This short interview reminded me of something many people discuss in the LSAT community: the difference between our practice and test day. Mr. Danaher is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach at Renzo Gracie's gym in Manhattan. In the past few years he has produced a crop of students that have transformed several aspects of the jiu jitsu game. One of his students won ADCC Gold in 2017 (the most prestigious no-gi tournament in the world) and something only ~8 American males have ever been able to do.

In the video, Mr. Danaher says we should look at test day (he talks about grappling competition day) much the same as we look at practice. That, if all along we have been practicing the way we should be, test day is essentially another practice. I've heard this before in the LSAT community: that had we been practicing properly, test day is basically another PT! To all those taking the September exam fresh or as retake, just remember: look at it like just another practice.

7Sagers, is there an example of a LR question that you have deconstructed front to back that really paid dividends for you? I’m not talking about magic bullets or anything, but a question that after you had a foundational grasp of LR down, provided an understanding that you felt took you to a deeper comprehension of the test? Maybe a question that you were thankful you got wrong because of the insight heavily reviewing it provided? If possible, I would like to use this thread to bring together our views as a community on this matter. Disparate points of view, like the sinews of the rope are often the strongest when they come together.

For me, my question is 53-3-22, the Paradox-Except question. The first layer of difficulty on this question for me is the “except” element of the question stem. For some reason, I lose sight of this when my brain tries to make the answer choices fit, when they do fit (that is to say, when they actually resolve the paradox) it takes a fair amount of discipline for me to not consider them the “correct” answer. Essentially, I feel as though it takes me an extra step to first translate the answer in a manner in which resolves the paradox and then eliminate it as wrong. I am reminded in this regard of what Marx wrote about the clunkiness of learning a new language: " In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.”

The first lesson this question provided me was not to waste the mental energy on the “Except” part. Simply know before I sit for the actual test that “except” means what it means and be familiar enough with the exam that that process is automatic and smooth. The first time I got this question wrong I simply chose something that resolved the paradox (C) and wrote “Easy!” in the margins. This will never happen again.

The next lesson this question taught me what was both out-of-bounds and in-bounds in the realm of assumptions. That is to say what constitutes “implausible, superfluous…” by “common sense standards” when weighing the assumptions of answer choices? The second time I got this question wrong I chose (A) because I thought it took more assumptions to consider (A) as a resolution than it did any other. So count that as 2 times I got this question wrong for 2 different reasons.

At the end of the day for this question, you are forced to weigh whether (A) or (B) actually resolves the paradox more. (A) carries with it the assumption that because libraries are buying fewer “popular” novels, that people are choosing to buy them at bookstores and therefore are increasing profit. (B) carries with it the assumption that not only are bookstores contained within the nebulous “most” retail category in which shoplifting has hit, but that the cost of the “sophisticated antitheft equipment” was not only covered by bookstores being “largely unaffected,” but that it actually lent itself to “increased profits,” all within the realm of “recent.” Colloquially, if I were to show (B) to my friends who are nurses or chefs or mechanics, it would make sense as something that resolved the issue. Yet the assumptions that it carries because of the wording, require much more mental gymnastics than (A) does to resolve the issue.

Lesson #2 this question taught me: you are going to have to sometimes make some assumptions, make them cautiously and weigh your options. you don't have to love the answer choice for it to be correct.

Lesson 3 is to bury the question when you've answered it. It's worth 1 point.

So 7Sagers, I hope this wasn't too stream-of-conscious, but what are yours? I look forward to your comments!

-David

Even though this question is old, it has several lessons built into it. I was able to parse this question out mainly because of the lessons on 7Sage. The first lesson I see with this question is the importance of being attuned to the grammar of the LSAT. The stimulus begins with “since.” This should reference back to the core curriculum grammar lessons: “since” generally introduces something that we will be using to build towards a conclusion. In other words, we are hurled by the first word of this argument into a premise. We also have an additional premise that is introduced by the word “and.” We then have a comma and the conclusion is given to us in conditional language. I sometimes feel on LR that what I am given in a stimulus is like joining a conversation mid-talk and I am expected to piece together the information into the way the authors want us to. This is a perfect example of that phenomena in my estimation.

The second lesson in this question is the heavy use of conditional language. You have to know your conditional indicators in order to map this question correctly. What we end up getting when we map this question is:

P 1:If you support the new tax plan——>no chance of being elected.

P 2:If you truly understand economics——>Not support the new plan.

C:If you have a chance of being elected——>truly understand economics

The third lesson from this question is the idea that questions are often related in the task they set out for us, a deep understanding of this sits at the bottom of the case for reading the stimulus before the question stem: if you can tell what is wrong from the stimulus this thinking goes, the question stem shouldn't have to be read first (I am not a proponent of this view.) When I lined those conditionals up, out of habit I wanted to find the sufficient assumption. Well it turns out that if we look at this question through a sufficient assumption lens, we can actually garner quite a bit. Lets take the contrapositive of that first statement:

P 1: If you have a chance of being elected——>Not support new tax plan

P 2:If you truly understand economics——>Not support the new plan.

C:If you have a chance of being elected——>truly understand economics

So insofar as the premises supporting the conclusion this isn’t a valid argument. But why? Above there is simply no way to get from the premises to the conclusion. The forth lesson dawned on me when I was BR’ing this question: This is where the flaw really is: as currently stated, the premises do not support the conclusion. Familiar terms are used in the premises and conclusion as a way to distract us, but the conclusion might as well be something about football or motorcycle maintenance. There is simply no support for the given conclusion from the given premises. The relationships between the elements do not support the given conclusion.

This is when we take a look at the fifth lesson embedded in this question and that is to take a close look at the question stem. This isn’t actually asking what the flaw is in the way we are all used to. Instead, this question is asking us for something that the argument ignores the possibility of. More specifically, that the argument ignores the possibility that “some people who _____” The fifth lesson here is how to deny a conditional relationship. So if I were to give you the conditional relationship: All cats are mammals, you would deny that by saying “some things that are cats and not mammals.” The existence of a thing that is both a cat and not a mammal is enough to deny the sufficiency of something being a cat triggering the necessary condition of being a mammal. With this knowledge in mind lets take a closer look at what we are given in the stimulus.

chance of elected———>Not support new tax plan

+

Understands economics——>Not support new tax plan

Conclusion:

Chance elected——>Truly understands economics

How could we make this valid? We could say that Not support new tax plan——>Understands economics!

