I took the November 2021 LSAT with an external monitor, an external USB webcam, and a closed laptop on my desk. I didn't have an issue.

Question 13:

The reason you've laid out--the market "self-correcting" and correct information from insiders spreading among investors—matches answer choice B. B says that accurate information spreads quickly throughout the market. And that’s the argument Passage A is making. It would be worth exploring how you matched your reasoning to answer choice A instead of B.

What answer choice A is saying is that contracts for someone who is initially unpopular CANNOT have a sustained increase in value. For this to be accurate, it needs to pass two tests:

(1) Is that something Passage A is arguing? Is the author arguing that if someone is initially unpopular they CANNOT/will NEVER have a sustained increase in the value of their contract? No. In fact, the author of passage A doesn’t talk about candidates who are “initially” unpopular at all. Passage A, paragraph 2 just explains how the Iowa Electronic Markets experiment worked. In Passage B, the author talks about a potential weakness in the experiment, which suggests that the “initially unpopular” candidate ended up winning at the last minute. But Passage A doesn’t make this point. So answer choice can’t be right.

(2) Does the scenario in the question stem show that initially unpopular candidates CANNOT/will NEVER have a sustained increase in value? Tackle this like an LR question. What the scenario shows is that on a single occasion, people tried to manipulate the market and artificially inflate the value of the long-shot candidate.* They succeed temporarily and then the effect disappears. Does that mean that all other attempts will meet a similar fate? No. It’s possible and it could be true that initially unpopular candidates SOMETIMES have a sustained increase in value despite this one example. So answer choice A is inaccurate as well as irrelevant to the argument of Passage A.

Also, we have to assume that the long-shot candidate is the initially unpopular candidate.

Passage A suggests that the market will “self-correct” as you put it but that doesn’t mean that someone who is initially unpopular WILL NEVER have a sustained increase in value. That’s not a matter of “correcting” something in accurate or disseminating insider information. It may be the case that you made an extra assumption there and assumed that “self-correcting” means that the market only sees an increase in value for someone who is always popular (i.e., not “initially unpopular”). But it could be the case that someone who is initially unpopular slowly becomes popular and therefore sees a sustained increase in the value of their contract.

Question 14:

Oh man, I really hate this question. I had the same idea as you did for thermometer: it tells me the temperature at a given point in time—just like, according to Passage B, the market “takes the temperature” of majority opinion at given point in time. And a thermostat is used to control or change the temperature—just like, according to Passage A, the market is used to control or change the value of contracts.

A word processor is like Microsoft Word—a computer program for word processing. So answer choice A was referring to the relationship between a typewriter to a word processor, which may be something like the latter is the modern, techy, evolved version of the former.

Question 22:

The author’s final assertion says that increasing the number of recognized species would increase the number of species that need protection. Why does she claim that? Because she assumes that increasing the number of species will also increase the number of endangered species—not just regular species that don’t need protection.

Let me give an example: we live in a world where there are only 3 species: 1, 2, and 3. You don’t know how many members there are in each group. Only species 3 is endangered and needs protection. The author comes in, looks at this, and says: “Oh, if you increase the total (1+2+3), the total members in 3 are likely to increase also. But why? The increase could be solely in 1, or solely in 2, or solely in 1 and 2. So the author is assuming that the increase in the total number of species will have an increase in the group of endangered species as well.

If you identify this assumption, you just need to find something to support it and make it “likely” to be true.

A doesn’t impact the argument. The argument is that increased number of species means increased number of endangered species/species that need protection. Whether or not international agreements are put in place, that doesn’t change the correlation the author has identified in terms of numbers. International agreements to protect endangered species aren’t what determines whether a species is endangered or not. So it really doesn’t impact the numbers and the increase in numbers the author asserts.

E is difficult to interpret because it requires some simplification and has a conditional statement. It says that “proponents of the phylogenetic species concept” aren’t likely to contest established species classification if no one is endangered.

Let’s simplify at the beginning: who are these proponents? They’re splitters. What do they believe? They like to split up known species—which has a net increase in the number of recognized species. This is good because we’re looking for something about numbers increasing.

Ok, next up: splitters aren’t likely to contest establish species if no one is endangered. If you have a solid grasp of conditional logic, you can translate this to: /endangered -> /likely to contest. So for regular species, splitters aren’t likely to split up and create more recognized species. Ok, but the author’s assertion is about endangered species so let’s contrapose: likely to contest -> endangered. That means that splitting up is likely to increase the number of endangered species. This is the assumption the author’s argument requires. It shows that an increase in the number of species is likely to be “focused” on the group of endangered species (if you followed my example above, that would be group 3 increase).

Good to know you can talk to them about it, thanks!

Thanks!

I had the same question and emailed LSAC last week. You have up to a year to complete the writing sample. Here's their full response:

Thank you for contacting LSAC. You may launch LSAT Writing beginning on November 4th, using the link provided on the LSAT Writing page of your LSAC.org account. Once available, you may complete the writing sample whenever you wish however, please note that an approved writing sample is required to receive your LSAT score and complete a law school report. Please allow 1-3 weeks to process your writing sample. The launch link will remain on your account for up to one year.

Select the “LSAT” tab and “LSAT Writing” in the drop down menu to access the launch link. Thoroughly read the instructions on this page and you may select “Get Acquainted with LSAT Writing” to download the PSI software using Chrome, Edge or Firefox or Internet Explorer as a browser. Do not use Safari as a browser for this process. Alternatively, you may select the “Launch LSAT Writing” link on the bottom right of the page.

For further information about LSAT writing, please visit our website at : https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/about-lsat-writing.

But like was said above, this may delay how soon we get our scores back since they require a writing sample before releasing scores.

@, could I please have a copy of your checklist as well? Thanks very much!

soil nutrients completely depleted + /fertilizer -> /additional crops grown

soil nutrients completely depleted + additional crops grown -> fertilizer

In the explanation video, JY refers to this as a conditional statement with an additional embedded conditional statement. You can tackle each separately by first dealing with the embedded conditional statement (let's call it B: "additional crops cannot be grown unless fertilizer is applied to the soil") and then turning to the outer conditional statement (let's call it A: "if the soil's nutrients are completed depleted").

A -> B

soil nutrients completely depleted -> (/fertilizer -> /additional crops grown)

The arrow turns to "and" when you "distribute" the logic from the outer conditional to the embedded conditional:

soil nutrients completely depleted + /fertilizer -> /additional crops grown

You can even take the contrapositive of the embedded conditional and then "distribute" the logic, like so:

soil nutrients completely depleted -> (additional crops grown -> fertilizer)

soil nutrients completely depleted + additional crops grown -> fertilizer

When you're just looking at the embedded conditional, "additional crops cannot be grown unless fertilizer is applied to the soil," and you have both group 3 and group 4 conditional indicators, you can just pick one and go for it. For example, if you pick group 3 and you negate/sufficient the "unless" statement, it becomes /fertilizer -> /additional crops.