It's Big, and it's Not Yellow

You’re going to love it. Take a look at how much we love it:

If you bought our last Logical Reasoning Guide after December 15, 2010, we’ll happily replace the book with a new one so that you can join in the Manhattan LSAT logical reasoning jamboree. If you bought it at a bookstore, send us the receipt, if you bought it through us, just e-mail us the shipping address to use.

Woo-hoo! We like big ducks.

MmmmMmm, bacon!

Since many of you will be taking the LSAT this coming weekend, I thought it was appropriate for me to channel my inner Jamie Oliver and make some dietary recommendations to all the February LSAT’ers (if you haven’t seen Jamie’s TED talk,  check out the first few minutes) out there. Truth is, we probably all should heed more nutritional advice from the likes of Jamie O – so why not let the LSAT be the incentive for change in your dietary habits? After all, chances are the exam has controlled every other aspect of your life for the past several months!

While I am by no means a medical expert or professional nutritionist, I do consider myself a highly skilled ‘Googler’, and I took some time to wrangle some helpful pre-exam tips from across the web to keep your mental steam throughout the entire LSAT exam:

Breakfast is essential. Nearly every expert that offered an opinion on what to eat before an exam started with the first meal of the day: breakfast. Some suggestions for a healthy pre exam breakfast are non-sugared cereal with fruit (try raisins, blueberries and/or or bananas), or if you prefer a hot breakfast, go with an egg sandwich with whole wheat bread or whole wheat English muffin. Read more

You may not remember, but not too long ago, the egg was considered the miracle food. Then it became known as a cholesterol bomb. And now it’s gaining acceptance in our South-Beach-diet-accepting world. The same thing happens in education. Just a few days ago, the New York Time published an article about a study that concludes that testing helps us remember what we’ve read. This seems to debunk the idea that “concept-mapping” leads to long-term retention. You don’t remember concept-mapping? Apparently it’s because you used concept-mapping to learn concept-mapping. It’s basically the strategy of drawing a map of a passage, or taking lots of notes. The scientific study also debunked straight-up studying, as in reviewing multiple times. You may not have been dabbling in the dark arts of concept-mapping, but studying what about you’ve read? That’s something we all know/have done/felt we were supposed to be doing during college, and something you might be trying to do to do well on the LSAT. Hmmm.

The basic gist of the study is that they had college kids read a passage. One group simply read it. A second group reviewed the passage a few times (i.e. “studied it”). A third made a concept map while reading. And a fourth took a short test right after reading it. Then, a week later, everyone was tested on what they had read. The final group did 50% better in terms of retaining information than the studyers or the concept-mappers. This might mean that poor high school students will find that after reading a story or essay in class, instead of having a deep conversation (in which they try to impress some girl, boy or teacher), they’ll find themselves immediately taking a test.

Don’t jump to conclusions yet, all of that is predicated on the idea that the goal is long-term retention. That brings us to what this study might mean for the LSAT. Read more

Don't burn those LSAT prep books just yet

If your LSAT spidey senses  were particularly aflutter over the last 48 hours, it’s probably because a very interesting article was published by the National Law Journal Wednesday, creating a lot of buzz around the law school blog-o-sphere.

The article outlines the potential plans for the ABA to no longer require the LSAT to be taken in order to be admitted into Law School. I know, right – after all those cups of coffee, weeks without seeing family, friends, sunlight or SportsCenter!! Alas, take comfort: prospective law school students after you will be forced to suffer the same cruel and unusual punishment that is the LSAT.

This change in policy may be adopted, however it certainly does not signify the end of the dreaded exam. Read more

Diddy said it was all about the Benjamins...

It turns out that going to law school does not guarantee you’ll get rich. Are you surprised? Are you putting down your pencil and throwing out your LSAT prep book? The New York Times published an article stating what anyone who has done their research knows: people come out of law school with lots and lots of debt, and the job market is far worse than what it was during better economic times. What was most disturbing was the reminder that law schools fib on their stats about how well their grads do. It’s all about the rankings – and we repeat our “yuck!”

We have an interesting window into the legal job world because of our audition process: We generally see the resumes of some former lawyers in our inbox, but a year ago we started seeing a small surge of resumes from recent law school grads. Sometimes that’s great – they finished law school and realized law is not for them, or want to practice government law or something that allows them to teach at night. Those are the candidates we love to see, people with a passion and perhaps a bit of outside-the-box thinking. But, we also saw folks who had been banking on their summer associate job, previously the doorway to a post-grad job, leading to just a line on a resume. These were not the candidates we wanted to see.

But, at least in NYC, the legal economic tide is turning. Read more

We want YOU to wait!

It’s been days and days – where the f@#$%@#$ is your score? Yeah, the folks at LSAC gave themselves until the 10th, but the LSAC operates like many airlines, giving us unreasonably late arrival times so that they have a spotless record of ontimeliness. We want to eat! We want to eat!