99 times out of 100, if we have gotten this far and we are stuck, it was actually our translation of the logic where we have gone wrong. Meaning if this was a sufficient assumption question, I would bet that I had translated something wrong. But, we didn’t. The only other possibility is something very peculiar: it appears that our author has given us: Understands economics———>Not support new tax plan, but has interpreted this statement in logic to mean: Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics! If we (wrongly) interpret the second condition as Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics, we have a simple A——>B——>C argument.

This is an incredibly difficult step to take. I am open for correction here, but the idea that we are given a conditional statement, that we translate correctly, but have to take a leap in judgement to conclude that the author might have interpreted that conditional statement wrong is hard enough. Finding where the author’s translation went wrong and then negating that translation to point out the flaw makes this, for my money, the hardest flaw question of all time. The author's assumption here is actually a mistranslation of the logic to: Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics The denial of this is (D)

I look forward to a correspondence with members of this community about this question. Has anyone come across something like this elsewhere? Would it behove us to classify this flaw under the umbrella of sufficient/necessary flaws more generally? Thank you!

David

**Admin note: edited title**

One thing I have been asked and am starting to take note of is goal setting on LG. Generally speaking, LG is looked at as a section very amenable to improvement. I believe this is rooted in the fact that upon first encounter, for many test takers LG is the weirdest section of the exam and that unfamiliarity translates into a lack of correct answers on one’s diagnostic or first attempt. It is often after one has gained familiarity with the games and developed a systematic strategy to approach the games where one starts to see their scores improve.


This post is dedicated to those who are what feels like a lifetime of prep away from their goal score on LG. It took me over 2,000 games to get from where I was (maybe 1 or 2 questions correct on the entire section), to close to where I want to be (a -1 for the whole section). I’m writing this for people who are -10,-12,-8 or even -5 on an LG section.

Let’s pretend you as the reader are attaining a -10 on a fresh, timed LG section and you want as your goal a -3 come test day. From someone who has put in so much work into the games, what do I recommend?

The first thing I recommend doing is figuring out precisely where your current problems are emanating from, is it a failure to make inferences? Do you occasionally misread rules? Is your understanding of conditional logic weaker than it should be, ie, not as sharp/quick/confident as it should be? Are you failing to keep track of your game pieces in a cogent way and therefore you have missed “floaters” or MBT placements? These are some of the possible places where errors might be introduced into our approach. The first step I recommend here would be to record yourself doing a section and review and watch the video on 7Sage for the game and see precisely where you failed to do something. Note here that you want to focus on the big things you missed, there might be smaller, stylistic differences between how you and MR. Ping set up a game board, sometimes, this is not a problem, other times it might be, in short, we are looking for substantive areas that are missed and not stylistic areas per se.

Next, use the filtering option on 7Sage’s question bank to find three or four games similar to the one you messed up on from a section of exam history you have dedicated to drills: for many this section of exam history is PT 36 and below: 35,34, etc, for me, my fool proofing/drilling “bundle” at this stage was PT 49 and below. Do these games several times along with the game you missed questions on. Look for similarities between the games on a deep level, how many rules chained together along with the inherent constrictions of what the game board allowed, for an inference on an in and out game? Where did you know to look for s possible inference? One small clue I will dispense here is that if you want to search for inferences after or during the writing of your rules: start with a piece mentioned in more than 1 rule. If a single piece as multiple restrictions/rules attached to it, there might be an inference attached to that piece!

All of this is outlined by 7Sage and by 7Sagers. Where I want to go with this post is , where to next?

After you’ve done the supplemental drills, located and hopefully fixed an issue, the next section you take (5,6 maybe 7 days later because you’ll be consciously drilling away the issue you discovered) your goal for that section is to not get a -10 or more missed questions. Your goal for that section is a -9 and maybe even a -8. The goal here is proximate: to be slightly better than where you were, meaning you have fixed something small and in addition to that kept everything else consistent. -9 here is a victory, you’ve survived and are no worse for the wear.

A quick detour: I’m reminded here of the first Pacquiao vs. Marquez fight. A thrilling match. Manny Pacquiao is, even to people who don’t follow boxing, one of the all time greatest fighters to ever live. Certainly (for my money) the greatest left handed fighter to ever live. Manny Pacquiao posses one of the greatest combinations of speed, precision and power ever. Tremendously physically gifted. But Marquez is brilliant, he knew he was outmatched in the physical areas of boxing and had to rely on what boxing experts call “ring generalship” or “boxing IQ.” In their first fight, Marquez got very badly knocked down several times in the first round: about as bad a start one can get fighting Pacquiao, who jumps on wounded opponents with precision like no other.

The fight was an inch away from being stopped by technical knock out. The round ended and Marquez went back to his corner: not defeated and deflated, but curious as to what he could do better the next round. Sure enough his corner started noticing things that he was doing wrong: not enough head movement, not enough jabs etc. From each round forward Marquez started implementing those things into his approach, one by one. His goal in the second round: stay alive and don’t get knocked down again. His goal in the third round: shake out all those cobwebs and start moving your head. Inch by inch all those things that got him into trouble in the first round, were being removed from his approach. He started winning rounds!

Sometimes we are going to get knocked down by an LG section, much like Pacquiao knocked down Marquez. But we’ve got to get to what went wrong and the next time we do a section (round) we implement that skill. Round by round Marquez started implementing all these things! And when the 12 rounds were over, it was a draw! A guy who had been knocked down three times in the first round by one of the greatest fighters to ever live was able: inch by inch to get back into the fight! If you’ve bombed a section: find one of the issues and drill it away. Bring that lesson into your next section, next time find another issue and drill that away! Marquez wasn’t looking to knock Pacquiao out in the second and third round, that would have been too much of a mountain to climb, Marquez was looking to win inch by inch. In your next section, don't look to crush the section and move from -10 to -2, instead look to turn that -10 into a -9. There are enough sections out there to implement this strategy across time.

Take a 6 minute brain break and watch the highlight:

So once you’ve improved by 1 point and you’ve improved something specific, it’s time to thoroughly review that new section, what went wrong and what went right? Your first goal is to stay consistent and your second goal is to improve upon that consistency. Consistency is improvement: for Marquez, consistency not getting knocked down again was an improvement! Drill via the question bank for the next week: your new goal is a -8 or maybe even a -7. Rinse and repeat, every 2 points in improvement taking an additional 3-5 days to drill the supplemental material along with the game in question. We do this because as you get better and better the problems might become more nebulous. Meaning, where once your improvement rested upon confidence in conditional logic, now your improvement relies on not making the inferences quick enough. Everything is great, it's just not fast enough to net a score improvement. These issues are going to take a bit more time to improve, but in the meantime you have hopefully attained a new normal when it comes to your score: a -7!

