TrustLawNerd

Joined: Feb 2026
Subscription: Core

Just an estate planning/probate paralegal of 13 years who spent three decades insisting I would never go to law school.

Too bad I finally got fed up with getting paid like a paralegal to do the work of a junior associate.

Law school, here we come.

Admissions profile

LSAT

157

CAS GPA

3.89

1L START YEAR

2027

Applications

New England - Boston

In process

Northeastern

In process

Suffolk

In process

Discussions

PrepTests ·

PT113.S4.Q17

TrustLawNerd

Edited 6 hours ago

I got a lot better at "takes for granted" and "assumes" flaw questions when I realized the negation test works just as well as it does for NA questions!

Negation of E:

The number of traffic fatalities two years ago [before the new speed limit] was abnormally high.

If the negation of E is true, then the argument starts to fall apart. Therefore, E is what the author has taken for granted.

General

•

Edited 14 hours ago

TrustLawNerd

🤔 Curious

Any paralegals of 10+ years here?

Any other long-term paralegals here? I'm super curious to know how many other people are in the same boat as me.

I'm a senior paralegal, and I've been working in estate planning and probate for about 13 years now. I finally got tired of (1) getting paid like a paralegal to do the work of a junior associate, and (2) billing at a rate of $100 less than the baby associates I'm teaching about this field of law, whose drafts I review, and whose cases I supervise (among other things) for no reason other than optics.

Besides, I want to be able to sign my own dang pleadings and say "I advise that you do XYZ" to clients instead of "[attorney's name] advises that you do XYZ" (even if I'm the one who suggested it to the attorney in the first place).

I spent my entire career saying I'd never go to law school, and yet here we are lol

If you're a paralegal of 10+ years applying to law school, what are your reasons for doing so?

General · The Purpose of Blind Reviews

TrustLawNerd

14 hours ago

I hated that blind review gave me questions I got correct for BR. Fortunately, you can change what it flags for review.

If you go to Settings > Preferences, the first section (Tester Settings) lets you choose which types of questions it flags for BR. I have mine set to only flag (1) wrong answers, (2) skipped answers, and (3) answers I left flagged.

I find this significantly more helpful than having totally random questions flagged to review. Hope this helps you too. :)

LSAT · Guilt

TrustLawNerd

Yesterday

I work 40 hours a week too, and I intentionally don't study on the weekends. That's my time to recharge and let the things I've learned sink in. When I get back into it on Monday, I always have a more concrete understanding of things I learned the prior week.

It's similar to sleeping on a big decision. Taking breaks to let your brain digest things can be quite advantageous to long-term learning, and also helps to reduce burnout risk :)

PrepTests ·

PT142.S1.Q20

TrustLawNerd

Edited Yesterday

build-center -> several-prof-org-cons

several-large-cons -> visitors-increase

visitors-increase -> revenue-increase

thus

build-center -> revenue-increase

-or-

A -> B

[B -> C]

C -> D

D -> E

thus

A -> E

What are we missing? We haven't connected B and C yet. So if we squoosh E in there [in brackets above], we've completed the conditional chain. :)

PrepTests ·

PT147.S1.Q23

TrustLawNerd

Yesterday

Hoo boy, I was floundering until I noticed that D referenced "bone samples" and "blood samples." Oh dunk, gotta reread the stim. Oh. OH. Oh my god they compared bone samples to blood samples.

Stim only says it's concentrated in "bodily tissues" - it never specifies which specific bodily tissues are affected by the heavy nitrogen or to what levels. So why would I assume that bears would have the same concentration of heavy nitrogen in blood vs. bones? Well... I wouldn't. But if the levels are consistent, then this issue becomes moot.

Thus, the answer is D.

PrepTests ·

PT101.S2.Q18

TrustLawNerd

Edited Yesterday

Prediction: The correct AC will tell me that the sixfold increase still isn't enough due to the budget starting quite low (a sixfold increase of $0 is still $0 lol).

PoE:

A: Irrelevant. Does not address the increases in funding or wetlands needing protection.

B: This would explain why there may be a need for extra funding, but does not address why the huge increase in funding they did receive isn't enough.

C: Irrelevant. Fails to address why funding increase is insufficient.

