Kevin has dedicated his life to helping students like you master the LSAT. With over 10 years of teaching experience, a perfect 180, and hundreds of former students at top law schools across the country, he can push you to the peak of your LSAT potential.
After graduating from U.C. Berkeley and Columbia Law School, Kevin practiced commercial litigation in New York City before serving a short stint as a federal prosecutor in Oakland, California. But for Kevin, legal practice couldn’t compare to the intellectual challenge and satisfaction of teaching the LSAT. He’s thrilled to be part of 7Sage – the best LSAT prep company in the world.
In his free time, he enjoys thinking about LSAT questions, planning out LSAT classes and explanations, and petitioning LSAC to release more new PrepTests.
Discussions
@MaryAnneCrespo You're right that the these two statements are equivalent:
If performed out of self-interest, then NOT generous.
If generous, then it was NOT performed out of self-interest.
But that doesn't make the argument valid. If we start off knowing that an action is NOT performed out of self interest, that doesn't allow us to go backwards on the second statement and conclude the "if generous" part.
It might be easier to stick with an example that is more intuitively true in real life:
If an animal is a dog, then it's a mammal.
If an animal is NOT a mammal, then it's NOT a dog.
Let's say we know that my pet is NOT a dog. Does that prove it's NOT a mammal? No, because it could be a cat.
This comment is interesting to me because "just parse the language, it's easy, no need to overcomplicate things" is such a narrow view of explanation. It's a common feeling that explanations that go into diagramming logic are too complicated, though, so I want to address it head on.
First, as a practical matter, most high scorers wouldn't diagram this, and I wouldn't either in a timed situation. That's because we can parse the language and we do understand what A is saying easily as well as how it fits into the logic of the argument.
But not everyone can do that right now. Many students read A and can't quite make sense of either what it's saying or why what it's saying makes it the correct answer.
What would we have these students do? "Just parse the language." Yes, but what if they can't do that accurately? How can we help someone who doesn't currently understand A understand it, and how can we give them tools to understand other similar statements accurately?
Diagramming the logic and breaking down in a more visual way exactly what A is saying is an attempt to help someone understand A. It's an attempt to show the parsing that is going on in a high-scorers mind.
Now we can of course fail at our goal, and explanations can always be improved. But I bristle at the "Just read it and understand it instead of overcomplicating it" criticism because it comes from someone who never had to struggle with a statement like A. Maybe we should say this more often though -- not every part of an explanation is for everyone. Take what's valuable and leave what isn't. And, the fact that we diagram an explanation shouldn't be taken to mean that we would in fact physically draw something out on a timed exam. 99% of the time it's purely a mental process, and a diagram is just a way of showing to others the meaning that we are getting in our mind.
@RussoLeoP That's a big part of it ... of course you do need to read the passage very well. That's step 1. But I find that a lot of people who do read the passage well don't realize how aggressively we can/should move through the questions. They're too careful and end up taking 9+ minutes on a passage/question set that they could have taken 7. And then this means later on when they get to a passage/questions set that really does require 10-11 minutes to finish, they just don't have enough time. Then they misdiagnose the issue. Because they got the earlier passage all right, and struggled with the later passage, it seems like the problem is with that harder passage later on. But actually the problem stems from the passage they found easy.
That's a bit strange, thanks for flagging. I'd just start on the Practice blocks earlier. You'll basically fit in 1 more than the current schedule allots. There's nothing wrong with that -- each practice block is loosely associated with a week, but you'll likely find yourself completing them a bit faster or a bit slower and adjust along the way.
Do you mean something like this? https://7sage.com/lsat-resources/lr-question-types/PhenLR
@GaretCarlson How so? Is there a part of that you don't understand? Let me know.
@Lillia555 It's possible you're not supposed to be able to tell -- sometimes the author really is neutral and simply reporting a debate between other views. In that case the author's main point is something like, "There's a debate about this issue".
I don't think it's helpful to think of having an "allotted" time for each question. Although it's true that to get into the highest scores, there are certain limits where spending more time on a question isn't the best test-taking strategy, that specific line is different for each person, and it also differs based on the question. Some people might solve certain questions faster than others, and can manage overall time well. So even if they're "behind" on one question, it's not something that matters. Some questions are supposed to take longer than 1.5 minutes, others are supposed to go by much more quickly.
I think it's better to simply have certain loose timing goals for a section (like, for high-scorers, the first 10 in ~11 minutes or the first 2 passages in ~15 minutes). You can glance at the clock one or twice to see whether you're on track or need to move on from a question or two with an educated guess, but without thinking about timing in terms of time per question.
This format is really hard to navigate especially when I'm going back and forth between my actual and BR.
Can you explain this a bit more? What's particularly difficult now compared to before when going between actual and BR?
@ShoddyLawyer After you change font size, doesn't it stay the same font size in your next drill? Or do you have to change it every time?
The PT/Section/Q number is coming back -- possibly as soon as tomorrow, but definitely by next week.
We'll consider an option to change the font when reviewing. Are you saying you would want the font currently used in the written explanations for the LSAT text itself? Or some other font?
Already try to follow advice like "focus on the author's opinion," "read for structure, not details," but still getting too many wrong, or running out of time on the last passage? Here are 3 mistakes you might be making.
@EricB7Sage
@Amelia_D Did you click "Show correct"? 
Or are you referring to the list of questions in the chart on review? Here you can see what you picked in red:
@jagoro If something isn't part of "why should I believe the conclusion," then it's not a premise. A premise is something that is offered to convince you of the truth of the conclusion. A claim that simply helps you understand what the argument is about, or a claim that goes against the author's argument, or a claim that is what the author is rejecting, aren't designed to help prove the author's conclusion.
@JulioBarbosa There's a difference between a premise and a statement that you're saying is wrong.
"Mark: George Washington was born after Abraham Lincoln."
"Me: No, you have the timeline backwards. GW was born in 1731 and Lincoln was born in 1809."
The meaning of "you have the timeline backwards" is "GW was born after Lincoln." The fact that we have to refer to someone else'e claim to understand the conclusion doesn't mean that the other person's claim is offered to help prove the conclusion.
@rrhj1986 Sorry, did you watch the explanation video in the explanation tab? If so you'll get a better introduction by watching the lesson video itself on this page: https://7sage.com/lessons/foundations/lets-dive-in/intro-youtry-1-pt141-s2-q21
@deji Are you saying in our tester clicking the hide time functionality doesn't hide the time? Or on test day you experienced this?
Note for all who are confused:
The rest of the Conditional and Set Logic module goes into these concepts in a lot more detail. And you'll get an opportunity to keep revisiting these concepts in drills and sections when you review. There's no expectation that you master conditional logic in just a day or a week. Come back a few weeks from now and see how you make sense of the lessons in this video.