This is what I mean by LG goal setting: your process of diagnosing what is wrong and keeping the good things and fixing a single issue is a game of inches. I see many people not happy that they haven’t gone from -11 to -2. For some people-myself included- thats not how it works for us. A -11 to a consistent -7 is amazing progress and is something great to improve upon. More specifically, going from a -11 to a consistent -7 is tremendous. We want structure our goals piece by piece with games. People don’t climb Everest in one shot, they climb 200 feet and camp out, 400 feet and camp out, the next day there is a storm and their goal is: don’t lose an inch, stay where we are (consistent) and then they climb 200 feet and camp out when the weather is better.

Inch by inch, when we add up all of our progress, we will make it into that -2/-1 range, as long as we are honest with our mistakes and implement the solutions consciously. I should add in closing here that for many, this is not a linear process, there are going to be setbacks, but as long as we are focusing on sustaining where we are and building upon the foundation: improvements should come.

For further questions, feel free to reach out to me.

David

Hey folks, I wanted to post a few questions here that contain “most” relationships in them that are not that common. They collectively might only take 45 minutes to memorize, and who knows: one might show up on your exam and you can get the point! This is part 1 in what I hope is a 3 part series examining weird most relationships.

The first most relationship I want to discuss takes this following form:

Most As are Bs

Most Bs are not As

The following are 2 questions that make use of this relationship, we are asked for a must be true and the answer to both is the same iteration of the must be true.

Pt 77-4-13

Pt 80-1-22

I have left one other question out. As an exercise, I want you, the reader to try to memorize this form and see if you come across it yourself, that way you can see if you have actually retained the memory and understanding of the form and if you would net the point come test day.

Lets take a look at what these two statements mean. Mr. Ping points this process out in the lessons, but it is worth repeating.

Here is an example:

Most people who live in the United States know who The Beatles are

But, most people who know who The Beatles are do not live in the United States

In combination, what must be true here?

Let’s pretend there are 320 people in the United States and lets assign a number constituting “most” of that set to be those who know who The Beatles are: 200. It might be helpful here to view “most” as simply something equal to or more than 51%. So that assignment of 200 is our “most.” This is a very basic way to look at this concept, there might be more thorough ways to look at it, but I think this will work.

Now let’s rephrase that first statement with something more concrete:

200 out of a total of 320 people in the USA know who the Beatles are

Now let’s look at the other statement and its relationship with the first statement:

But, most people who know who The Beatles are do not live in the United States

Here we are looking at the total set of people who know who The Beatles are and we are making a statement about that set: that that 200 we know comes from the United States constitutes less than half, or less than what we are colloquially calling “most” or more specifically, a maximum 49%, this has to be true in order to make room for the number of people that constitute 51% or more not from the USA who know who The Beatles are. So whatever the rest of that set is (not USA): it must be something more than 200, because if it were less, the statement itself would be false. So what raw number constitutes most in one context does not constitute most in another context.

So the second statement tells us that the 200 we have from the USA falls short of most, and the remainder of the total set of people who know who The Beatles are comes from Not USA. So the total set of people who know who The Beatles are might be 1,000 and 200 come from the USA and 800 from elsewhere/not USA. That is a fact pattern commensurate with our statements. A number that constitutes most (200) in one context is less than half in another context.

Most professional Bull riders are from Texas

Most people from Texas are not professional bull riders

This is an example that might make the idea of sets in this context easier to grasp.

Texas has roughly 30 million people, a set much larger than “professional bull riders.”

In one context “most” means something like 180/300 (bull riders)

And in another context “most” would mean something like 16 million (From Texas)

Intuitively, this makes sense, and I submit so does the must be true inference: that there are more people from Texas than there are professional bull riders.

I have designed a small exercise to help demonstrate this point. Below are 3 total sets that reference our Beatles/USA example above, which one is not commensurate with our fact pattern in the stimulus? Here is a reminder of what the fact pattern in the stimulus is:

Most people who live in the United States know who The Beatles are

But, most people who know who The Beatles are do not live in the United States

Total set:700 know who the Beatles are

USA:200/320 know who The Beatles are

Not USA:500 out of a total set of 700 know who the Beatles are

Total set:300 know who the Beatles are

USA:200/320 know who the Beatles are

Not USA:100 out of a total set of 300 know who the Beatles are

Total set:200,000 know who the Beatles are

USA:200/320 know who The Beatles are

Not USA:199,800 out of a total set of 200,000 know who The Beatles are

That’s correct, set (2) does not fit our fact pattern.

Now here is another intuitive example:

Most people who currently attend Harvard Law School are really smart

Yet, most people in the world who are really smart, don’t currently attend Harvard Law school

Intuitively, we know that the second set “really smart” is a much large set than the total group currently attending Harvard Law school.

Now, try applying a fact pattern to the two questions above and see what emerges as a must be true! Keep this form in mind, it might be rare, but getting it correct could be the difference between a 159 and a 160, or getting it correct quickly and efficiently could free up time that could lead to getting 3 questions correct you otherwise might have been pressed for time when you got to.

You know the drill: I'm open to correcting any mistakes I might have made here.

Thank you for reading!

David

I’ve drilled and drilled LG for the past 7 months. I have done nearly 700 LG games, 50 timed sections and really battled to get my LG score close to that coveted -0 or -1. I have not taken any LG sections in the 70s (saving these) and in the last 2 weeks I finally hit -0 on three separate timed LG sections from the early 50s. I felt confident and even finished those sections within 31-33 minutes. My scores prior to achieving the 3 perfect sections hovered around -2 for 3 months. I thought everything was going well. I would take a timed LG section one day, then drill 10 games from the 1-35 PT sets the next day. Today I took PT 39’s LG section and scored an astonishing 11/23. For some perspective, I scored 12/23 untimed during my initial diagnostic last August… I am not necessarily shocked, because I didn’t feel the sense of being “in control” of the games in the PT 39 set, but cannot put my finger on why. Doing well on this test requires honesty with oneself. Eluding the truth about one’s weaknesses is of no virtue. 11/23 doesn’t define my abilities on LG, but points to something systemic that is terribly wrong. If I was really approaching true mastery of the games, I feel as though my "bad days" wouldn't be this terrible. My sense is that when a game doesn’t flow well or doesn’t fit some sort of pattern I have come across before, I stumble and make silly mistakes. Has anyone else experienced this? I take Saturdays and Sundays off completely, so I don’t attribute this to burnout, I wake up excited to prep and learn each day. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

-Thank You

Edit: spelling error

There has been some discussion lately about the difficulty of PT 83,84 and 85. I want address an aspect of these discussions I have yet to see fully articulated as of late. I am by no means the first person to come to this conclusion, but I hope you find my take both helpful and reassuring. This process is what has worked and continues to work for me personally, I mean this advice as respectfully as I can.

