powerscore Logical Reasoning Bible when you run into these problems.

I was consulting these books every single day for at least the first half of my prep. Basically, I could have recited parts in my sleep by the end of my prep. Only when you’re confident, you have taken that advice to heart and mastered it should you consider going elsewhere for more advice. However, chances are you won’t be having too many problems by then.

Think about whether you are really paying attention to what the prep book says. Once you’ve picked a good prep book, follow its advice to the letter. A lot of research and effort has gone into these books to figure out what works best. Use it.

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9. Alternate Intense Study Days With Lighter Ones

I see a lot of LSAT students say, “I’m going to study for the LSAT four hours a day every day for the next three months!!!” That’s a good attitude, but efficient preparation is about creating quality study, not just going for volume. With that in mind, I think it’s way better to alternate intense study days (3-5+ hours of study) with lighter ones (1.5-3 hours).

This combats burnout and helps ensure you get more out of your long study days.

Don’t forget the all-important day off either. Every week there should be one day where you don’t even think about LSAT prep. Trust me; the recharge time is worth way more than any extra study you get out of prepping that day.

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10. Exercise, And Also Consider Meditation

I’m not a scientist, but I’ve read many you can perform better mentally through exercise. For example, this study showed that regular exercise improves cognitive function.

Also, a study recently showed that meditation led to greatly increased performance on standardized tests. I would give it a try for sure. Don’t argue with stuff that works.