Author: Evan Jones

Are you searching for an LSAT study partner? In this post, we discuss how to find a good one and how to get the most out of your work together. Do You Need A Study Partner for The LSAT? You certainly don’t need a study buddy to do well. I was fine studying exclusively on my own, and so was Josh. In fact, I thing the people who can power through hours of lonely work are exactly the sort of people who are going to do well in law school. I’m a little skeptical to begin with that most people are getting actual positive…

There are now hundreds of news articles and entire blogs devoted to warning potential students of the perils of attending a low-ranked, high-cost law school. We’re positive people here at Lawschooli, so we typically try and keep our message positive and upbeat. But sometimes we see things happening in the legal education industry that we simply can’t ignore. Today we’re going to talk about the dark side of the industry. Admissions standards have been in a free fall at Tier 4 law schools over the past few years. One school, in particular, has sunk so low that we felt compelled to announce our pick…

If you are considering going to an elite law school, now may be a good time. After several years of delayed recovery, the high end of the legal industry is showing some signs of robust health. The National Law Journal announced that full-time job offers to summer associates have reached their highest rate in a decade. This is good news for law students evaluating their chances to secure high paying firm jobs. Landing a summer associate position (where law students clerk for a firm during the summer between 2L and 3L year) at a BigLaw firm has historically been known to result in…

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Santa Barbara, California- You have spent long, lonely months in rigorous training for a single day, and a three hour test that may determine much of your future course in life: the day of the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT. The LSAT is one of the major factors that decide entry into law school — whether you are able to get a seat a super elite law school, such as Stanford or University of Chicago, or will be going elsewhere, is often a matter of 5 points either way on this test. Thousands of students are expecting their scores…

Here, we describe in just one or two sentences the core of what you need to do to answer each LSAT LR question type. While it’s not technically cheating, if you always stay focused on just these tasks when doing the questions, you will score as if you were cheating!

Here is the top 20 from this year’s US News and World Report Best Law Schools (i.e. the only rankings that matter): 1. Yale 2. Harvard 2. Stanford (+1) 4. Columbia 4. Chicago 6. NYU 7. Penn 8. UVA 8. Berkeley (+1) 8. Duke (+2) 11. Michigan (-1) 12. Northwestern 13. Cornell 14. GULC (-1) 15. Texas 16. UCLA 17. Vanderbilt (-1) 18. Wash U 19. Emory 20. USC 20. Minnesota  We’ll be updating this list to cover the whole top 100 and add comparison with last years rankings, so check back throughout the day! The Top 14 At the very…

UPDATE: The rankings are out! See them here: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/law-rankings It turns out that the lists below were indeed an accurate picture of the new top school. We’ll be posting our analysis tomorrow, so check back! In the digital age we’ve come to expect anything and everything to leak early. Only Beyonce has figured out how to run a tight ship. While US News also usually does a pretty good job keeping their new rankings a secret, it appears they’ve let slip a little teaser… With the official USNWR rankings not expected to arrive until tomorrow, Above The Law earlier today published what may well be…

So what should you do? Here is what to do if… …You Killed It and Scored Right Around Your Practice Average You got the score you want. Congrats, you have won the LSAT. Even if later you later decide that you want to try for a higher score, scoring around your practice average is good cause for celebration. It shows that you don’t collapse under the pressure of test day. Now, all that is left is to start figuring out what school you can get into with your new score. This can be a bit tricky for February retakers, who are often…

In almost every law school, you are graded on a strict curve. In this article, we break down the details of the law school curve and analyze why the dreaded curve causes so many law students to break into a cold sweat. Curved Grading Most of us are familiar with the concept of a curve: it means grades must fall along a predetermined distribution. In a true curve-graded class, the exact number of As, Bs, Cs etc. is set ahead of time and students’ scores must be made to fit into those pre-determined allotments. Typically, this supposed to follow what is a called a normal distribution,…

Wondering how many people will be taking the LSAT with you this year? LSAC, the makers of the test, track how many people they administer the test to each cycle, so you can get a rough idea. Here is the chart: However, a lot of people retake the LSAT twice or even three times, so substantially fewer individuals actually take LSATs in a given year. I added up the number of retakes attempts on all the retakes in LSAT in 2012-2013, and approximately 30,000 of the attempts in that year were retakes. Subtracting all 30k from the total would result in…