Several people have written about the difficulty/subtly of these newer exams. Yet, almost by definition, the exams should not truly be that different from the previous exam which shouldn’t be that different from the previous exam before that and so on, because if they were markedly different, the LSAT would no longer be standardized in a way that any meaningful data could be gleaned from someone taking the exam. The exams would become “non-standardized” at that point. Imagine the shock for instance, if you sat down for an LSAT PT marked “PT 95” after all the hours of drilling valid argument types and the common flaws only to find the entire exam was a manual on how to disassemble and troubleshoot the transmission of a 2006 Honda Civic. Then the entire process of taking this standardized exam would be defeated.

Obviously, no one is claiming that the exams are now that different from previous exams, but nonetheless: this raises a question, if the newer exams are different, what are the primary differences? The answer to this question is usually something like: the reasoning patterns on LR are more subtle or “the answer choices are wrong because of the inclusion of a single word,” or “the flaws aren’t really as cookie-cutter as they were on older exams.” Obviously, there are more tangible differences between the PTs in the 80s and the PTS in the 40s: the inclusion of rule substitution questions on LG and the comparative passages on RC for instance, but these differences are by no means “new.” In fact, some of them have been around nearly a decade.

So, the general consensus seems to be that the newest exams are more “subtle” than exams 10-15 years ago. Which brings me to my central point, I am in no way claiming that the exams have remained completely unchanged, but I do claim that the changes have been subtle enough that if we have been doing pretests in order, we shouldn’t have noticed a big change from PT to PT and we should have in our approach inbuilt fixes to whatever has arisen.

So what should we do to minimize the struggle the newer material poses? After you’ve gotten through the CC and you are comfortable with the material: do the pretests with thorough blind review in order. Either from PT 37-present day with thorough review of each PT, or if you are like me and you need a few more PTs to drill from to get comfortable with the material then from 49-present day with thorough review. This helps us get a great foundation, hone our test day skills (pacing etc) and also mitigate any newer elements of subtly or surprise that might come our way.

So, ideally, the process would go something like this:

-You leave the CC having what you believe is a decent understanding of the material

-First PT 37: score 151

-Revisit the CC while thoroughly doing BR, because you thought you knew how to do necessary assumption questions but on the PT you missed 3.

-You watch the videos, you interact with the community, you walk away from that exam knowing how to explain every question, maybe not as fully as you one day will be able to, but nonetheless, you can explain it in a way where your strategies are being used.

-You take PT 38 rinse and repeat, maybe get in on a study group to answer questions and ask questions. You do this through all the PTs. This takes time, but can lend itself to the student getting used to the subtle difference between exams.

What I argue emerges here is a process in which by the time we go through the 60s, past the 70s and into the 80s in order, the “subtly” of the newer exams should be something we are acclimated to. If we have done this process correctly.

In summation, I have met a ton of elite high scorers in my journey. From them telling me their stories I have come to view the process these used in two rough categories: those that got a super high score by doing a process similar to this, if not more in-depth and those who come into the LSAT with amazing LSAT skills already in place who could start with PT 70 and do this process, but greatly abridged (either due to some combination of previous training in logic or other skills.) Basically, every high scorer I have met has done some iteration of this process, the only question is how much did they do.

On test day there are going to be people who get elite scores, how do they do it if the exams have this new subtly to them? They simply have become acclimated to the features of the exam that might be new or slightly different and assimilated this newer subtly into their already built approach of general skills honed through taking PTs and thorough BR. A wise person once told me that we have enough PTs available to us that the LSAT has in a very real way already “showed us their hand.” So the process can be done: go out there and do every post CC PT if you have to in order with super thorough review building skills you can carry forward to the next PT, you’ve got this.

TL;DR: if the newer tests have a unique subtly to them, we can mitigate this difficulty by doing pretests in order. That way we build our core skills along the way and also try to become acclimated to the subtly the newer material poses.

David

Hey everyone, This post is intended to be an overview of how the sufficient/necessary flaw appears on the LSAT and how we can develop a system of attack for the questions on which the sufficient/necessary flaw appears. I have collected my approach to these questions to 1 single thread.

I want to build on an analogy here that we all might not be entirely familiar with. It is rooted in my understand of the philosophical principle of Occam’s Razor. Suppose your car won’t start and you need to get to work. In an effort to solve this problem, you start deducing what is wrong with the car on the simplest grounds first: you check to make sure the car is not out of gas. We start here prior to checking more elaborate/expensive and time consuming problems: like replacing the transmission, because why potentially waste time with the more elaborate problems if the issue can be solved by appeal to something much simpler?

We do this all the time in our daily lives and I will submit, we should do this on various aspects of the LSAT: start with the simplest explanation of the problem on flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary flaw in an effort to save time. If that simplest explanation does not appear, move on to the next description. I might not be the first to apply this system to a problem, but this is the process I use:

1.Identify the “form” in which the argument has taken. This step is a convergence of several skills outlined in 7Sage’s core curriculum. From recognizing conclusion/premise indicators, to properly translating conditional statements, here is where our drills pay off. Extract from the argument both the conditional statement and what the author of that argument does with that conditional statement, here is where the flaw usually occurs.

Drill tip: any time we have a flaw question and our author is using conditional language, alarm bells should be ringing, for our chances of landing in sufficient/necessary territory have increased (although this is not a “silver bullet” it is a decent place to start.)

Drill tip 2: I want to place here a skill I have been thinking about a ton lately for my retake. My tutor calls this skill: following the thread of the argument. Following the thread is granting the argument a certain amount of leeway when we read it. Constantly taking the sentence we just read and trying to see how it relates to the sentence we are reading is following the thread of the argument. Among other things, we are looking for possible negations of certain terms that might not be readily apparent. Take for instance PT 43-2-12, “center of the universe” is essentially negated by the concept of “revolves around a star in the outskirts of the galaxy.” The concept of “center of the universe” implies that it is not in the “outskirts.” Negations can be hidden in the argument in this manner. Note here that there is some debate whether this question is really a sufficient/necessary flaw but I believe it illustrates the point I am trying to communicate fairly well, look out for innovative and clever ways the argument negates terms in the conditional statement, this can happen on several fronts, but a great way to be on top of these possible ways is to “follow the thread” of the argument sentence by sentence.

