LSAT 

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is an entrance test administered by LSAC four times a year at designated centers throughout the world. It is required for admission to all American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools, most Canadian law schools, and many non–ABA–approved law schools. The LSAT helps law schools make sound admission decisions by providing a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants. Prospective law students come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, ethnic groups, and cultures. Diversity of experience among applicants—both personal and academic—serves to enrich the law school applicant pool and, ultimately, the legal profession. The LSAT is not, of course, the sole factor law schools use to make their admission decisions. But it is the only common yardstick by which the ability of all prospective law students can be measured fairly.

The LSAT is a half–day, standardized test designed to measure some of the skills considered essential for success in law school: the reading and comprehension of complex texts with accuracy and insight; the organization and management of information and the ability to draw reasonable inferences from it; the ability to think critically; and the analysis and evaluation of the reasoning and arguments of others. The test consists of five 35–minute sections of multiple–choice questions. Four of the five sections contribute to the test taker's score. These sections include one reading comprehension section, one analytical reasoning section, and two logical reasoning sections. The unscored section typically is used to pre-test new test questions or to pre-equate new test forms. The placement of this section, which is commonly referred to as the variable section, varies for each administration of the test. The LSAT is scored on a scale from 120 to 180, with 180 being the highest possible score. A 35–minute writing sample is administered at the end of the test. LSAC does not score the writing sample, but copies are sent to all law schools to which a candidate applies.

Click here for more information about the LSAT, including an online registration option.

Many law schools require that the LSAT be taken by December for admission the following fall. However, taking the test earlier—in June or October—is often advised. Some schools place greater weight than others on the LSAT; most law schools do evaluate your full range of credentials.

Administration

LSAC administers the LSAT four times per year, in June, September/October, December, and February. LSAC views the June examination as the start of a new "cycle" as most test-takers are applying for the following year's class. In the 2007-2008 cycle, 142,331 people took the LSAT, up 1.6% from the year before, although still lower than the 148,014 people that took the exam in the 2002-2003 cycle. The most popular test date is the October administration of the exam.

Test Format
The test consists of five 35-minute sections of multiple-choice questions, in three different item types. Four of the five sections contribute to the test taker’s score. The unscored section, commonly referred to as the variable section, typically is used to pre-test new test questions or to pre-equate new test forms. The placement of this section will vary. A 35-minute writing sample is administered at the end of the test. LSAC does not score the writing sample, but copies of the writing sample are sent to all law schools to which you apply.

What the Test Measures
The LSAT is designed to measure skills that are considered essential for success in law school: the reading and comprehension of complex texts with accuracy and insight; the organization and management of information and the ability to draw reasonable inferences from it; the ability to think critically; and the analysis and evaluation of the reasoning and arguments of others.

The Test consists of:

Reading Comprehension Questions

These questions measure your ability to read, with understanding and insight, examples of lengthy and complex materials similar to those commonly encountered in law school work. The reading comprehension section contains four sets of reading questions, each consisting of a selection of reading material, followed by five to eight questions that test reading and reasoning abilities.

Analytical Reasoning Questions

These questions are designed to measure your ability to understand a structure of relationships and to draw logical conclusions about that structure. You are asked to make deductions from a set of statements, rules, or conditions that describe relationships among entities such as persons, places, things, or events. They simulate the kinds of detailed analyses of relationships that a law student must perform in solving legal problems. 

Logical Reasoning Questions

These questions are designed to evaluate your ability to understand, analyze, criticize, and complete a variety of arguments. Each logical reasoning question requires you to read and comprehend a short passage, then answer one question about it. The questions test a variety of abilities involved in reasoning logically and thinking critically.

Unscored section                                                         

Each exam includes one experimental section, used to test new questions for future exams. The performance of the examinee on this section is not reported as part of the final score. The examinee is not told which section of the exam is experimental, since to do so could skew the data. To reduce the impact of examinee fatigue on the experimental results, this section is always one of the first three sections of any given test. Because multiple versions of the exam are issued, alert examinees who have two different versions of the test can identify the experimental section by noting which sections they had in common.

There is a controversy about the fairness of this section. The student does not know which section is ungraded. Examinees can determine which type of section was unscored as soon as they run into an extra section of a given question type. For example, if the student has already done two arguments sections and runs into a third one, then one of those three was the experimental section. Some examinations will include three arguments sections; others will have two games or reading sections. Because the section order is unpredictable, sections of the same type can occur consecutively. Depending on ordering and where a given examinee's weaknesses lie, an examinee could underperform (or overperform) on one specific testing. No formal examination of the impact of the experimental section has ever been done, and examinee scores tend to steadily rise with practice regardless. Critics of the experimental section charge that it also amounts to unpaid research being done on LSAC's behalf by examinees who are already paying for the testing.

Writing sample

The writing sample is always the final section of the test. The examinee is given one of two types of prompt: a decision prompt or an argument prompt (as of the June 11, 2007 administration of the test, all examinees will be given a decision prompt). The decision prompt provides the examinee with a problem and two criteria for making a decision. The examinee must then write an essay favoring one of two provided options over the other. The decision generally does not involve a controversial subject, but rather something mundane about which the examinee likely has no strong bias. For the argument prompt, the examinee is given an argument similar to a logical reasoning prompt and then asked to critique that argument. The decision prompt has been used continually since the addition of the writing sample, while the argument prompt was added in June 2005. In June 2007, however, LSAC will retire the argument prompt.

LSAC does not score the writing sample; instead, the essay is photocopied and sent to admission offices along with the LSAT score. The writing sample is essentially an extemporaneous essay, hand-written in pencil at the conclusion of a four-hour examination. Between the quality of the handwriting and that of the photocopy, some admissions officers regard the readability and usefulness of the writing sample as marginal. Additionally, schools require that applicants submit a "personal statement" of some kind. These factors sometimes result in admission boards ignoring the writing sample. However, only 6.8% of 157 schools surveyed by LSAC in 2006 indicated that they "never" use the writing sample when evaluating an application. In contrast, 9.9% of the schools reported that they "always" use the sample; 25.3% reported that they "frequently" use the sample; 32.7% responded "occasionally"; and 25.3% reported "seldom" using the sample.