Just got a frightening alert from one of my LSAT students. Please spread the word if you know anybody taking the June 2013 LSAT!

Hi Nathan,
You may want to tell your students to check their LSAC accounts frequently. I just logged on to mine, and found out I had been unregistered for the LSAT. Luckily it was an LSAC mistake and I was able to re-register. I wouldn’t want that to happen to someone else and have them not realize until it’s too late!

Wow. Thank God this student was on top of things.

Continue reading ‘Alert! Student accidentally unregistered for June 2013 LSAT via LSAC mistake’ »

I don’t believe in complicated “techniques” for the LSAT’s Reading Comprehension. Actually, I think most of the “strategies” being taught to LSAT students are at best hot air, and at worst counterproductive. (I’ve seen students so attached to underlining, for example, that they carefully underline 90% of the passage and by the time they’re done they have no effing clue what the passage actually said.) It’s not an art project! For me, Reading Comp is a simple two-step process. Ready?

Step one:  Read.  Step two:  Comprehend.

Continue reading ‘Reading comprehension strategy’ »

Apparently, the University of San Francisco dropped 38 places in the newest US News law school rankings. The fact that this is even possible illustrates the colossal stupidity of the law school rankings game. Every year, I have a student who says something like “Well, I am going to choose School X because they are ranked 10 spots higher than School Y.” A student will do this even when school Y was offering him scholarship money, and school X wasn’t. But next year, as this student is studying for his final 1L exams, an entirely new set of rankings will be published. How’s that going to feel, paying full price at a school that has now dropped below the school that was offering him a full ride? The rankings will readjust again when he’s a 2L. And again during when he’s a 3L. And again and again, every single year of his legal career.

Every spring, the Internet goes all giddy with posts about “winners and losers” in the new law school rankings. I thought about linking to one such article, to illustrate the silliness, but I thought better of it. Dear students: Please stop making decisions about where to invest $200,000 based on a set of arbitrary rankings. Yes, there’s a major difference between Harvard and USF. But you already knew that, before looking at the rankings. And the “fact” that USF used to be ranked higher than McGeorge, and is now ranked lower than McGeorge, means absolutely nothing. Odds are, those rankings will reverse themselves next year.

I’ve got a great new crop of LSAT students grinding away on their preparation for the June LSAT. Some of them are also working on their personal statements and sending me drafts. One draft came accompanied by this question:

My long term goals include advocating for medical professionals who have assisted in “comfort care,” deemed as “euthanasia,” as well as working on “right to die” legislation. It is something that I believe in fully. The estate planning will be rewarding and also the way I pay my bills, but this other work is what I really care about. The reason I left it out is because right-to-die, physician’s assisted suicide, etc. is controversial. I worry that if I mention that in my essay and then get a really religious person reading my personal statement I am screwed. What do you think about this? 

Continue reading ‘Is my law school personal statement too controversial?’ »

A question from a student who just started my LSAT class in San Francisco:

Hey Nathan- I have some questions about the application process. I have already asked some of my professors if they would write me recommendation letters and they agreed, and I’m still polishing my personal statement. Do I need to wait until everything is done, or can I add stuff little by little? Or do I wait until after the test to upload everything on LSAC? Thank you!

Continue reading ‘When should I upload my documents to LSAC?’ »

Another painful test-day story. But I still don’t think this student should cancel her score. Explanation follows the letter.

Hi Nathan,

Question from a student taking tomorrow’s LSAT:

I have a procedural question. The LSAC instructions say to allow up to 7 hours for the test. I’m trying to figure out when (and how) to have snacks to keep my energy up…should I reasonably expect it to last that long, or is that more of a cover-your-ass worst-case-scenario advisory than an assessment of how long the test typically takes?

Short answer:  Yeah, really.

Continue reading ‘7 hours for the LSAT? Really?’ »

Question from a student:

I’m taking the LSAT this Saturday, so I’m not sure how much I can improve by then. I’ve been taking a diag every day for this last week and I’m getting perfect games and missing 5-8 for both sections of LR combined.

My worst section is reading comp, and I’ve tried everything (focusing on 3 passages and throwing out/guessing on the last one, disregarding content and outlining structure, marking up the passage/minimal notations, reading the questions first… everything!) and I’m still missing 10-15. For half the answers that I’m missing, it’s usually a 50/50 answer, where I’ve narrowed it down to two, and always always always pick the wrong one! Even when I understand the passage and feel confident about picking the correct answers, I end up missing a good portion of this section.

I read “Cheating the LSAT” for October 2010 and the way you approach RC questions makes it seem second nature, and that’s something that I just can’t seem to get down.

Do you have any tips on how I can improve on reading comp this Saturday? Any help would be much appreciated!

Wow. Thanks for the email… lots to talk about here. Let’s take the issues one at a time.

Continue reading ‘RC is killing me… help!’ »

“If given the opportunity to do it all over again, would they?”

That’s the key issue in Ann Levine’s second book, The Law School Decision Game.  For many lawyers, the answer is yes.  But for many others—myself included—the answer is a resounding no. If I had read this book before attending law school, I wouldn’t currently be $150,000 in debt.

Continue reading ‘“The Law School Decision Game”’ »