The sufficient/necessary flaw takes two general forms that encompass the vast majority of sufficient/necessary flaws:

Form 1:

We are given:

A---->B

We are told we have a specific ~A

We conclude we have a specific ~B

Note here: that we are given the ~A in the premise of the author’s argument and are given the ~B in the conclusion of the author’s argument. With this structure, the LSAT writers are telling us that the premise functions like the sufficient condition and that the conclusion functions like the necessary condition. this is an insight that I found helpful when I first noticed it.

Examples:

Pt 45-1-13

Pt 37-4-22

Pt 40-1-14

Pt 23-3-17

Pt 27-4-7

Pt 11-2-9

Form 2:

We are given A---->B

We are told we have a specific B

We conclude we have a specific A

Examples:

Pt 24-2-23

Pt 13-2-26

Pt 22-2-25

Pt 39-4-15

Note here that these are not exhaustive lists. So this is our first step, get a grasp on the form of the argument.

Drill tip: note here that the only question I have been able to find in which we are asked to tell the difference between these two forms is: Pt 51-1-20, in which answer choices (B) and (E) contain the sufficient/necessary flaw, but in different forms. Here we are choosing the form that mirrors our stimulus. Know these forms! Knowing the form in front of us is the first step to describing that form with an answer choice.

2.Once we have the entire “form” in front of us, we move on to the question of how a description of the flaw might appear. In the easiest way available: we scan the answer choices for the words sufficient/necessary. This is the analog to checking if our car is out of gas, if we have found a description of our problem that uses the words sufficient/necessary correctly: choose it and move on, congrats, you’ve answered this question in 40 seconds.

Drill tip: the LSAT writers are aware of this surface level approach to questions, occasionally, they will plant a misdescription of the sufficient/necessary flaw. For an example of this, please see: PT 75-1-12 answer choice (B),in which is using our words that we need, but is describing valid logic! Yes, the test writers are this petty. This is not the only question ever to contain a trap like this, so it begs the question of knowing how to describe a sufficient/necessary flaw beyond the buzz words sufficient/necessary. At this juncture, with some back of the envelope calculations, I believe with the first two steps, we are looking at getting 30-35% of flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary conflation correct. What I mean by this is that many flaw questions that contain the sufficient/necessary conflation that we have understood due to our application of step 1 will describe it using those words. This is merely noticing the reappearing elements to the question and describing it.

3.So we have reached step three. We have a handle on the form of the argument and we know that the author has committed the sufficient/necessary flaw. We also don’t see the words sufficient/necessary used in the answer choices as a way of describing the flaw in front of us. So at this point, we are going to need and are going to have to deploy an understanding of what makes the sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning. In service of this point I recommend three things: Mr. Ping’s individual explanations of questions contained in the various packages available for purchase on 7Sage, Douglas Walton’s book: “Informal Logic, A Pragmatic Approach” and an analysis of the answer choices the LSAT provides us with as credited responses to these questions. Lets take a look at a problem that contains the sufficient/necessary flaw in which we have to describe the flaw by reference to precisely how the reasoning is flawed rather than the use of buzzwords.

PT 37-4-22

Here we are given:

Irish stone--->very old

Premise: we have a particular ~Irish stone

Therefore we conclude that have a particular ~very old stone

Note here that we have to know that Scotland is not Ireland in order to draw this implied negation of our A term. I think we can rely on the fact that the terms are not literally the same here, rather than geographical knowledge. This is an example of ”following the thread” of the argument.

So this is the sufficient/necessary flaw, form 1. We are given A-->B, we say we don’t have an A, therefore we conclude we don’t have a B.

Here we are going to see two hurdles that the test writers throw our way: referential phrasing and what I call the fourth wall. Now, if you have read this far, bear with me for a moment! I promise this will be of value to you.

Quite often with sufficient/necessary flaws, our author is going to take the actual conditional statement that we translated correctly, reverse it and then run some sort of operation on that reversed (flawed) interpretation of the conditional statement.

So we are told if Irish stone then very old. This is the correct interaptation.

Our author takes that conditional statement and reads it as:

If very old then Irish stone

Our author then takes that wrong conditional statement and runs the contrapostive on it.

~Irish stone

Therefore

~Very old

This is what answer choice (E) is describing:

“Takes the fact that all members of a group [Irish stones] have a certain property [very old] to mean that the only thing with that property [very old] are members of that group [Irish stones].”

This answer choice says:

takes Irish stones---->very old

to mean

Very old---->Irish stones

This is where the flaw occurs, when the author has mistranslated the initial conditional statement. At that point the author runs the contrapostive on this wrong conditional statement. Now this is weird, we are essentially engaging with what the author has erroneously translated and ran away with.

So this “fourth wall” of analysis is where we will move to if the words sufficient/necessary are not present in the answer choices. Lets take a look at another example:

Pt 23-3-17

Here we are given:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

We say that we have evidence that punishment does not deter

Therefore we conclude that punishment is never justified

Again, take a look at answer choice (C)

The author has mistaken

“Being sufficient to justify punishment [deters] to be necessary to justify punishment.”

The author has taken:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

To mean

If punishment justified then punishment deters

The author then runs the contrapositive on that mistaken translation of the conditional statement.

Step 3 is about finding how the author might have messed up the conditional statement we were given and that we correctly translated. In the above example the author has taken

Deter---->justified

To mean

Justified------>deter

At this juncture, it doesn't matter what operation the author of the argument takes, it will still be wrong, because the statement is translated wrong.

Here is the heart of what makes a sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning: sufficient conditions do not operate the same way as necessary conditions. Lets look at another example to engrain this intuitively:

If something is a dog then it is a mammal

Dog---->Mammal

My neighbor has a cat (not dog)

Therefore my neighbor doesn’t have a mammal

Depriving a necessary condition of its sufficient element does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the necessary element [mammal]. This is covered in the core curriculum. Depriving “mammal” above of something that is sufficient to produce it doesn’t mean we don’t have a mammal in front of us. Something else could be sufficient to produce mammal: cat, gerbil etc.

Now, saying my neighbor does not have a mammal, allows us to draw the conclusion that my neighbor does not have a dog, for (as we all know) depriving a sufficient element (dog) of its necessary condition (mammal) allows us to say we don’t have the sufficient condition, because we don’t have the thing necessary for having that sufficient condition.

Operationally, sufficient and necessary conditions hold different powers for our conditional statement. On sufficient and necessary flaws, the author of the argument (usually through a mistranslation of the initial conditional statement) has granted the sufficient element the powers of the necessary element.

