It’s been a hard week for the east coast, and here in New York, the difficulties range from inconvenient to catastrophic. Volunteer and donation opportunities abound, and with neighbors in such dire need, it feels strange to write about the LSAT.

You’re hopefully already taking a break from study to vote, but if you, like me, are finding it difficult to focus when the need around us is so desperate in places, consider taking some time to step away from the test to volunteer.

Donation opportunities:

Brooklyn Community Foundation

Occupy Sandy

Volunteer opportunities in NY/NJ:

New York Cares

NYC Service

Food Bank for New York City

Jersey Cares

And for a quick read that finds the silver lining in hardship, I recommend Mei Mei Fox’s 5 Spiritual Lessons from Hurricane Sandy.

After a Sandy-induced delay, October LSAT scores were released last week. To those of you who rocked the test to your satisfaction, congratulations! Time to get thinking about the rest of your application.

For those of you with more LSAT work to do still, we’re here for you. Whether you’re still having nightmares about zones, or you simply want some help deciding whether or not you should retake,  I strongly encourage you to attend our free, live online review of the October LSAT. This Thurssday evening (8pm EST) Manhattan Prep’s Executive Director of Academics, Noah Teitelbaum, will cover some of the more challenging questions from the October exam, as well as provide some perspective for your retake decision. The best part? It’s completely free to sign up!

It has been a whirlwind (crappy pun not intended) few days here in New York City as we deal with Hurricane Sandy and her aftermath. Thankfully everyone here at Manhattan Prep is OK — and we sincerely hope the same is true for you and your family.

As LSAC is located in rural Pennsylvania, they have been affected by the storm. According to their official twitter feed, @Official_LSAT, LSAC’s offices are closed due to power outages, and the release of October LSAT results may be delayed beyond the Oct 31st release date.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that LSAC traditionally releases scores at least a couple of days ahead of their stated release date. For the first time ever, they may miss their stated score release deadline. The following was tweeted by LSAC at approximately 9:20am today:

“We still expect scores to be released by Thursday afternoon.”

LSAC also commented via twitter about December LSAT registration:

“We expect to be back online today. We will make sure you get registered for Dec. and will waive the late reg fee”

As for Manhattan Prep, we’re dealing with some loss of power at our headquarters in Manhattan. We’ll continue to monitor our phone lines and email inboxes remotely, but it may be a day or two still before we’re able to resume our in person courses in New York, Washington DC, and Boston. If you are a student in any of those clases, we will continue to keep you posted via phone and email. All other classes (live online or in unaffected cities) will resume normally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact studentservices@manhattanprep.com/lsat/ or call (646) 254-6480.

Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week.

10/30/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

11/3/12 – Washington, D.C. – Free Proctored LSAT Exam – 6:00-10:00 PM

11/3/12 – Santa Monica, CA – Free Proctored LSAT Exam – 6:00-10:00 PM

11/3/12 – Irvine, CA – Free Proctored LSAT Exam – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

11/3/12 – La Jolla, CA – Free Proctored LSAT Exam – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

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

Still waiting for your October LSAT score? Pass the time by catching up with some of this week’s top stories about legal education. Happy Reading!

Network ‘Yer Face Off! (Legal Skills Prof Blog)

LSAT scores will be here...soon

Legal Skills Prof Blog has some great advice for law students hoping to secure a job upon graduation. It’s all about networking!

The Shift Toward Law School Specialization(The New York Times Deal Book Blog)

Are general professional degrees in law a thing of the past? Find out how law schools are restructuring their curriculums to allow for increased specialization.

The Short on Long-Term Planning: Go to the Sources, and Here They Are (jdMission)

Want to know what makes for a strong law school application? Here are some answers from admissions officers at Yale, Michigan, and Columbia.
Read more

Perhaps the cruelest part of taking the LSAT is the 3-4 week waiting period that test takers are subjected to before receiving their results from LSAC. It’s hard to imagine what the reason for this is, given that it is 2012 and the test is taken on a bubble sheet that can be easily run through a scan-tron machine. Being such a high stakes test, it’s no wonder why people waiting for their results will literally pull their hair out right around this time, when scores could literally be released any day now.

Any day now? Yes. While LSAC touts October 31st on their website as the day that scores will be released, past trends indicate that they consistently email scores out 3-5 days sooner than that.

The result of this imprecision is that October LSAT takers spend several days in a nervous stupor, constantly peaking at their inboxes through hand covered eyes to see if their results have arrived.

Guessing when LSAT scores will arrive is an imperfect science at best, but that doesn’t stop us from making our official prediction. In February of this year, LSAC cruelly released scores just one day before their listed release date. In July, they redeemed themselves by releasing scores 4 days early.

I’m very confident that October 2012 scores will be released either Friday (tomorrow) October 26th, or Monday, October 29th. I’m feeling optimistic today, so I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a score release of Friday, October 26th. Again, this is just a prediction — I don’t have any inside information. If I did, you’d all be the first to know. (Update: It appears as though my attempts to will the release of LSAT scores today was unsuccessful. I am as disappointed as you all are. Hopefully Monday is the day!)

Good luck to all of you who took this thing in October. Don’t forget to register for our free online review of the October LSAT, which will include explanations for the most difficult problems on the October exam.

The 3rd Edition Manhattan LSAT Strategy Guides

We are pleased to introduce to the world the newest (3rd) Edition of our renowned LSAT Strategy Guide series, on sale now in our store and on Amazon.

This time around we’ve overhauled our Logic Games Strategy Guide, nearly doubling its size. Like a geeky piece of cake that goes straight to the hips, we’ve added substantial bulk to our explanations, including hand written solutions for every game from PTs 40-66, simply because we love you.

So far the chosen few who have received advance copies of the LG book cannot stop raving about it. One forum user out there even admitted to wishing that they were still prepping the LSAT, just so they could read out new book. Yes, it is that awesome!

While the Logic Games Strategy Guide has been enhanced significantly, our Reading Comprehension and Logical Reasoning guides received simple face lifts and remain the basically the same awesome guides that they were in our 2nd Editions.

Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week.

10/23/12 – Online – Writing Your Way Into Law School Workshop (with jdMission) – 8:30-10:00 PM

10/27/12 – New York, NY – Free Proctored Practice LSAT – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

10/27/12 – Online – Free Online Trial Class – 12:00-3:00 PM

10/28/12 – Zen and the Art of LSAT Review Session – 8:00-10:00 PM

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

Wahoo!

Happy Friday, everyone! Take a break to check out our weekly set of LSAT and law school-related links.

Want to Stand Out from the Pack? Start a Blog! (The Girl’s Guide to Law School)

Ruth Carter, author of The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed, talks about why law students should start blogging and offers some tips for getting started.

The Short on Long-Term Planning: To Addend or Not Addend? (jdMission)

This week our friends over at jdMission explain why you should not write an addendum explaining your LSAT score.
Read more

Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week.

10/18/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 6:30-8:30 PM

10/20/12 – Online – Free Trial Class – 1:00-4:00 PM

10/20/12 – New York, NY – Free Proctored LSAT Practice Exam – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

10/21/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 5:30-8:30 PM

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