D: Similar to B, but even weaker.

E: Oh! There we go. I like this one a lot, and it nicely paraphrases my prediction. If we map this out into something a bit more concrete...

Let's say that for purposes of this stimulus, we're discussing a hypothetical country that requires wetland funding equivalent to the U.S.'s current budget.

Real-world fact: The U.S. government budgeted ~$45 million for wetlands conservation in 2026.

Now to flesh out stimulus facts a bit:

In 2016, the budget for wetland preservation was $200k.
Over the last 10 years, the budget has increased to $1.2 million.

This results in a deficiency of $43.8 million. Well... that's not great. That sixfold increase seems pretty inadequate to me!

LSAT · Reschedule test?

TrustLawNerd

Yesterday

Yep, I was feeling the same so I rescheduled for September. No shame in doing so!

PrepTests ·

PT119.S2.Q19

TrustLawNerd

2 days ago

I was waffling between A and B. Ultimately went with A because conclusion refers to "humans," not just "babies," and I interpreted A to imply that it happens in all ages, not just babies.

However! What I should have focused on/predicted was an AC that eliminated an alternate explanation of "Well, these babies have heard this music before so they paid attention to familiar sounds more than others."

PrepTests ·

PT137.S4.Q23

TrustLawNerd

2 days ago

First, I predicted that the correct AC would address both P-plankton and fish species X, Y, and Z, connecting them somehow.

How did I predict this? Because "biologists believe the two phenomena are connected." Thus, the explanation will explicitly state how the two are connected.

Next, PoE:

A: This doesn't address P-plankton or fish species and requires a billion assumptions. Eliminated.

B: Oh, I like this one. It tells me (1) why the P-plankton population is shrinking; (2) why fish species XYZ are dying off; and (3) that both of these phenomena are caused by the same thing.

C: This one is okay, but definitely not as good as B. This AC tells me why the P-plankton population is shrinking, but requires multiple assumptions regarding the reason behind fish species XYZ's increased death rates.

D: Requires assumptions regarding the cause of widespread starvation and doesn't address why P-plankton's population is decreasing.

E: Irrelevant. Requires way too many assumptions, doesn't address anything I actually care about.

Thus, the answer is B.

PrepTests ·

PT142.S1.Q17

TrustLawNerd

2 days ago

After an initial shallow dive into the ACs, I landed on D, but it felt extremely weak. So, I went back and did PoE:

A: Well, if white glass and Han purple were exclusively produced near each other, then it's conceivable that one derived from the other. Still pretty weak, but at least stronger than D.

B: Not sure why I care about how the materials were used.

C: The amount of people who know the techniques involved has no bearing on how Han purple was discovered.

D: Already dislike this one. Next.

E: Do not care how prevalent each type of material was.

Result: A is still pretty weak, but at least it's better than the other ACs.

LSAT · New feature: AI Coach

TrustLawNerd

Edited Yesterday

It is extremely rare that I find an AI feature that actually helps me, however, in the limited scope of (1) spitting raw data out to me in a plain-English format, and (2) providing study strategies based on my performance and focus thus far, I like the implementation of the AI Coach.

I really enjoy the way it analyzes specific LSAT questions, because it DOESN'T. The AI is prohibited by LSAC from breaking down the actual questions (makes sense for many reasons), which mitigates some risk of inadvertent over-reliance on AI or using it to think for me. Honestly, if the AI Coach actually broke down questions or summarized 7Sage explanations, I wouldn't use it at all.

My biggest critiques are, unfortunately, inherent to all LLMs - overly wordy and tends to unnecessarily repeat itself, sycophantic, and anything and everything it says must be double-checked by a human.

Overall, it's good when used purely to crunch data and get recommendations on best study practices. Otherwise, no thank you, I would rather do it myself.

Detailed response examples:

Again, I very much appreciate that the AI Coach is prohibited from analyzing the questions themselves. As an experiment, I entered the prompt: "Analyze my incorrect science RC answers since March 1, 2026." The AI Coach responded with:

"I can't break down your specific missed Science questions or the passages themselves — LSAC prohibits AI analysis of official LSAT content. But I can confirm the pattern in your data and point you to the right review approach."