So, if we are given:

A----->B

and the argument says we have a particular ~A

therefore we conclude we have a particular ~B

The argument might be erroneously taking A---->B to mean B---->A

Similarly, if we are given:

A---->B

And the argument says we have a B

Therefore the argument says we have an A

The argument might be erroneously taking A----->B to mean B----->A

There are a finite number of ways in which the LSAT describes how this flaw has taken place and I have found it helpful to look at the flaw the way we do in step 3 as my main method of cutting through the haze of referential phrasing on many of these answer choices, because quite often the heavily referential phrasing answer choices to sufficient necessary flaws will be saying just this: that our author has taken A---->B to mean B---->A. If we know that the author has misinterpreted the conditional statement to mean something that it doesn’t, we can get a grasp on a majority of the ways in which it is described not using the words sufficient/necessary. It has been my experience, that with some back of the envelope calculations, an application of steps 1-3 will net us the form and description of 85-90% of sufficient/necessary flaw questions.

I hope this approach helps:

I will monitor this thread for additional questions and will be adding a part two in the coming weeks.

David

*full disclosure, I'm not sure if there is anyone else out there that approaches these questions like this. Any similarity is purely coincidental. I am also open for any correction you might see fit, we can make our approach stronger together as a community.

Edit 1: more specific elaboration in paragraph starting "There are a finite..."

Hey everyone, Across my studies, one thing that I have tried to do with LR is to look at arguments as repetitions of older forms of arguments. Trying to distill the argument in front of us down to something we are familiar with for me has been a real key to building my competence in LR. Competence leads to confidence, which shaves off time. Some of these forms are form that appear on nearly every exam: a sufficient/necessary confusion, the valid argument forms etc. Some are bit more rare.

My test dates are coming up (I’m scheduled to take both the July and the September exams) and I wanted to make a few posts about some specific (albeit rare) argument forms I have come across in my studies. This post will be dedicated to an argument form I have tentatively called the “tether” form. I am unaware of any other effort to specifically isolate and categorize this form or the others I have planned to post on in the coming weeks: although it is certainly possible that others closely studying the exam have indeed done so, maybe others have even named the form.

The basic analogy I want to build on here for the “tether” argument is this:

Imagine I have presented you with the following argument:

The New York Jets football team had an amazing record last year, after all, they finished with the same record as the Chicago Bears last year.

At bottom, I have tethered the claim in my conclusion to an unstated/unknown dock in the premise. A necessary assumption here would be that the Chicago Bears had an amazing record. Because the Jet and the Bears are both equal, if this assumption were not true, we would be tethering the Jets to a non-amazing record, which would defeat the argument. *_Note here to NFL fans, I am aware that in the real world this isn't exactly a necessary assumption because The Jets and Bears are in different divisions and the same record could be worth more in the AFC East etc, nice catch if you were thinking this, but: play along with the general gist of the argument for me please ;-) _

Going further: around this unstated assumption we can construct: weakening answer choices and strengthening answer choices. So in short, before we get into some examples: If I tell you that something is popular or great because it is similar to something else, I better have told you that that other things is popular or great, because by virtue of how a premise functions, I am “tethering” the subject of my conclusion to that in the premise.

Take a look at the structure of PT 56-3-10, where we have this very same outline slightly obscured by the usual LSAT tricks:

-Premise: because we have the same income from sales of t-shirts as these other series

-Conclusion: Our concert has popular appeal

With this knowledge in hand, we can see that what the argument has assumed is that the subject in which we have tethered the subject of our conclusion to in the premise, does indeed possess the property that we discussed in our conclusion.

Remember: because the Jets had the same record as the Bears, therefore the Jets had am amazing record.

We might also be asked to weaken this argument structure.

Pt 51-1-8

Here we conclude: sugar does not cause hyperactivity in population x

On the basis of: the behavior of sugar is tethered to the behavior of sugar substitutes.

Here, the credited response is simply a denial of the tethered assumption. In short: sugar is like a sugar substitute, therefore sugar does not do Y.

There is an infamous example that is slightly more complicated than the others on PT 37-1-19:

Here we have essentially “tethered” hatha yoga to traditional self help groups. And on the basis of that tethering, we conclude that hatha yoga is “powerful.”

There are other arguments that fit this form. These are just a few memorable examples.

In conclusion, my recommendation here would be to take the examples of this form of the argument and study them. Committing this form to memory takes only a few minutes of focused study and paid me dividends on PT 82, where I was able to spot a “tether” argument, answer it quickly and efficiently and move on to other questions that demanded more time from me. If you are able to do the same, please comment below with the question on PT 82 where the tether assumption is located: this is how you will know that you have successfully committed this form to memory. Carrying an understanding of a argument form forward is an important tool on the road to competence on LR.

David

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-2-question-12/

Hey 7Sagers, I just did this question and did almost everything right, but ultimately chose (E). I understood there to be 2 gaps,the first between: ~being able to tell ulterior motive——>~possible to tell whether an action is moral/ and the second gap being: ~being able to tell an action is moral——> should evaluate the consequences > morality. I took the last link in this chain (should evaluate the consequences) as the major conclusion. So I pre-phrased my answer to anticipate some iteration on the second link (or it’s contrapositive), thinking that what I wanted to build towards with the selection of a principle is something that would allow the major conclusion to properly stand.

Like several other 7Sagers, I usually write down why I am eliminating answer choices. I recognized (A) as the contrapositive of the first gap and didn’t eliminate it at first. B-D introduced new ideas or something we didn’t need. I eliminated (E) with my notes reading “Not what I need.” I recognized (E) as wrong, but (A) as simply something restated, So opted (with reservations) for (E). I now know a glimpse of what it must feel like to score 40 points but lose the game hahaha. I did almost everything correct and understood what was going on, but didn’t get the correct answer. :(

My questions about this question are the following: If we are asked to find something to “justify the reasoning,” wouldn’t any choice that leaves one of the 2 gaps unfilled not really “justify” much? I mean, I get that it says “most,” but aren’t we at least looking for something that justifies the Major Conclusion rather than some subsidiary minor premise/major premise link? Are there any sufficient assumption/pseudo sufficient assumption questions (that you are aware of) in which we will be forced to choose between bridging the gap between a minor premise/major premise at the behest of bridging the gap between a major premise/major conclusion? Are there questions in which adding a sufficient assumption or principle to the wrong gap nets the wrong answer?

