Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

Ah summer, so full of warm weather and relative freedom. (Unless you’re taking an LSAT course… then it’s so full of warm weather and THE BEST TEST EVER!) However, this week’s post is not as much for the current LSAT takers, as it is for my friends who will be joining me as 1Ls at law schools across the nation within the next sixty-five days. As my legal ducklings gear up for the July 4th weekend, and hopefully a month+ of idleness to follow, I thought they might want some input into how that time could be best spent to prepare for their upcoming 1L adventure. I mean, it’s still a little early to buy your trapper keeper (the good back to school sales never start until mid-August) so what’s a future law student to do in the meantime?

Well what follows are my humble suggestions. Or at least the suggestions I feel comfortable publishing online. As for the ones I don’t… well, you can use your imagination.
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The signs are all around us. You’ve seen them: listless bodies walking blankly around town at dusk, a preponderance of frighteningly pale and sickly young people lurking about your neighborhood bars and restaurants, and an ever increasing number of confused individuals emerging from the shadows, devoid of people skills and all-around cleanliness. No, this is not a casting call for the next George Romero zombie flick, nor is it at all related to the ubiquitous and thoroughly tired vampire fad. My friends, what we’re dealing with is a massive outbreak of PLWD: Post LSAT Withdrawal Disorder.
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If you took the test on Monday, I feel for you. You’re probably still suffering from some mulch-induced PTSD. The whole thing may have been a rather harrowing experience. That’s normal. That’s the LSAT. But did it really go poorly? Is it time to cancel your score?

If you’re thinking about canceling, you should be pretty certain that it’s the right thing to do. Tons of people walk out of the testing center feeling like they were just run over by a recycling truck. Really, almost everyone has a general feeling of impending doom after taking the test. But just feeling bad about the test isn’t enough reason to cancel. I’ve had so many students who thought they did terribly, but ended up not canceling and doing incredibly well. Could this be you? Well, it depends on why you think you did terribly.
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It seems a pitiable thing to offer empty words of good luck as some sort of benediction as you enter your last 24 hours prior to the LSAT. Instead, I’ve made the unilateral and completely UCLA-biased decision to offer you some words of wisdom from the Wizard of Westwood, John Wooden, who passed away on Friday at age 99. Let these be your guide on test day. Good luck, kids. Remember that it’s just a test.
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The clock is ticking… 10 days, 9 days, 8 days, 7 days, 6 days, 5 days…

Yep, the LSAT is less than a week away. But no need to stress. Not much more than the rest of your life (higher education, career, attractiveness of your future spouse) is riding on your performance next Monday.

My last day through the ringer was last September. If you want to get a feeling for what the experience will be like, check out my pre-game post, written in the stressful moments before the big day.

These last few days can be vital to your performance. You should know by now that the LSAT is not a test for which you should cram. This is not introductory Biology. If you pull an all-nighter before the LSAT, you are in trouble. Your mental acuity is crucial.
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So, apparently you have some test to take next Monday. It seems like only yesterday that you ran out to greet the friendly FedEx delivery guy as he gave you your fresh set of Blueprint textbooks. It was a sunny day, and you waved across the street to Ms. Johnson, who was talking to the milkman as little Billy practiced his baseball swing in the front yard. “I never realized how corny my neighborhood was,” you thought to yourself, but nonetheless it was a hopeful time, and you said “Gee wiz! I’m going to be a lawyer in no time!” Fast forward 12 weeks to today. You’re woozy and now suddenly aware of how much this battle with the LSAT has taken out of you. Instead of waving to Ms. Johnson, you resist the urge to ask her why the f–k she still has a milkman in 2010.
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We’re less than one week away from ¡THE BIGGEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!, and one of the most important things to do is eat right on Monday. And this is coming from a guy who eats M&Ms for breakfast everyday (in a bowl with milk, with a spoon), so believe me, I’m serious. You’re about to get a three-hour long brain humping courtesy of the good people of Newtown, PA, and you need to be on your feet. So not eating breakfast is really not an option. You want something that is going to stick with you, so granola and yogurt is probably a better option than Cap’n Crunch. Eggs are probably a good idea, hash browns maybe not so much. Coffee is obviously important, but be careful to not drink too much or you’ll have to constantly pee. I have a sort of nutty student with a Capri Sun-sized bladder who developed a system of “tea shots,” where she brews 2 ounces of extra strong tea so that she gets the caffeine without the liquid. I had another who swore by those 5-Hour Energy shots that you get in gas stations. The important thing is that you’re fully alert and energized for when section one begins, so plan out your morning consumption in advance. (more…)

Hello to all of you out there who are in the trenches of LSAT preparation. You have a week and a half before test day, and if you are taking the actual LSAT at Pepperdine on June 7th, then I will see you there. I will be the guy in the nose and mustache disguise in an attempt to throw off my tens of fans across the Southland. Imagine that one of your professors told you that an exam was still 11 days away. Plenty of time, right? Alas, as you have heard, the LSAT is not like other exams in college. They say you can’t cram for it, because it tests a skill and a specific way of thinking and not a set of facts or concepts. I tend to agree with this sentiment, but I also think that 11 days is an eternity. As Rubin tells Josh in Road Trip, “I can teach Japanese to a monkey in 46 hours.”

If you have not been attending class or doing the homework for these last 2 or 3 months, you are not going to just “learn the LSAT” between now and June 7th, and if you do, then you shall be forever known as Doogie Howser, J.D. However, if you have been working hard and have a good grip of the main concepts, I think that big strides can still be made. If you are feeling demoralized, well, suck it up, skippy, and let’s start getting down to business. Some sacrifices will need to be made over the next week and a half. Here are my top five:
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Growing up, I was just your average Korean girl. Great grades, piano and flute lessons, tutoring younger students, sports, and dreams of being a lawyer/doctor/something lucrative and socially impressive filled my life. I graduated from UCLA, had a brief stint at a “fun job”, and then got my first big girl job at a medical malpractice insurance company. After working there for a couple years, I decided that the next logical step in my big girl life was to get ready to go to law school.

Initially, I tried to prepare by buying a prep book from the bookstore and taking it to the beach to study. Three skip-and-go-nakeds and two tan shades darker, I realized that I needed something a bit more structured to prepare for this test. After furiously researching my options (i.e. asking a friend and doing no further research), I enrolled myself in Blueprint.

Unfortunately, at that point I had neither a sugar daddy nor a rich family, and had to continue working full time while studying for the LSAT. What did this mean? It meant that after working 8 hours, I was either sitting in class for 4 hours or doing homework for the same amount of time. My days and nights started to blend into a weird combination of medical records, LSAT questions, and Trent Teti’s face. It certainly wasn’t the ideal way to prepare for the test, but I got through it, improved my score, and came out relatively unscathed. I know that I’m not alone in this, so here are my tips for anyone who has to work full time while preparing for the LSAT:
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Some people see the glass half-empty, while others see it half-full. I myself typically just chug the whole thing then fill it up again.

Philosophical positions aside, a new wave of half-empty sensibilities has breached the legal community in recent weeks. The Wall Street Journal has recently published an article detailing the dire straits of employment among 2010 law grads. The next day the ABA journal presented basically the same piece but with comments enabled, which ended up being far more interesting and informative than the article itself. The shock value centerpiece was the story of Fabian Ronisky, a Norhwestern Law Graduate who, unable to procure any sort of legal position, has resorted to selling media online at his parents’ house. (I’m pretty sure I went to high school with the pariah in question, but like any righteously paranoid, self-protecting law student should, he doesn’t have a facebook account, so that pretty much exhausts my investigation on that matter).
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