It followed this disclaimer with a couple of tips on best practices for reviewing and analyzing these questions myself:

"Rather than me parsing questions, here's the highest-leverage move:
Pull up the Science passages you've missed questions on in your past PrepTests and sections, and review them yourself by question type — sort your misses into structure/main-point questions vs. detail/inference questions. That tells you whether the breakdown is in your read of the passage or in answer selection.
Science passages often pair with Critique/Debate structure (competing hypotheses, an author weighing evidence). Since Critique/Debate is your top RC priority, reviewing these two together gives you efficient overlap."

I have also found its analysis of specific sections/drills/PTs helpful. Because it cannot analyze the questions themselves, I am only getting info available to me through the Analytics page, just in an easily digestible format which points me toward strategies and types of drills that I may want to focus on. Which is great! I don't want the AI to think for me - I only want it to point me in the right direction. For example:

"Your performance on your most recent high-difficulty questions shows that your fundamentals are rock solid. You perfectly navigated all the Difficulty 4 questions in this set, meaning your only remaining hurdles are the absolute hardest questions the test throws at you—Difficulty 5.
Looking closely at those Difficulty 5 misses, a clear priority emerges: Sufficient Assumption questions built on dense conditional reasoning. Two of your misses fell into this exact category, and one of them drained over six and a half minutes of your time. It is great that you are currently reviewing the Theory and Approach (SA) lesson. At the highest difficulty tiers, these questions almost always require you to flawlessly connect complex conditional chains. As you read through the lesson, pay special attention to the strategies for explicitly bridging the gap between premises and the conclusion.
Your other Difficulty 5 misses were scattered across Necessary Assumption, Strengthen (specifically involving quantifiers), and Argument Part. Because you are already operating at an elite level and aiming for the 170s, broad concept review across all these question types isn't the best use of your time. Instead, focus on rigorous, untimed Blind Review of these exact arguments to dissect the high-level traps that caught you.
Once you finish your current Sufficient Assumption review, build a custom drill exclusively targeting Difficulty 5 Sufficient Assumption and Strengthen questions. Since you already have Difficulty 4 on lock, practicing strictly against the hardest variations will help you spot top-tier traps more efficiently and protect your stamina for full timed exams."

Lastly, I like the suggestions it gives when you give it the prompt "What should I do next?" For example:

"The clearest signal in your overview, Nikki, is an imbalance in how you're practicing — and it points straight to your next move.
Your practice mix is heavily skewed toward LR. Across your last 45 days, almost all your drilling has been LR — often 30, 50, even 60 questions in a sitting. Your RC reps come almost entirely from full sections and PrepTests, with only a handful of standalone RC drills (14 on April 21, 27 on May 15, 7 on May 29). You've built a deep, well-practiced LR foundation. RC has gotten far less deliberate attention.
That matters because RC is where your inconsistency lives. Your RC sections swing from a perfect 0 all the way down to -7. That spread — some passages click, others fall apart — is exactly the pattern that dedicated RC review fixes, and it lines up with the priorities we've discussed: Critique/Debate and Science are your widest RC gaps.
A few things to prioritize:
Shift more deliberate reps to RC. Review your missed RC questions by question type, focusing on Critique/Debate and Science passages. The goal is diagnosing why certain passages collapse — usually a shaky read of structure or author stance rather than individual questions. Your recent dedicated Critique/Debate drill (a clean 7/7) is exactly the kind of work to keep feeding yourself.
Keep LR narrow and sharp. You don't need broad LR volume anymore. Target only the highest tiers: Difficulty 5 Sufficient Assumption and Strengthen, plus Phenomenon-Hypothesis. And watch the Math-tagged causal/explanation questions — those keep surfacing in your misses.
Keep taking full PrepTests. Your most recent was 168, above your 162.9 average and closing in on your 171 best. With 17 in, the remaining work is consistency — raising your floor so your average days look more like your good days.
Bottom line: your LR is strong and well-drilled. The points to 172 are hiding in RC consistency — the section you've practiced least deliberately."

PrepTests ·

PT130.S1.Q24

TrustLawNerd

Edited 3 days ago

While info in the ACs are assumed be true, I forgot that in phenom-hypo questions, the stimulus is NOT assumed to be true.