I started studying for the LSAT barely able to answer a single question on games. With no training in logic, I essentially had to start from the ground up. I credit 7Sage with allowing me giving me the tools become competent in games. I have been tutoring for about 8 months now and have been working on a system that I try to impart onto my students. Any parallels between the following steps and the advice that others have dispensed is purely coincidental. None of this is reinventing the wheel here, but rather some thoughts I have on LG consistency.

I have titled this thread "The Four Pillars of LG Consistency" for a reason. Notice that I didn't title this thread: "The Four Pillars of LG success." This is because 1.the definition of "success" will vary slightly from person to person, 2. Success has more elements to it than consistency. Consistency is a part of success. This post is better able to answer the question: "how can I keep my sections from being riddled with errors?" rather than "how can I get a -0?" The "pillars" are what emerged for me after doing over 2,000 games and teaching LG for several months. The general thread that runs through each aspect of the pillars is 1.to try to eliminate any "sloppy" errors and 2. knowing the exam well enough to be confident in our approach. Zooming out, what we are trying to do is build competency and eliminate any "mystery" the exam might present. Lets get started:

1.Develop your system whatever your "system" is, develop it and keep it rigorously consistent. Do you write your game pieces in the upper left hand corner each time? Then keep doing that. Do you write your gameboard to the right and your rules to the left? Great, keep doing that. But go deeper, make sure you are making "tick marks" next to your rules each time you write one down. Write your game pieces twice separated by a line: one set you never touch and the other you can scribble out to see what piece is left or what piece is the "floater." Have constant checks that you have properly translated rules. After you have translated all of the rules start from the last rule and read up to the first rule, each time checking that you have translated the rule correct. Read and extract precisely what each rule is telling you. The slogan here with check is: pay now or pay double later. If we made a mistake in translating a rule, we want to be in a position to catch it with our 20 second check rather than midway through the game (we all know that feeling :( ) when you have burnt 2 minutes. Have built in fail-safes. What also goes along with this first pillar is: be neat in your writing, what you are doing is worth money in scholarships.

I will tell a quick story here. When I first started studying for game I spent 6 months and did 1,400 games. I thought I knew what I was doing, I thought I would have that coveted -0. When I did my first timed section, I missed 7. Partially because I drew a "V" that looked like a "U," thereby messing up a rule and ruining my score. All of this stuff has to be solved item by item. For games we are looking to extract three basic things: the rules, our pieces and our gameboard. This information will often be partially contained within the "stimulus" (the block of text to begin a game before our rules.) I cannot understate how important this step it. I have calculated that for us to be consistent on an LG section between 16 and 19 things have to go well. We have to make sure we are translating the rules correctly, we have to make sure we have a neat and coherent system etc. But for things to go bad, just one or two of those things have to fail.

There are several ways to find the inference of a game. The most obvious is to focus on rules in which a piece is mentioned more than once. So if rules 1 and 3 both mention piece "A" we should be asking questions about what these rules mean in combination with each other along with the inherent constirctions of the gameboard (things like we are choosing 5 out of the 8 available in an in-and-out game etc.) Asking questions is a very helpful way to help us find the inference. So if a rule for a grouping game says something like: "piece A must be with exactly one other piece," we should be asking the question: who could that piece be? If in a five space sequencing game we have three pieces that are "followers" we should be asking the question: who can be first?" I believe that essential to finding an inference is asking the right questions.

What can aid us in asking the right questions? That is where the concept of the other side of the coin comes in. A coin has two different sides that express the same thing, we could be looking at the "heads" or the "tails" of a penny and those of us familiar with the penny will know that it is a penny and it has this particular value. Rules on LG are often presented to us in "the positive" or "the negative." By trying to find the other side of the coin we can help ourselves possibly find the inference. So for instance if we have a three group grouping game and piece A cannot go in the tennis group, by telling us that piece A cannot go into the tennis group the other side of the coin for that rule is: A must go in the volleyball or soccer group. It is the same thing stated in a different way, except now we have "the positive" of the rule or "the negative." You probably already do this, but often times the other side of the coin with rules is valuable information. It becomes valuable because questions will often be predicated on us knowing the other side of the coin. Take the aforementioned example. Piece A cannot be in the tennis group, which means piece A must be in the volleyball or soccer group. Another rule might tell us that a piece that piece A must stay away from piece B and a question might tell us that piece B is in the soccer group, which means, since we know the other side of the coin, that piece A must be in the volleyball group.

The other aspect of this step is building on an analogy I use quite a bit with my students. That is where do we start our analysis of the question? The analogy I like to use here is that if the car won't start before we replace the transmission, let's make sure that the car is not just out of gas. This is a variation on Occam's Razor. We start with the least complicated solution-a $5-$10 quick solution- rather than a $700-$900 complicated and long solution. In LG we can often eliminate an answer choice or two from a question by a mere application of our rules. Some choices are never going to work no matter what "If" condition they give us in the question stem is. By starting our analysis here we can possibly eliminate all the wrong answer choices quickly or efficiently or we can eliminate enough o make our "testing" of the available options quicker and more efficient. Take for instance PT 11 game 1 question 2. If we start our analysis of this question by first eliminating what could never be true with a mere straightforward application of our rules, we know that answer choices (A) and (B) violate rule 5 and answer choices (C) and (D) violate rule 4. We essentially do not have to do much work here because we have worked simple to more complex and we eliminated all of the incorrect answer choices on the basis of "checking the gas" i.e. a mere application of our rules. Always try to run answer choices against the rules or your inference or mini inference unless you know the answer from a sub-game board or split etc. We maximize our chances of getting the question correct in many instances.

Knowing the questions also comes down to knowing what to look for when they ask you a straightforward MBT: this is more than likely (but not 100% of the time according that my knowledge) a point that they are rewarding you for finding the inference.

Knowing the questions also comes down to counting the "steps" away something like an "If____, then what MBT?" question form takes. +90% of the time the answer to these questions will be between 1 and 4 steps away from the condition they gave us. So for instance if the if condition they gave us tells us to place something somewhere, we ask ourselves what does that trigger (by consulting our rules that are neatly placed next to our gameboard) that should trigger something, that is 1 "step" away. That thing should trigger something else according to our rules and pieces: that thing is 2 "steps" away. one can effectively predict the answer to these questions by knowing the amount of "steps away" something is from what they have asked us. The LSAT will rarely ask us for 1 step away and will rarely ask us for 4 steps away. Instead, they will be looking for 2-3 steps away most of the time.

LG has stayed remarkably consistent for the better part of 30 years.

