I have a fairly low stress legal job working at a circuit court doing mostly decedent estates and trust litigation case management (and some other probate). However, since it is a large county, I thus have a large caseload and so it takes up 40-50 hours of my week. It can take a lot of time and energy away from my allotted study time if I am not careful. It took about 3 months for me to find my footing but now my schedule is as follows:

Weekdays I wake up at 5:30ish and get in a little over an hour of studying before going to work.

I do not work in the PM's because I found that I just end up burning out if I work+study more than 10 hours a day, I don't retain much after 7:30, and I am generally a morning person. I'd rather expend from a full battery after just waking up than push my limits after a long day and face the repercussions of being tired out the next day or by the weekend. I don't have as much energy as most people on this thread, and that's okay!

Saturday and Sunday I get in 6-7.5 hours each day (unless I am working on Saturday, in which case only 4 hours that day). Saturday I do drills to warm myself up to extended testing, and Sunday I do a PT and BR. I review and figure out all my wrong answers throughout the weekdays in addition to doing drills throughout the week based on my weak points.

This leaves me with about 17-20 study hours per week, which I've found to be sustainable. Unfortunately, I'm sure I'm not making the gains I could be if I really focused on LSAT studying, but I think my study plan leaves me pretty content with my life and able to fully enjoy my hobbies and make the most of my pre-law days. Although it's a little discouraging to potentially have to push out going to law school a year because I still may not reach my target score by this summer, I'm generally quite happy with my job and work/study/life balance. If anyone has any tips to improve my schedule please lmk!

I had the same situation, was testing 166-169 and got a lower score in the 160s on two occasions. After my second test, I realized I was putting a lot of blame and pressure on myself, even though I didn't feel much test anxiety going in the second time. I really wanted to max out my score, so I decided to take more time and not crunch more tests before applying. But I made that decision with the assumption I'd just work on my resume in the mean time, since I'm in no rush to go to law school, so it depends on everyone's personal situation. I think at this point, I've made the test such an ingrained part of my schedule, that it's been normalized to me, which might be a useful strategy for you. If it's any help, try to think of every real test as just another practice test with a "meaningless" score, instead of letting yourself ruminate and think that every practice test is like the real test.

interested!

it might be beneficial for schools to know you know what you're getting yourself into (the legal field). Your cumulative gpa as calculated by LSAC and your highest LSAT will probably have more weight especially when it comes to scholarships.

I purchased CAS thinking I'd apply last year (did not). So I think yes. The writing prompts might change year to year (not sure) but if you look on 7sage admissions, they've got a list of the schools' requirements including their essay requirements.

I'm not sure but it will probably show up as a cancel I think, which is totally fine, law schools see cancels all the time and all they care about is your high score they get to report on their 509s. You'll do great in January, good luck!

Taking the LSAT on Friday too. Hoping for no crazy outages or anything. PT on Tuesday-- a relatively more easy one I've saved as a confidence booster-- and review on Wednesday. Thursday might just drill a logic games set and a RC set to stay fresh. On Friday, going to try to act normal. But saturday? live decadently.

If you're still working on your first bachelors, I would say take the time to improve that and work on your LSAT. Maybe this can be an opportunity to get scholarships next cycle. But if you've already completed your bachelors, your GPA is kind of set in stone.

I had the same question a while back, and 7sage does have a converter. Here's the score converter link.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat-flex-score-converter/