Therefore, I skipped over E because it entirely contradicted the stimulus. Which I now see is exactly why E is correct.

PrepTests ·

PT124.S3.Q22

TrustLawNerd

Edited 6 days ago

Why did I get this right?

First step: highlight 'EXCEPT' in the stem so I don't forget.
Second: Keep in mind that the stem says "helps to resolve" and does not require it to be entirely resolved.

Started with PoE:

A: Helps. If libraries are buying fewer popular books, then libraries may not be able to keep up with the demand for popular books, so people may buy them instead of checking them out of the library.

B: Does not help. If bookstores were largely unaffected by the increased thefts, then their profits should stay the same, not increase.

C: Helps. This offers an additional source of income for bookstores.

D: Helps. This provides bookstores with a more lucrative business opportunity.

E: Helps. This offers another way for bookstores to make more money recently.

Feature Request · In Drills, Also Include the PT Equivalent for Blind Review

TrustLawNerd

6 days ago

Seconded!

PrepTests ·

PT131.S2.Q18

TrustLawNerd

Thursday, May 28

Oh I dislike this.

I eliminated D because "has increased more rapidly" implies it is an event that has already happened and thus set in stone.

However, I would've chosen D if the stimulus was phrased as "has been increasing more rapidly" which implies the event is currently happening, which means it is possible to change in the future.

I selected C because I interpreted "Malthus's position" in the AC as referring to "Malthus's prediction," not "Malthus's arguments," meaning that the statement (i.e. the thing that Malthus is wrong about) actually ends up supporting Malthus's prediction.

I'm fairly miffed at the grammar choice of "has increased" vs. "has been increasing" and I'm not entirely certain how to interpret the former as the latter.

wait just kidding I think I got it while retyping this post hang on

"Has increased" refers to an event that is continuing to happen because there would be no humans if we were not continuing to produce food. Duh.

PrepTests ·

PT133.S2.Q23

TrustLawNerd

Edited Thursday, May 28

From the "heck yeah I got this difficult one right really quickly" journal:

(Note: I've used "flawed idea" as shorthand to refer to "just because someone is not inclined to do otherwise, she or he does not deserve to be praised for doing what is right.")

A: The ethicist does not attempt to justify this claim.

B: There we go! "Although we do consider people virtuous if resist an evil desire [implied "however"], people with no evil desires are no less virtuous." combined with "It would be a mistake to say flawed idea" led me to choose this one.

• Conclusion states that flawed idea is false ("It would be a mistake to say flawed idea")
• Assertion acknowledges truth of both types of people being virtuous ("We consider A to be virtuous, however, B is also virtuous.")
• Arguments that make use of "although A, however B" generally mean that while both A and B are true, A alone is insufficient to prove the flawed idea's conclusion.

Thus: The assertion (observation) is insufficient to justify the truth of the flawed idea (claim the argument concludes is false).

Felt very confident about B, but still quickly skimmed C, D, and E just in case.

C: Ethicist does not discuss what an "adequate" conception of virtue is or any obstacles.

D: Ethicist never states that this is false.

E: This claim does not prove that it is a mistake to say flawed idea, it proves that it is NOT a mistake to say flawed idea.

PrepTests ·

PT134.S2.Q5

TrustLawNerd

Thursday, May 28

From my "oops I almost got this one wrong" journal:

Mostly used PoE here. I initially misread the stimulus as "All children ... are permitted to swim between noon and 5pm." Whoops. We got there eventually though.

A: Unsupported. Stimulus never mentions number of adults/kids.

B: Initially eliminated due to misreading stimulus and because of the weird conditional included ("next-door neighbor" is SO SPECIFIC but technically correct, which is the best kind of correct).

C: Again, we don't know how many people are there. Maybe only one child swims today, but 50 adults swim today.

D: Unsupported for multiple reasons. First, the pool could be open but no one comes to swim that day. Once I realized I'd misread the stimulus, I caught the second reason: children are not permitted to swim in the afternoon.

E: Finally realized I misread the stimulus and eliminated this answer. "Before 5pm" isn't limited to "as early as noon" - the kid could be swimming at 10am, and the stimulus doesn't discuss the morning.