4.Knowing what you know and executing that knowledge The last pillar here is the actual application of your knowledge to new games and timed exams. It is one thing to know how to dig deep into the games, it is another to be so comfortable with being able to do that that you can apply that knowledge to new games in a concise and coherent fashion. This is where a focused process of drilling comes into play. When you drill, look at all of the above pillars, consciously apply your system to the game, do each game several times, you will start to see the patterns upon which the games are built.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

David

I recently was able to take part in a discussion with a very well respected and recognizable civ-pro professor. The question I asked the professor was: “is there anything you recommend that an incoming student learn or be aware of before they come into your classroom?” The professor answered with a very relaxed response that essentially stated: you could skim a commercial outline over the summer but you don’t have to, mostly relax and maybe read a novel [Paraphrase].

I found the answer shocking but it is also indicative of a response one gets quite often when asking this question. Some of the forms this answer takes are: “don’t bother learning anything.” “Don’t bother learning any substantive law, you don’t know what your professor is going to focus on.” Before I continue I should with full disclosure state that:

-I have yet to attend law school (This August I will be: God willing!)

-I did not study law in school formally and have never worked a legal job, my interest in law mainly comes from life experiences and my own independent watching of the news in my home country of the USA.

So ultimately because I come to this issue from a particularly inexperienced perspective, I might be completely wrong about my analysis so wanted to start this discussion as an open and transparent way of evaluating the arguments for and against doing 0L prep and to what extent.

My position:

Is a student in a better position if they go into an American law school not knowing anything at all about the law? Is that student going to be better prepared for a Con law class for instance if they have never heard of the 5th Amendment or the 14th amendment beyond a law and order rerun? Is that student going to be better prepared for a property class if they have never heard of the legal concept of trespass? Is a student better off as a “blank slate” to both learn the law, understand how that law might be applied to cases and then contextualize that information to such a degree that they can both effectively issue spot and know what is important for their professor come exam season?

I think the resounding answer to each of these questions is no, if we define “better off” as engaging with the material in a more meaningful way and doing better on exams, a student that knows something: what the basic elements of a contract are for instance, will be better prepared for the rigors of 1L than a student that knows nothing. As I have stated previously, I don’t know of any other domain of knowledge acquisition where an individual would be better off coming into something as a complete blank slate, think of how these pieces of advice (that are routinely uttered online in response to the 1L prep question) would sound:

1.The summer before med school, it doesn't help to know what the major functions of the liver are

2.The weeks before auto mechanic school, it is a waste of time to know what the major components of a car's fuel injection system are.

These pieces of advice hinge on a key assumption: that everything you could possibly need to know for the grades that largely (but not exclusive) determine your future employment will be dispensed in the classroom time. Could this be true? Airing on the side of caution, I would say no, but of course, my experience here is limited. Even if this is true, even if the exams are exclusively determined by what is stated in class, doesn't it help to come into the class with some background knowledge of the topic to be able to distill that information effectively? So for me personally, I just don’t believe the professor, respectfully. Civ-Pro is one of the most convoluted subjects I have ever looked into, with all due respect, I would rather struggle now when I have 2 hours per day to spare with the basics, then to struggle later, when 1L grades are on the line and my anxiety is running high and the cases we are reading are based on the foundations I’’m struggling at the very same time to learn. For me personally the question is not should one spend any time studying, but rather: how much time should be spent?

With that position outlined I should take the time to ask other 7Sagers:

-Did you 1L prep?

-If you did, did you feel better able to engage with the material?

-If you didn’t, do you wish you did?

-If you didn’t, did you feel “behind”?

-What do you wish you did differently?

*Fallacy alter: we might not be able to tell what the causal mechanism for being “prepared” here is. 1L prep or not.

So for me personally the question becomes: how much should I study? I have never heard the blank slate idea defended properly. I’m open to hear this case.

So for me, my plan is to read some outlines, continue taking the 7Sage courses, explore LarryLawLaw’s practice exam, read “getting to maybe” as well as some other 1L resources for bout 2 hours per day, schedule permitting. My plan is to be ready with the basics of each subject so I can build upon that knowledge and take practice exams. I don’t plan on writing a masters thesis on the origins of the 5th Amendment in British Common Law, lol, but giving myself some tools to be ready for the material. Gunner much? maybe… But as of this writing I simply cannot buy the blank slate approach.

*Full disclosure, no one paid me for this as an endorsement for anything, I receive no monetary kickback from anything I mentioned, this post is rooted in genuine curiosity and an attempt to stimulate engaging conversation with the users on this forum.

Questions for my fellow 0Ls:

-Are you prepping for 1L and if so, why and how?

-If not, why?

-Want to form an online study group, maybe reach out to some professors as guest speakers and review material together?

I should note here that I will commit myself to following up come 1L the best I can on these boards, particularly trying to answer the question: how much did 1L prep help me?

7Sage’s first lesson in the core curriculum is: the LSAT is hard. I recently reread this lesson and wanted to add some thoughts: especially for people who might not have gotten the score they desired from the most recent administration of the exam or who are currently struggling to hit their goals.

An elite score on the LSAT has the potential to be worth $100,000 in scholarship money. This is a ton of money. To give some perspective: the average winner of an episode of Jeopardy wins about $12,000. Years of memorizing facts and figures ranging from everything from state capitals, flags, quotes from literature, pop culture references and even physics comes down to 21 minutes of rapid fire questions and an average award of $12,000. A person who wins Jeopardy has undoubtably spent years-decades even- collecting knowledge and fashioning skills for that moment.

What’s worse is that if that person wants to win what an elite LSAT score can provide them: they have to win 8 times in a row, this against 8 different pairs of equally qualified, equally hungry people who have been preparing equally hard for the next 21 minutes.

For what it’s worth, Uncle Sam will then take roughly 25% of their earnings. Which means the person who wants to win the equivalent of what an elite LSAT score can afford them must win about 11 straight games against a total of 22 other equally qualified, equally hungry people who have been studying a lifetime for the next 21 minutes!

So what we have here when we draw these parallels, is a reassertion that what an elite school can afford us is quite amazing and therefore it shouldn’t be surprising that the LSAT is hard. More specifically: that an elite score on the LSAT is hard. But, inch by inch progress can come and with the right study schedule, discipline and a supportive community: progress will come.

But, when you’re in the thick of RC or LG drilling or cracking necessary assumption question patterns, don’t get down if your score is not increasing quickly or linearly, for many test takers, it will be a laborious process. This thing is supposed to be hard and sometimes we lose sight of that, especially on the internet, where it seems like everyone has a high score. I think given some perspective on what an elite score can provide a test taker, it’s really no surprise: the LSAT is hard! Hang in there!

David

https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/the-lsat-is-hard/