While you’re waiting, sign up for our Review the Dec. 2010 LSAT workshop (Tuesday, Jan 11th, 8pm EST, be there or be square sort of thing). We haven’t seen the test yet – we’re friends with the LSAC, but we’re not that close. We’re planning on focusing on the games, probably with an eye towards how to speed up. The scuttlebutt is that there was nothing new under the sun, but people got bogged down.

So what could LSAC be doing right now? Some possibilities:

1. Researching each and every one of your lives to figure out what score you deserve. (i.e. finding out if you’ve been naughty or nice)

2. Hand erasing your stray pencil marks as a gesture of good will.

3. Editing/laughing at/doodling on your essay.

4. Calculating the relationship between the raw scores, scaled scores and percentiles.

Don’t sweat it, the scores will be here shortly – good luck!

Congratulations to all the December LSAT test-takers. Hopefully last weekend was a dream come true. Now begins the frightful wait for LSAT scores – here’s a list of previous LSAT release dates, so you know when to start wondering.

Until then, finish up your applications, make sure all your letters of recommendation are in, and get ready to hit submit when your score comes in.

Our fingers are crossed for you!

It happens to all of us.

Folks, it’s that time of year. The weather is turning crisp, the trees are stripping down for the winter, 3rd grade teachers are changing their window decorations from cut-out turkeys to snowflakes, and LSAT students are burning out.

This is understandable. With such a high-stakes test, prepping for the LSAT generally goes past being a part-time gig and starts becoming an obsession. Yes, practice does improve your score, but there’s a limit. Watch out for the signs of burn-out:

– Your score is starting to droop – and not because of anxiety, but because of weary eyes and a wandering mind.

– You are taking tests but are not reviewing them. Mostly because . . .

– You are angry, deeply angry.

Alright, stop. Here are some suggestions:

1. Take a day or two off. Your brain may actually do better if you give it some time to settle and organize what you’ve learned.

2. Work out. Your brain is a muscle – it needs oxygen.

3. Stop drinking, sniffing donuts or whatever you do for recreation that happily or not impairs your brain functioning. Your brain . . . well, this one is obvious.

4. Change how you are preparing. Try studying with someone else. Try playing the LSAT Arcade. Try doing just 1 or 2 full sections each day for a couple of days instead of full practice tests. Re-do some old sections.

5. Get some sleep. If you’re exhausted, this can be more helpful as doing more work.

6. Create a schedule, and add in breaks. Watch a movie to unwind and let your brain relax.

7. Recognize that you cannot learn much more – these final days are for you to solidify what you’ve learned and get into a routine.

You’re almost there, so don’t sweat it if you’re seeing a dip in scores – instead, change up what you’re doing.  And don’t worry if you’re unable to get excited about the LSAT. Test day will bring adrenalin, which will help energize you a bit.

In New York there are several companies that you can pay to provide you someone who will wait in line for you. But even in this ridiculous city, there’s nobody you can pay to do the waiting for you if you’re hitting refresh on your LSAC account, itching for your October LSAT score to be released. If you’d like to take an educated guess at when that’ll happen, here’s a list of past LSAT score release dates. On average they arrive about 4.5 days before the officially-sanctioned release date. It seems like the LSAT and airlines have hit on the same idea: set your arrival time late so that you show up early.

While you’re waiting, sign up for our October 2010 LSAT Review Workshop where we’ll review that LSAT and serve tea and cookies (if tea and cookies could be served live online).

Hang in there! That score’s coming any minute…

Let’s continue our personal injury saga that we began last week. After yet another break of a few days, we came back to hear opening statements – more or less what you see in the movies – followed by a few days of witnesses. The first witness was not officially called the King of Slips, Trips and Falls, but in essence he was. This man had more credentials about slips and trips than you, and I’m sure of this, can imagine exist. He has written the code for various policies on construction, he has taught classes, he’s been on TV (specifically his receipt of a national award was televised on 52 stations – that was really too much information!), and he’s board certified by everyone, and he’s run said boards. The jury was thoroughly over-impressed to the point of annoyance.

Similarly, we heard from a very certified doctor who told us in no uncertain terms that the plaintiff broke his nose and that it really, really hurt. What amazed me is how much these guys get paid. $7,500 to appear in court for less than an hour! These specialists show up in court cases all the time and make a huge bundle of money. That’s when I started calculating. If the plaintiff has these two expert witnesses – about $15,000 – the lawyers must be hoping to win a huge payment. Thankfully, the plaintiff doesn’t pay a dime to the lawyer unless they win the case. If they do, the lawyers take a huge chunk of the settlement. Wow – they were hoping to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this was for a broken nose and a twisted pinky.

It turns out, we learned from meeting the plaintiff, that he went back to work two days later, then flew across the world to get married. Now, he is able to do everything he was able to do previously – basketball, painting rooms, etc. So, what were we actually going to be paying for? Read more