Has anyone used The Loophole for LR?

Comments

• DanielB84 Alum Member

  August 2019 95 karma

  Like to also know everyone’s thoughts on this as I have heard great things about it.
• LawPupper Alum Member

  August 2019 6 karma

  I haven’t personally used it, but a lot of people on reddit talk about it being really good! I would ask on there.
• 5 Likes

  ZXXXSXXXL Member

  August 2019 edited August 2019 40 karma

  I read through the "Loophole" and experimented with the methods. Ultimately depends on what works better for YOU.

  The Loopholes approaches is read the stimulus, find logical gaps (CLIR) and have a good understanding of the "LOOPHOLE" before reading the actual question stem. 7sage method is reading the stem first to know what to look for.

  Both methods still need you to ID the question type. For me personally, reading the stem first helps me to laser focus on the task in the beginning, since I have a tendency of over analyzing. Therefore I mainly go with the reading the stem first to attack the questions.

  There are a bunch of practices&exercises I found to be valuable in the LOOPHOLE for LR book, especially during a blind review. I highly recommend doing the translation drills, reading the stimulus and then covering in up and rephrasing it in simple symbols and notations. First writing them out, then doing them vocally, and then doing them in your mind. The utility is very similar to the memory method that the CC advocates for the reading comprehension. Of course, during an actual test, you won't need to cover up the stimulus after reading it, but it helps training this way for a bit, to help you focus on extracting the right things when you read the stimulus, especially when the language is very convoluted and confusing.

  The concept of "provable" and "powerful" didn't really stick with me, perhaps because I had already completed the CC and had practice with 7sage methods. Nor did the many specific
  terminology derived by the creator, and I felt the same with the PowerScore bibles system. In all the prep books I looked in to, I tend to look past the uniqueness of the system and find out what are the fundamentals they relied on. In that sense, I also recommend picking up a copy of the Trainer, and look at the approach Mike Kim teaches for the LR section. IDing the Flaw, is sorta the same thing that the CLIR method aims at in the Loophole book.

  In the end, the methods do converge: whatever approach you decide to use, your main goal is to sharpen your intuition, like JY says right in the beginning of the CC.

  As for what to do first, I believe you should complete at least the LR portion of the CC, before looking into seriously the Loophole book.
• a1ex_682 Alum Member

  August 2019 307 karma

  I read the Loophole after I completed 7Sage CC and would definitely recommend it as supplement material. It taught me how to critically read and analyze the stimulus. Additionally, it taught me how to recognize patterns in each answer choice, helping me fish out correct AC’s from incorrect ones. It’s been invaluable to my LR approach!!
• 1 Like

  mzthaidumpling Alum Member

  August 2019 edited August 2019 83 karma

  I recommend it, especially if you know how to go about a problem but still get them wrong. It's also fun in my opinion, so it goes by fast!

  Right now I get about -1 to -4 wrong on LR consistently so I got Loophole. I have finished CC and am halfway through Loophole. I have used the LR Bible and LSAT Trainer as well and still felt like Loophole really helped. A lot of things you will breeze through if you already know the concepts. The other books were great with the technical aspect, but Loophole made the most sense to me after getting creative with it.

  Thanks to Loophole, I finally don't trip up on SA and NA questions despite knowing what to do. (And it took me about 10 minutes to finish that chapter!) As a creative oriented person, I always overthought these types of questions. That alone made the book worth it to me. I just had to have someone make my own answers for it to click. Loophole has a lot of fill in the blank type of activities wherein you write your own premises, NA, SA which really helps, and lots of pop quizzes. I also agree with doing the Translation Drills.

  What's different about the Loophole is that it's creative and uses a lot of nonsense subjects and verbs, so that you actually see structure and patterns, and not get fixated on what each thing means.. The author repeatedly insists that you don't skip around in the book, so I think that it is really thought out to ensure progress...you start off doing some basic stuff, but I trust that it's part of rewiring your brain.

  If you are a "by the book" type of person, then the other books and CC may be more helpful. Personally I felt that knowing all the different types of flaws that others books provided was overkill, since most answers you can deduce by imagining what the flaw may be before you see the AC. I didn't need to know the technical name of the flaw and ID them, such as "strawman" or "false delimma" to see or understand the flaw. I think of Loophole as a way to "reprogram" your brain just by going through the book in order, sort of like how it's recommended to read dense material other than LSAT to study for Reading Comprehension. It still explains to you the definitions, and how to go about the types of questions, but the activities and examples in it feels more "off the grid" than the other books. It's more like a workbook which I really appreciate because I felt like the other books were more textbook-y, followed by solving questions cherry picked from PTs (Felt like BRing!)
• bennn LSAT Core Member

  August 2019 edited August 2019 96 karma

  Since I haven’t done either yet, I was thinking of using The Loophole first for the fundamentals of reading and understanding the stimulus and then the CC for understanding and approaching each question type.
• Trusttheprocess Member

  August 2019 776 karma

  reading it right now and definitely would recommend it
• 2ndTimestheCharm Alum Member

  August 2019 1810 karma

  I enjoyed the Loophole book. I think it's very helpful and a fun read.
• 2 Likes

  shaari16 Alum Member

  August 2019 33 karma

  Definitely recommend Loophole. 7Sage introduces you to the concept of “prephrasing” but you don’t really learn a specific mechanism for how to formulate that pre-phrase. This is what Loophole focuses on and it’s super duper intuitive. I think you could start with 7Sage, build a foundation, and then see how you perform on LR sections. You may have a natural aptitude for the reasoning and thus won’t need extra material to help you develop that instinct. If you find yourself stumped by LR or really struggling with certain question types, then pick up Ellen’s book because it will definitely help you develop a new approach on how to tackle your problem areas.