When you're all lawyers in the future, buy a copy of Morson's English Guide for Court Reporters. If you folllow it, you'll run less of a chance that the clerks and judge will talk bad about your motions filings behind your back (speaking from experience).

Best thing I've learned from this introduction to informal logic section of the course is simultaneously knowing that two ideas are not identical yet given the right context, one can imply the other. "Unless the hospital is named "St. Aquinas' Hospital for Logical Precision.""🤣

Preptest 1 flashbacks

This feels very counterintuitive to the kinds of logical assumptions that one normally makes during LSAT questions. In literally any other question we would probably be assumed to know that an actor would have a copy of a script. It's like saying you can assume a lawyer has a law degree. We don't KNOW, per se, but common knowledge and ways of the world so strongly contradict the idea that an actor wouldn't have a copy of the script that I don't know what I'm supposed to gather from getting it wrong.

Rant over.

anime enjoyer

The incorrectness of B was very confounding to me because the prompt does explicitly use comparative language.

The thing is, as said in the video, Glen and Sara aren't both comparing what is stated in B:

The importance of something (Glen is saying something is "primary" which might be a measure of importance, Sara is comparing danger not importance);

They do not both compare virtuousness on the part of citizens (Glen and Sara mention the encouragement by government or the law toward virtuousness, not whether citizens actually are virtuous); and

They are not both talking about "protection of citizen's rights" (Sara kind of is, but Glen is talking about indifference to society's welfare).

The only thing that connects Sara and Glen in the two arguments is the cultivation of virtue (again, not the same thing as BEING virtuous), therefore we get E.

I read some advice on a website for military veterans (who often have low GPAs from doing school while on active-duty, and therefore are splitters) who are going to law school about this. I'll copy-paste their advice:

This is the biggest comedown for almost every vet applicant. Some of us went to school while working full time. Some of us have degrees from the notoriously grade-stingy Military Academies. Others were dumb 18 year olds who drank their way to a 2.0 at one school before enlisting and graduating with a 4.0 at another school. When we see the calculation of “3.3” from LSAC as our uGPA it can be incredibly disheartening.

Guess what? Can’t change it. What’s done is done. Your uGPA is your uGPA. Your goal at this point is to crush the LSAT. Nothing else matters. It’s the sole metric that’s going to move you, in the eyes of an admissions officer, from the “almost certainly reject” pile to the “hmmmm maybe we should take this vet” pile. Thus, that is your task.

Optional: uGPA/LSAT Addenda

But BEWARE, these should be short sentences for a small paragraph that explain boring facts, not some grand story. For instance, a uGPA addendum might read like this:

“I am applying with a 3.19 uGPA. When I began my undergraduate education, I chose an engineering major for which I was uninterested and unsuited. After three semesters at a 2.5, I switched to political science, where I found much more success. During my last three semesters I earned a 3.93 GPA.”

If you have some sort of discrepancy between scores here, either in your undergrad record or the LSAT, it might make some sense to provide some color for your application that explains the discrepancy. That’s it. That’s the story. There’s no crying or begging, just information. It at least puts the thought in your head that you’re more than the 3.19 on your application, even though you will be a 3.19 in their metrics. An LSAT addendum might be even shorter:

“I mistakenly took the LSAT in February of 2019 without preparing properly. My score of 152 is a reflection of that lack of preparation. After preparing more diligently, I earned my current score of 168 in September of 2019.”

Boom. Simple. Total story. It takes away the shock of a reader seeing a 152 and a 168 in your score log. Since they only count the highest score in their metrics, this isn’t entirely necessary. But it does answer the obvious question.

One aside here: These addenda are almost never going to matter much in your law school application anywhere except in the margins. If a school suddenly needs to pull five applicants off the waitlist in June, they’re likely going to go with applicants who have provided a clear picture of who they are. This is just another way to help do that. Do NOT expect to addendum your way around bad numbers. Every school where your numbers are below both medians is an assumed reject no matter what you say in your addenda.