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Related Discussions
LSAT useful for Law school?
westcoastbestcoast
Alum Member
I was recently spoke with my 3L friend and he told how skills tested by the Logic Games carry over to law school. He said that law is really a measure of how good you are at puzzles. Can you take a piece of information (the rule), like a puzzle piece, and create a whole picture(your argument) with it in a way that's logical? Have you guys heard something similar in your conversations with law students? Its cool to see that LG, a section that seems so bizarre and unnecessary, is actually very relevant to law school success.
Comments
Yes it is absolutely helpful. For example, here is a way judges define whether a person is liable for battery:
BATTERY: HARMFUL CONTACT
A person is subject to liability to another for battery if:
(a) The person acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and
(b) A harmful contact with the person of the other directly or indirectly results.
Does this look familiar? It should! Because it's basically necessary and sufficient conditions!
IF we say liable = A; intent = B; and offensive contact = C, then this is basically:
B + C -> A
or
/A -> /(B+C)
Real world LSAT hehe
God I hope so. I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard for anything in my life.
Hahaha @"Paul Caint"
Not from a law school perspective, but I was called for jury duty last month and got to serve on a jury for a trespassing/burglary case. It was a super interesting experience and when we were in deliberations, I really think that my LSAT study (for better or worse) affected my reasoning. Basically, this person was caught in a building where a crime was committed. Being in the building is necessary for committing the crime, but is it sufficient? I don't think so. My brain got very weird and nerdy analyzing the situation lol. But, I actually could see those skills as being relevant and helpful to the practice of law.
LSAT is life.
Studies have shown that the LSAT plays a role in how successful you are in your first year of law school. The video below states that the test alone makes up 16% of the breakdown for factors of success during 1L.
(fast forward to about 15:20 to see stats)
I'm not sure what the standards of burglary are, but with the rise of technology, does one truly need to be in the building to steal. Perhaps one can resort to hacking to rob banks.
Haha... for sure. Not in every case. But in this one, yes.
Law has general qualities but much depends on the area of law as well as the process adopted. Logical thinking certainly has its place and value, but I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the specific designs of the LSAT as a paradigm to be re-encountered and responded to by reaching back to LSAT techniques.
It's definitely useful for law school and for when you begin practicing law too. I say this based on many of JY's explanations where he bring in his own practical experience as a former law student and associate. I remember there were moments where JY would say something like, "this particular skill is very important for law schools and for future lawyers." JY highlights being precise and accurate with your words, rules (when they apply/don't apply), and the implications of what you include and what you may be excluding in certain situations among other things. For the last one, it was the example JY used when he was helping draft a prenup. JY said that the way he drafted it, it would've been malpractice.
LSAT is supposed to test general reasoning skill. Reasoning is definitely important for law school, practice of law, and most importantly, life.
I think that part of the reason for the correlation between law school success and high LSAT scores is that high LSAT scores require a long and rigorous study period. Such preparation suggests that higher scoring students are more committed to the long-term goal of being a lawyer. Law school success is obviously a part of that process, and more committed students tend to get better grades.
Being able to do well on the LSAT certainly correlates to doing better in law school in general. Part of that is that knowing how to reason logically is a developable skill that is important in law school and part of it is that people who are naturally better at that skill are also slightly more likely to naturally be better at law school.
That said, law school is graded on a curve with you competing against your fellow students. If you learn the LSAT well and get a high score, you generally end up with people who also had fairly good LSAT scores. So even if it does provide an advantage in law school, being able to reason in the way the LSAT tests won't be able to help you beat your classmates who generally have about the same ability. And if you decide to go to a lesser school with LSAT scores far enough below yours that you are likely at an advantage, you are at risk of finding out the hard way that LSAT score explains less than 25% of the variation in first year law school grades.
Edit: The other variation in law school grades likely isn't mostly explained by effort. It is explained by how well you naturally understand law school exams and how well you study. However, I am guessing based on what I have read on this. In a year I'll at least have the experience of 1L year to base these beliefs on.
I think studying for the LSAT is a lil helpful with my job which involves legal writing and vice versa. Both give me this tunnel vision of parsing through a bunch of wordiness to get to the point.
I cant imagine the correlation being super strong, like someone just might not care to study really hard for the LSAT and do average at it but then they decide to get their shit together to study hard and succeed in law school.