Learning science has come a long way in recent years, and we’ve been learning with it. We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT course to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.

Note: If you haven’t yet read Allison Bell’s post on LSAT motivation, I highly recommend you check it out here. This post is inspired by both a comment from my lovely wife and that post.

At the end of Allison’s post, she mentions finding a study partner (or partners, plural—small group or paired study is very, very effective). I’m hoping to follow up on that post with some ideas on how to make these group study sessions more efficient. Read more

In this series, a jdMission Senior Consultant reviews real law school personal statements. What’s working well? What’s not? If it were his/her essay, what would be changed? Find out!

Note: To maintain the integrity and authenticity of this project, we have not edited the personal statements, though any identifying names and details have been changed or removed. Any grammatical errors that appear in the essays belong to the candidates and illustrate the importance of having someone (or multiple someones) proofread your work.

Personal Statement

I love gardening: My hands in the dirt, the smell of freshly grown flowers or vegetables, the invigorating sensation of working the earth in the great outdoors. There is order to sowing seeds – steps and clear directives that allow life to reproduce generationally.

I feel like the law boasts numerous similarities to a garden. While there are no hard and fast rules, there are serious guidelines to each. In a legal environment, you have to understand the existing laws of the land. But you must also understand that public opinion shifts and makes room for subtle changes to the law. Read more

Ready to study the right way? We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT course to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.

I was on my way to a science degree. I had all-nighters studying Organic Chemistry under my belt. I had completed hours and hours of lab work.

That last one was what changed my mind.

My career plan had been to become a researcher at a pharmaceutical company, but I just didn’t enjoy spending hot days in a glove box measuring out micrograms of catalysts for reactions that almost certainly wouldn’t work. Yes, I’m impatient.

So what was I to do? Law school, of course! It was a respectable profession that would allow me to deal with the cool part of science—when something’s been created and it’s time to get a patent. The rationale was half-baked at best.

That decision, and the LSAT it necessitated, changed my life. Read more

Learning science has come a long way in recent years, and we’ve been learning with it. We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT course to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.

After getting over the general panic that many feel as soon as they start looking at a Logic Game, people start to categorize the questions into general types. Ordering, Grouping, Hybrid, etc…

While that’s important, it’s just as important to put a premium on breaking the questions into categories and knowing how to deal with each of them.

Note: This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it covers 98+% of questions. Read more

A personal statement is really no more than telling a story—one that illuminates the “you” a law school would be lucky to have in its student body. In this series, “Telling Your Story,” a jdMission Senior Consultant will discuss how elements of storytelling can—and should—be applied to your personal statement.

With respect to your law school personal statement, stories about how you came to be who you are today are interesting. On the other hand, stories about how you always were who you are today because you have not changed over the years are not.

“I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was three” may be true, but this kind of statement is not effective in a personal statement. Read more

You read that right.  Read more

Learning science has come a long way in recent years, and we’ve been learning with it. We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT course to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.

If you’ve taken a practice LSAT, you’ve probably frantically bubbled in your favorite guess letter – mine’s D, for Daniel – as the last few seconds ticked off the clock. Maybe you keep getting stuck on a difficult game, or perhaps you struggle to get to that last Reading Comprehension passage with more than a few minutes left. Whatever your specific difficulties, here are some high-level strategies that you can apply to be more efficient with your time. Read more

In this series, a jdMission Senior Consultant reviews real law school personal statements. What’s working well? What’s not? If it were his/her essay, what would be changed? Find out!

Note: To maintain the integrity and authenticity of this project, we have not edited the law school personal statements, though any identifying names and details have been changed or removed. Any grammatical errors that appear in the essays belong to the candidates and illustrate the importance of having someone (or multiple someones) proofread your work.

Personal Statement

I never actually got to be Brutus, at least not on game day. But I was the next best thing. I actually got to spend every game day on the sidelines of Horseshoe Stadium, which was a childhood dream, and I got to make sure that Mike, who played Brutus, had enough water and didn’t fall over with the enormous weight of that giant head. (Trust me. On a hot autumn day after two hours, it’s hard to keep upright.)
Read more

Learning science has come a long way in recent years, and we’ve been learning with it. We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT course to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.

One of my favorite TV shows is Jane the Virgin. On a recent episode, Jane’s husband, Michael, decides to take up everyone’s favorite past-time: studying for the LSAT. To Jane’s chagrin, studying for the LSAT is almost indistinguishable from watching the NFL playoffs. When Jane inquires, Michael tells her that football gets him in a relaxed frame of mind to study, and resumes eating popcorn.

If you’re in Michael’s shoes right now (or Jane’s!) you’re not alone. Many LSAT students have confided in me sheepishly that they’re struggling to find the motivation to get down to business with their test prep. That’s understandable. The LSAT is intimidating and can be more than a little boring. But it takes a significant time and energy investment for most people to see the score improvement they want. So if you need help lighting a fire under yourself (or your significant other!), here are a few suggestions: Read more

A personal statement is really no more than telling a story—one that illuminates the “you” a law school would be lucky to have in its student body. In this series, “Telling Your Story,” a jdMission Senior Consultant will discuss how elements of storytelling can—and should—be applied to your law school personal statement.

You walk into a bookstore to browse, pick up a book with an interesting title and open it to the first page. It begins, “I was born on a sunny day in Indiana in 1955.” Do you keep reading? If you are like me, probably not. I know better than to overvalue book covers, but I do judge most books by their first lines.

A general principle of storytelling is that too much exposition or background before the action starts is a guaranteed way to lose readers. The same idea can make your law school personal statement stronger, hooking a reader from the beginning rather than the middle. (Let’s be honest, an admissions officer may not even make it to the middle, depending on the strength of your application.) Read more