Law school admission test

Last updated: October 21, 2006 | 01:00

5 MIN READ

Educator UmmeSalma Mujtaba compiles all the basic information about the test that is a must if you are planning to study law in the US or Canada

About the test:

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a standardised test that is administered by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) in the United States and Canada.
It is intended to provide law schools with "a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants".

When is the test held?

It is administered four times a year - traditionally in February, June, October and December.
Scores are distributed on a scale of 120 to 180.
Students can take the test three times in a two-year period.

Why you need to take the test

Unlike other standardised examinations in America, the LSAT is the most important criterion in its corresponding school admissions process.
The second most important criterion is your GPA (Grade Point Average).
The examination offers admissions officers at law schools an effective way to eliminate a large number of applicants from the pool.

NOTE: This June, the American Bar Association (ABA) revised a rule that mandated law schools to report their matriculants' average score if they took the test more than once.

The new ABA rule now requires law schools only to report the highest LSAT in such cases. So now most law schools consider only the higher score for applicants with more than one score.

Test composition
Logical Reasoning (LR):

There are two logical reasoning sections of 35 minutes each. Commonly known as "arguments" or "LR", each question begins with a logical statement or argument (e.g. "A is B; therefore C must be D"), followed by a prompt asking the student to find the argument's assumption, alternate conclusion, logical omissions or errors in the argument, to choose another argument with parallel reasoning, or to identify a statement that would either weaken or strengthen the argument.
Per argument, one or two questions are posed.
Logical reasoning sections usually consist of 24 to 26 questions each. In its official LSAT Superprep, the LSAC scores questions on a difficulty scale from 1-5.
Most logical reasoning sections contain two or three level-5 questions. The hardest questions tend to come toward the end of the section.

Reading Comprehension (RC):

Lasts 35 minutes.
The section consists of four brief passages with five to eight follow-up questions each.
Any given RC section will typically have one passage each related to the physical sciences, the social sciences, the arts and humanities, and one law passage.
The passages usually contain more information than can be immediately retained by a typical reader, requiring frequent referral by the student.
Through the 1990s, the reading sections have grown longer, and currently contain 26 to 28 questions, with the most recent LSATs having 28 questions.

Analytical reasoning:

Lasts 35 minutes
Informally known as the "logic games" section.
It involves grouping and/or ordering of elements. The student is presented with a set-up ("there are five people who might attend this afternoon's meeting") and a set of condition statements (e.g. "if Amy is present, then Bob is not present" etc), and is then asked to derive various conclusions from the statements.
Throughout the 1990s, these sections have become shorter, now often ranging from 21 to 22 questions instead of 22 to 24 as in the middle 1990s.

Experimental:

There is one experimental section, which will be any one of the above types.
Although the section is graded, the performance of the student here is not calculated or reported as part of the final score.
The section is used to field test new questions for future exams. The student is not told which section of the exam is experimental, in order to avoid the distorting effects of inattention or apathy.

To reduce the impact of student fatigue on the score distribution of this section, it usually, but not always, appears as one of the first three sections of any given testing.
Because multiple versions of the exam are issued, alert students, who have two different versions of the test, can identify the experimental section by noting which sections they have had in common thus far.

NOTE: The fairness of this section is often debated. The student does not know exactly which section is ungraded.

They can determine which type of section it was only after they have already completed at least one such section.

For example, if the student has already done two arguments sections and runs into a third one, then one of those three was the experimental section.

The order is also unpredictable. Depending on ordering and where a given student's weaknesses lie, they can severely underperform (or overperform) on one specific testing.

The experimental section also amounts to unpaid research being done on LSAC's behalf by test-takers who are already paying to take the test.

Writing sample:

Consists of a brief essay that the student hand-writes at the end of the examination on lined paper that is provided with the test booklet.
The writing sample is unique in that it is not scored and its order is known beforehand.
The topic of the essay is given by either a Decision prompt or an Argument prompt.
The Decision prompt provides the student with a problem and two positions on what decision should be made to solve it. The student is challenged to write a brief essay in support of one position.
For the Argument prompt, the student is given an argument and then asked to critique it.
Time limit for either prompt is 35 minutes.
This essay is then photocopied and sent to admission offices along with the LSAT score.

NOTE: Between the quality of the handwriting and that of the photocopy, the readability and usefulness of the writing sample can be marginal.

Additionally, most programmes require applicants to submit a "personal statement" of some kind. These factors sometimes result in the writing sample portion being ignored completely by admission boards.

National Admissions Test for Law

The LNat - National Admissions Test for Law - is an admissions aptitude test that was adopted in 2004 by eight UK university law programmes as an admissions requirement for home applicants.
It was devised as a solution to the problem facing universities trying to select from an increasingly competitive pool with similarly high A-levels.
With effect from its second year the LNAT is required for UK and overseas applicants alike.
There are now 11 participating law schools and hundreds of test centres worldwide.

Format

The test taker has two hours to complete an essay and 30 multiple choice questions.
The questions are aimed at measuring reading comprehension and logical reasoning skills.
The reading portion contains 10 sets of three questions based on the corresponding short reading passage.
The questions typically ask for terms and arguments from the reading to be defined by inference.
The essay lasts 40 minutes and involves the candidate answering one of five available essay questions.
The questions are open-ended topics typically about student-related issues or other well familiar subject matter.
The reading section is scored out of 30
The essay is individually marked by respective universities.

Participating law programmes (2005)

University of Birmingham
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
University of Durham
University of East Anglia
University of Glasgow
King's College London
Manchester Metropolitan University
University of Nottingham
University of Oxford
University College London

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