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Independent Tutor
julielamberth

I have worked for major test preparation companies for over twenty years. I've graduated law school and passed two bar exams on the first attempt as well; I know the stress and the importance of the test, and this isn't just a sideline or an add-on to GRE or GMAT prep - I'm a true LSAT expert.

The LSAT is based on a set of skills, and if you can master these composite skills, you can master the test. There is nothing unusual or unexpected if you understand what you will be asked. You don't have to know anything substantive to succeed (but you do have to put the work in). The initial phone consultation is free, so that we can assess your tutoring needs and make sure we are a good fit for each other. Law school is three years of your life, and tens of thousands of dollars; you owe it to yourself to make the best LSAT score possible to maximize your options for admission. Your LSAT score can enable you to attend to the school of your dreams, or to graduate free of crippling student loans.

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julielamberth
Saturday, Apr 25

So my approach is a zoom out view. This is open book - nobody is taking the passages away from you. When you move on to the questions you want to understand the big picture ideas but don't worry about the details. If and when they ask about them, you'll pick them up. But on the first read stay on the high level stuff. Skip the details and minutiae - the for example, the in addition, the excruciating specifics of the science experience. "Curie did the experiment that proved her theory" is what you need, not every step of the experiment.

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julielamberth
Saturday, Apr 25

How far off is your time? Is it a 162 in 37 minutes per section, or a 162 when you take an hour and a half for each section?

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julielamberth
Saturday, Apr 25

Not saying this because I tutor but it might be helpful to get a human to work with you and assess what you are doing wrong. It's really hard for us to say from the information here though what is giving you trouble.

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julielamberth
Saturday, Apr 25

It's possible, but I'd recommend a longer time frame to give more realistic time for improvement. You want to be consistently testing a couple of points above your target, ideally. You might hit your goal in June, but it's going to be hard to feel confident about that in that time period.

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julielamberth
Tuesday, Apr 21

@JordanElliott is that the answer to why you are missing questions? Because you are mistranslating conditionals?

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julielamberth
Tuesday, Apr 21

What is giving you trouble? Why are you missing questions? it's hard to give specific tips without knowing where you are falling short.

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julielamberth
Tuesday, Apr 21

It's possible, thought not a guarantee. It will really depend on how quickly you pick things up. Make sure you are connecting each question you miss to an improvement or broad reason you missed it. When you get down to two and pick the wrong one, why did that happen? What did you do wrong to make you think that answer was correct?

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julielamberth
Wednesday, Apr 15

@bella_nova with 2, make sure you are connecting to the text. "I know C is right because at line 23 it says this is a problem." Wrong RC answers are generally wrong because they just aren't supported by the text. Think about the scope of the stimulus in LR, what type of language you want for that question type, and how to "plug the answer back in" to double check.

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julielamberth
Tuesday, Apr 14

Are you identifying why you missed each question? What patterns are you seeing? Changing answers last minute? Getting it down to two and not being able to differentiate? Without more specifics, I think key things are keeping in mind what type of language you want for answers to certain question types, how to "double check" the answer against the stimulus, and making sure you are looking at all 5 to help catch if you've jumped on an answer too quickly. But it's hard to say in a vacuum. At the upper levels you're not missing much and it's usually pretty individual from student to student.

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julielamberth
Thursday, Apr 2

I have some availability, please feel free to reach out if you're still looking. I have almost 25 years of experience.

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julielamberth
Wednesday, Apr 1

I advise students to drop the "pop quiz" mentality from high school. Remember RC is open book. Read at a high level to get the big picture and create a mini TOC with paragraph maps. Then use language in the question stem to direct you to where to go to research.

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julielamberth
Wednesday, Apr 1

The hardest questions in LR will be around 15-22 so that tracks. Look for places to save time. Where are you losing time? Are you quickly skipping an A/C once you see it's extreme/outside the scope/too weak? Are you going directly to conclusion, then evidence in argument based questions? Saving 5-10 seconds per question adds up over the section.

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julielamberth
Wednesday, Apr 1

What do you see when you review why you missed them? Are they all overthinking? Work on making sure you have a "test" for each answer choice. Remember when you took Algebra in high school and you'd solve equations? If you get x=7, ideally before you move on to the next question you plug 7 back in for x and make sure it works. Then you're 99% sure that's the right answer, and you didn't make a mistake along the way. Same thing for LR - have a way to test answer choices. The negation test for NA, walking back through the stimulus for MBT to show yourself why this answer definitely follows. Also make sure you are at least looking at all 5 choices before you pick so that if you've been too hasty in picking A or B you'll have a warning when you get to D or E and go "wait, this also seems to work. Something must be up."

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julielamberth
Wednesday, Apr 1

I always look at whether it's feasible. I have had students contact me who want a 20 point jump in 3 weeks and won't move their test date, and I tell them that that's going to be hard to do, ask if they are flexible on their dates, and if they're dead set on that score improvement in that time I honestly will tell them I'm not a good fit to work with them because their expectations are unrealistic. All that to say that I'm pretty honest and direct with people. If you were a student who came to me and said these are my goals, I'd probably tell you that August is a better target. SOME students could do this under the right conditions, but you don't know if you are one of them. If this is a cold diagnostic that helps, because it's more likely that just getting some basic fundamentals you don't currently have will give you a bigger increase. But if you were to come to me with this goal and ask me when to target, I'd say August.

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I’ve been teaching and tutoring the LSAT for almost 25 years, since 2002. In that time I’ve worked as the national product manager for a major LSAT course, and worked with many hundreds of students, and helped to design courses from the ground up.

My LSAT philosophy is to work smarter, not harder. Narrow the test down to what you need to do to answer the questions, and don’t overcomplicate things needlessly. I focus on a high level approach to RC (get the big picture, then use the questions to research where you need to go into more depth) and having a clear plan of attack for each question type in LR. The goal is always to think about big picture changes to strategy; you’ll never see the same question again, but should take what you did wrong on one question as an indicator for what to do differently in your approach.

Tutoring sessions are usually two hours long; each session is pay as you go so you don't have to purchase a package of hours. I’m on the east coast and generally schedule between noon and 6 pm Tues-Sat, with other times negotiable on an individual basis. I graduated law school in 2006, have been admitted to the bar in NY and NC, and spend most of my time helping students prepare for the bar exam when I’m not working with LSAT students.

You can reach me by messaging me or emailing me directly at julielamberth@mac.com. If you email, please put “7Sage LSAT” in the subject line, and if you don’t hear from me within a day, follow up with a message here as your email may have been spam filtered.

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