I had now eliminated all 5 ACs. So after I eliminated E and figured out that I needed an AC that addresses other times of day, I circled back to B. It's definitely phrased oddly. However! It's the only AC that addresses swimming times outside of noon to closing.

PrepTests ·

PT122.S2.Q7

TrustLawNerd

Thursday, May 28

I initially diagrammed correctly:

/rot AND inspect -> /infect -> safe

But the addition of /rot confused me because it's not actually relevant to the conclusion. I now see that all I needed was /infect -> safe!

PrepTests ·

PT145.S2.Q23

TrustLawNerd

Tuesday, May 26

Diagrams (after kicking up Moradco):

Velyena -m-> /violate (cannot take contra of "most" statements)

gold -> violate (contra: /violate -> /gold)

All strung together:

Velyena -m-> /violate -> /gold

In plain English:

Most Velyena mines aren't gold mines.

PrepTests ·

PT119.S3.Q15

TrustLawNerd

Tuesday, May 26

PoE and negation test:

A: Immediately eliminated because "...than is any modern individual" is WAY too strong. It's also unsupported. Stimulus doesn't state the levels to which earlier/modern people are concerned with societal good.

B: This one is interesting. It connects "...can damage individuals who appropriate this attitude" and "societal good." What happens if we negate it?

"It is not to anyone's advantage that they be concerned with societal good."

Well... if concern with societal good doesn't help anyone anyway, then why would the opposite attitude damage anyone? Let's put a pin in this AC.

C: The factors which go into a person becoming concerned with benefitting society are irrelevant to the conclusion. Eliminated.

D: Aesthetic merit is entirely irrelevant to the stimulus. Eliminated.

E: This one has the weak language I'm looking for, but there is nothing in the conclusion regarding a comparison between earlier/modern literature. What does the negation test tell us?

"Modern literature is usually equally conducive to societal good as was the literature of earlier eras."

Same as with A, stimulus doesn't state the levels to which each era is concerned with societal good. But even then, literature which causes people to become concerned about societal good doesn't necessarily make it conducive to societal good. Eliminated.

---------

After PoE and negation, the only plausible AC remaining is B.

Feature Request · Enable Text Undo in Text Fields

TrustLawNerd

Wednesday, May 20

Seconded!

PrepTests ·

PT150.S3.Q21

TrustLawNerd

Edited Wednesday, May 20

Wow I hate this one.

I caught that the tax filing simplification omitted large companies, but to me, "hypothetical business" refers to "any business," not "a company with specific attributes that the World Bank made up for purposes of this report."

If it is easier for small and midsize companies to file taxes, then even if it's not easier for large companies, the rank will likely still improve - no? Just not as much as if large companies also had an easier time.

PrepTests ·

PT150.S3.Q19

TrustLawNerd

Wednesday, May 20

Changed from A to B right before submitting. :( I felt like there was a roughly 50% chance that the stimulus wanted me to focus on urban pollution, and a 50% chance that it wanted me to focus on pollution as a whole.

Lost that coin flip.

PrepTests ·

PT150.S3.Q17

TrustLawNerd

Wednesday, May 20

I was not super pleased with any of these ACs, so I deferred to the phrase "most helps" in the stem.

It's okay if the AC doesn't 100% resolve the discrepancy or if there are some assumptions that need to be made as long as the AC you choose is even slightly stronger than the other ACs. Going by PoE, I felt that C was the only one that even remotely strengthens.

The two base assumptions I made when reading the stimulus was "Wet weather -> better conditions for mosquitos to breed -> larger mosquito population -> more people bitten (i.e. more outbreaks)."

PoE:

A: If insecticides are prohibited in wetlands, that could theoretically increase the population, which would result in more outbreaks in wetlands. This makes the discrepancy worse.
B: More humans = more mosquitos? Less? Why do I care about humans here?
C: Ah, this one is interesting. There's something that's reducing mosquito populations in wetlands, that would resolve the discrepancy. But since there are a couple of assumptions to be made here, let's table this until we look at D and E.
D: Why do I care about number of species?
E: Why should I care about plant growth? How does that affect mosquito populations?

Summary: This one kinda sucks to parse out, but C makes the most sense compared to the rest of them, despite requiring assumptions.