Happy Black Friday! In case you’re too full of turkey and stuffing to make your way out to the shops today, we’re serving up something extra special. Today through December 8th, we’re offering $150 off all of our December GMAT, LSAT, and GRE courses*! This deal includes all Complete Courses– in-person as well as Live-Online. To receive this limited-time discount, register for a course that starts in December and enter the code “BLACKFRIDAY150” at checkout.

This is only the beginning of the holiday season, which means we have many more amazing things coming your way. Be sure to check back next week when we unlock our most student-focused holiday campaign. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with everything happening at Manhattan Prep. Oh what fun this is going to be!

*Offer is valid for courses starting in the month of December only. Not valid for students currently registered for courses, or with any additional offers. Offer expires 12/08/2013 for LSAT courses.

Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week. All times local unless otherwise specified.

11/24/13 – Boston, MA- Free Proctored LSAT Practice Exam– 10:00AM- 2:00PM

11/25/13 – Online – Free Trial Class–  8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

11/25/13 – New York, NY- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM)

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page

Manhattan Prep is offering special full tuition scholarships for up to 4 individuals per year (1 per quarter) who will be selected as part of Manhattan Prep’s LSAT Social Venture Scholars program. This program provides the selected scholars with free admission into one of Manhattan Prep’s LSAT live online Complete Courses (an $1190 value).

These competitive scholarships are offered to individuals who (1) currently work full-time in an organization that promotes positive social change, (2) plan to use their law degree to work in a public, not-for-profit, or other venture with a social-change oriented mission, and (3) demonstrate clear financial need. The Social Venture Scholars can enroll in any live online preparation course taught by one of Manhattan Prep’s expert instructors within one year of winning the scholarship.

The deadline our next application period is December 6, 2013.

Details about the SVS program and how you can apply can be found here.

This past week, some really interesting articles about the legal profession, its present and its future, made their way to me. I thought I’d share them here on the blog, since they will also probably interest all you future lawyers! Here they are, in no particular order:

Will computers replace humans as lawyers?

(And will it be this cryptic start-up?  More on it here)

How to fix the justice gap: A controversial suggestion

And more on access to justice:

A futuristic infographic on what’s to come…by a paralegal:

Good news! Lawyers can still act human, and even be fun ones:

A lawyer dad applauds a son’s decision not to become one, too.

While in general on the logic games section, game types can be divided into two categories–grouping and ordering–there are the occasional “hybrid” games. These are the ones that, like mutts, are the sweet little offspring of both.

A hybrid game might look like this:

Over the next week, Miley Cyrus will have three performances, one in Boston, one in New York, and one in Washington, D.C. Her repertoire of dance moves includes twerking, gyrating, shimmying, and lunging. She will perform at least one of these moves during every performance, and every move will be included at least once. Her performances meet the following conditions:

She performs in New York sometime before Boston.
Her New York performance includes at least three dance moves.
She doesn’t lunge when she twerks.

Do you recognize why this is a hybrid game? Think about it before reading on.
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Last weekend I got to attend Columbia University’s mock trial tournament sponsored by Manhattan LSAT and had the privilege of watching some very talented students from colleges up and down the east coast flash their argumentation skills. At one point, I found myself talking to a senior who said that despite his love of mock trial, he didn’t want to go to law school.

“I’d much rather take the GMAT than the LSAT,” he said. “I opened an LSAT book and saw logic games and was like, ‘no thanks!’”

My immediate reactions:

“But you are missing out on something great for a bad reason!”
“If you knew the test, you’d feel differently.”
“You didn’t even give it a chance!”

In other words, I responded like the LSAT was my boyfriend, first novel, or mom.

What’s so lovable about the LSAT?

I’ve written on how it makes you smarter. But that was an appeal to research showing what I already believed to be true, because the LSAT had already made me smarter.

In high school and college, I got by on my strengths, which were not, though I didn’t realize it at the time, anything resembling logical thinking. I was an insightful thinker and could write in a way that flowed, and these were enough to push me over the threshold for most teachers and professors. I graduated with high GPAs.

When I first opened a book of practice LSATs, I was a college junior doing so out of curiosity. It wasn’t an intentional move to initiate a study plan–I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to law school. Much like the fellow I mentioned above, I just wanted to see what this LSAT thing was all about. I took a few questions–maybe a whole logical reasoning section, maybe just a few pages, I can’t remember. What I do remember is that I missed the vast majority of them. I answered 2-3 right and at least 10-12 wrong. I recall seeing X’s all over the dingy pages of the yellowing, used practice book I’d bought, and closing it, thinking, “From now on, I have to hide the fact that I’m just not good at logic.” I was convinced I wasn’t a logical thinker, and that any day, someone would discover it about me.

Two years later, I was sure I did want to apply to law school, and I went about approaching the LSAT yet again, intimidated tremendously by my earlier, brief encounter with it. I enrolled in a course, did all my homework, didn’t miss a class or a diagnostic test, and began the slow, arduous process of improving my study skills: I turned off the music. I put in ear plugs. I made myself focus for thirty-minute increments without getting up for a snack or to put some wacky clip in my hair. And over the weeks then months, I watched my score go up. As it did, I became aware that I was learning a certain mode of thinking, and so my confidence went up, as well. I started to believe in myself intellectually in a way I hadn’t before. By the time I actually took the text over six months after I’d begun studying, I had gone from answering only 13 questions (4-5 of which I got wrong) on a timed logic games section–that is, leaving the other 10-11 blank–to completing a perfect logic games section.
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