If you adhere to the official “line”, the LSAT tests your initial aptitude for the types of tasks you will be graded on in law school. Essentially, it is intended to offer predictions on your likelihood to succeed (i.e., get good grades) in your law school classes. 

And it does that fairly well—at least law school admissions offices seem to think so!

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We’ve all experienced the dreaded mind drift. You read an entire paragraph only to realize you have no idea what you just read. You could not even express the general topic, much less the author’s main points. 

For many, this “lack of focus” is pervasive. It can happen throughout the RC or LR section, on only the hardest passages, or whenever you feel most tired and/or frustrated. So many students decide that they’re just slow readers or can’t concentrate well enough and stop pushing to improve their reading on the LSAT. But like all the other things the LSAT tests, reading processes can be improved. 

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This post was written by Laura Damone, a Manhattan Prep LSAT instructor.

By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Like everything else in the world, the LSAT has gone digital.

Note: The digital LSAT changes referenced in this post are only applicable in North America.

It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. The paper LSAT, with its Scantrons, #2 pencils, and analog watches, was decidedly behind the times. The other graduate and professional school exams—the GRE, GMAT, and MCAT—have all been digital for years.

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Each week, we analyze a movie that illustrates a logical fallacy you’ll find on the LSAT. Who said Netflix can’t help you study? ??

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

You know what they say: Life is like a 1994 American epic romantic-comedy-drama based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Who says that? Why, Wikipedia, when talking about Forrest Gump.

Forrest Gump tells the tale of an earnest-yet-dumb man as he stumbles through life, like a feather on the wind. During the course of the film he: Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

This post will be the first of a series exploring the June 2007 LSAT in detail. Each post will examine a few questions from that test at a time. My goal is to demonstrate where hidden opportunities lie; then, using this analysis as a template, you can find those hidden opportunities in other practice tests. And, of course, find them on test day! Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Starting your LSAT prep can be a scary experience. You pick up a book and see all the complexity of the test at once. A long list of LR question types; many variations of logic games; Reading Comprehension, chapter after chapter! It’s a lot to take in, and most places that break the test down into categories like to impress with their long and exhaustive list.

This series of three blog posts—one for each section—will break down the LSAT at a much higher level. It’s important to start with a strong scaffold for the section.
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Logical Reasoning is a multi-faceted LSAT section with many, many different things going on.

Logical Reasoning is also a highly repetitive section with very few things going on.

Dickens I’m not.

What do I mean by this apparent contradiction? Read more

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.

Do you struggle with assumption and flaw questions? Do you often choose answers that seem right, or relevant, but end up being wrong? This may help.

Consider the following argument:

Many respected entrepreneurs assert that insufficient capital, capital required to cover operating expenses in addition to initial start-up costs, is inevitably a factor in the failure of start-up businesses. However, all of the failed start-ups with which I’ve been involved have failed as a result of executives’ lack of expertise in the product or service that the company provides. Thus, insufficient capital is not a factor in causing start-up businesses to fail.

If this were followed by a question that asked you to choose an assumption, this would be a pretty tough question. The average test-taker attempts to memorize, or “learn” the entire argument, and then gets distracted by answer choices that seem relevant to some particular part of the argument that ends up not mattering so much. This leads to wrong answers. Read more