[This is a lesson excerpt from our online course, for which we invite you to enroll.]
Our students are always asking us:
“How hard is the LSAT?”
Our reply?
“It's hard. But LAW SCHOOL IS EVEN HARDER.”
If you didn’t already know this, now you do. If you already knew this, then you’re in better shape than most prospective law students out there. High five! If you didn’t get a high five but want a high five, just reread this paragraph until you get one.
I will often remind you that this test is hard, simply to remind you that you need to study to do well. If the idea of a hard test you might have to study for is very scary for you, you may want to rethink going to law school. One last time: The LSAT is hard. You still here? Let’s move on.
The LSAT is a formidable test for two distinct reasons:
- The comprehension of logic and English required to understand and answer the questions correctly is foreign to most people and often counter-intuitive.
- The LSAT imposes a time constraint. On average you have 1 minute and 24 seconds to complete each of the 100 scored multiple choice questions on the exam.
So what do we do?
When Julius Caesar led the Roman army against the Gauls, they were too numerous to face all at once. On a related note, one time I was trying to eat an entire quadruple fudge ice cream cake by myself, but I found I couldn’t fit the whole thing into my mouth at once. To overcome these seemingly overwhelming challenges, it is often best to use a strategy of “divide and conquer.” It worked for Caesar and it works on cakes. Guess what? It works for the LSAT.
LET’S REVIEW
Is the LSAT hard? Yes. It's LSAT is hard. It’s hard because (1) the logic and English is difficult and (2) you don’t have much time. We are going to “divide and conquer,” dealing first with the logical and English comprehension and then with the time constraint. Lastly, I ate a whole ice cream cake one time.