The ABA recently released it’s yearly enrollment statistics, showing that enrollment has plunged yet again this year, bringing enrollment to a record 27-year low. 37,924 full-time and part-time students began law school this fall, a 4.4 percent drop from last-year. All told, approximately 15,ooo fewer 1Ls will walk through the doors then did in 2010, when a record high 52,488 students started law school. Here’s a chart of 1L enrollment over the last several of years: In 1973—the last time enrollment was this low—only 151 ABA accredited law schools existed. Now, 205 fully accredited schools compete for the same size stock. Can it get…

In this article, Evan takes a deep dive into one of the most common problems students encounter when preparing for the LSAT: Timing. Joshua Craven – Founder, Lawschooli.com As we’ve worked closely with hundreds of students in the LSAT Mastermind Study Group over the past 12 months, we’ve developed a system that has helped many of our members overcome their timing issues. Although most students find that overcoming timing issues is one of the most difficult challenges of their LSAT prep, we realized that there seemed to be a lack of concrete & actionable advice on this important topic. In this…

It’s one of the longest standing myths in LSAT prep: that you can’t gain anything from reusing old LSAT exams. A lot of prep companies subscribe to this belief, and I admit that for a long time I was convinced it is true, at least with regards to logical reasoning and reading comprehension. I used to counsel students to always save some fresh exams in case they were needed for a retake. Worse, I believed that when you had used up all your tests, there wasn’t much more you could do to boost your score. Now, I’m happy to put this harmful myth…

Deciding to take the February LSAT can be a tough call. Although many law schools now accept applications from those who take the LSAT in February for admission the immediately following fall, conventional wisdom is that it places you at a big disadvantage compared to earlier applicants. Is that really true given how few people are applying to law school this year?

Josh and I were just interviewed by Ben Olson and Nathan Fox, hosts of the Thinking LSAT Podcast. Check it out here: Podcast: Play in new window | Download Mentioned in this podcast: How I Got a 177 On the LSAT by Joshua Craven Join the LSAT Mastermind Study Group We talked a little about our early battles with the LSAT then covered some reader questions, including: When is a good idea to give up when a game, passage, or individual question is too hard?How did you approach test day?How do you get the most out of reviewing a preptest?What does a good LSAT study plan…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-tHRDAQ9Tg For people who just got their score and are thinking a retake might be necessary or are wondering where to go from here, come to sit in and listen to Josh and I talk about advice and strategy. We’ll cover a bunch of topics including: Will your LSAT get you in where you want to go?Should you retake?How to approach a retakePrep materialsApplication timingWhen to retake … and much more.

One of the more common inquires I receive from readers is about how LSAC will calculate GPA. Because the policies are a little obscure, I’m going to try and shed some light on the process so you might better know what to expect. Hopefully, you won’t be blindsided like I was with a substantially lower GPA than you anticipated having. When you apply to law school, you have to submit your undergrad transcripts to the Credential Assembly Service (or CAS), a part of LSAC. Depending on your academic history, your LSAC GPA (the number law schools will use to review your application) might actually…

I’m fully aware that after one takes the LSAT, they want to forget about law school, logic, the LSAT, admissions, etc. for a bit. For June LSAT takers, this is totally okay (that’s one of the many reasons we most recommend taking the June LSAT). Those taking in February but not applying until the following admissions cycle are similarly able to just relax. The October and December crowd, however, should put this time to use. Refreshing your email inbox until your score hits is not a particularly productive use of your time Here are some suggestions on what to do while waiting for…

If you are thinking about throwing a thousand dollars or more in to an online prep course or a live course, it may have crossed your mind “why does this cost so much?” It’s a fair question. Basically, it boils down to one thing: huge markups on LSAT prep questions. In this post, we’ll explain exactly why these courses are so expensive & show you how to avoid overpaying!

While more and more college grads have been avoiding the law school path, there is one group that appears to be coming back: high LSAT scorers. Going by the LSAT and GPA numbers, the current crop of students at the top law schools is substantially weaker than the pool we had in the recession years 2008-2011, when people were applying to law schools in droves. This isn’t surprising: from a high in 2009-2010, when some 171,514 people took the LSAT, the number has tumbled to just 105,532 who took the LSAT last year. With that much smaller a group, there are way bound to be…