Welcome to the lightweight LSAT

The lightweight LSAT is a simple, proven, and completely free guide to the Law School Admissions Test.

Who is this guide for?

The lightweight LSAT is primarily designed for students who feel stuck or frustrated with their current approach. But it does not assume you have any knowledge about the test.

It is meant as a corrective to other test prep systems. It corrects those systems by offering a more simple and flexible approach.

It is also meant to correct bad study habits. Because the LSAT is different than other tests, you have to study for it differently.

It does not provide practice questions. You'll need access to official LSAT questions to practice on. I recommend LawHub. And you'll need to be self-directed in that practice.

I generally assume you are aiming for a top score, like over 165. That said, my belief is that achieving a top score is a matter of mastering a core set of basic skills. So the strategies I suggest here are applicable for students of all levels.

How is the LSAT different than other tests?

Most other standardized tests and college exams are tests of knowledge. The LSAT, in contrast, is a test of skill.

If you study for the LSAT in the same way you studied for the SAT or History 101, you're going to have a bad time.

On a knowledge-based test, each wrong answer teaches you a concrete lesson you can apply on future tests.

Example of a knowledge-based lesson

A history exam might ask a question like "When was the US Constitution ratified?"

Suppose you pick answer "(a) 1776". Then you look at the answer key and you see that the correct answer was actually "(b) 1789".

This correct answer provides an immediate and obvious lesson. You can make a flashcard that says "year Constitution ratified" on one side, and "1789" on the other.

On a skill-based test, like the LSAT, you have to dig deeper to learn a useful lesson.

Example of a skill-based lesson

The LSAT asks questions like: "Which of the following would most weaken the argument above?"

Suppose you pick answer "(a) Zebras have stripes." But in fact, the correct answer was "(b) Zebras sometimes do not have stripes."

What do you take-away from this mistake? It is unlikely that the next LSAT will ask you about Zebras. Memorizing knowledge about Zebras will not help you.

Instead, you'll have to go back to the prompt and question to figure out what nuance you missed. You can use the correct answer to help you see what the LSAT thought was important, but it won't immediately teach you what you did wrong.

What is required for success on the LSAT?

The are 3 primary tasks the LSAT asks you to do. One for each of the three sections:

Test Section	Primarily tests your ability to...
Games	methodically follow rules one-by-one
Reading	identify what the author of a short passage is for and against
Reasoning	break down arguments by clarifying fact from conclusion

Tip

You could stop reading here.

If you can reliably achieve these three major tasks, then you can correctly answer most questions on the test within the time constraints.

The remainder of this guide is really just an elaboration on how to achieve these 3 major tasks.

What's different about the lightweight LSAT approach?

Most other test prep systems aim to be complete. They offer advice for handling every possible situation that has ever happened on an LSAT.

In contrast, the lightweight LSAT aims to offer you with knowledge you can actually use on test day. It describes the patterns that frequently repeat on the LSAT, so that you can quickly recognize those common patterns and process them with the least brain-power possible. And it offers a set of flexible tools that you can adapt to any situation, using your full brain-power.

Example of a flexible tool offered by this guide

This page describes how to draw 8 types of game.

The first thing to do when you encounter a new game is try to figure out which of the 8 types it is. Once you figure out the type, you immediately know how to start drawing it. This pattern recognition is key to speed on the test.

But there are more than 8 game types. So why not memorize every type of game? Because the weirder types are usually remixes of the 8 most common types. This means you can adapt skills from easy games for the hard ones.

The reverse isn't true. The lessons from a hard game wont help you on an easier game. In fact, focusing on hard games may hurt your performance and speed by making you overthink the easier stuff. And since every hard game is unique, the specific way you need to approach one hard game is unlikely to help you on other hard games.

What are my bona fides? Who am I to tell you how to study for the LSAT?

The lightweight LSAT reflects the lessons I learned in over 5 years of teaching the LSAT for a luxury test prep company.

The lightweight LSAT describes the actual system I used to score a 180 (a perfect score) on the March 2020 LSAT.

Disclaimer

The LSAC does not approve of this website. And I do not approve of the LSAC.

How do you get the most out of the lightweight LSAT?

Your brain is unique. So you must adapt my system for yourself.

Here are some tips for making the the lightweight LSAT work for you:

• Test out my ideas. Experiment on real LSAT questions.
• Start small. Try out new skills one question at a time and without a timer.
• Try to make your process perfect on easy questions. Then gradually add in difficulty and time pressure.
• Don't expect ease or perfect results at first. Over time, expect to get smoother, more confident, and more reliable.
• Pay attention to what you can control: your process for approaching each question.
• Treat your results as information about whether your process is working, rather than making your results into a judgment about your worth as a human being.
• Jump ahead. Explore the parts of the guide that most interest you.
• Ignore anything that doesn't help you.
• Circle back. Revisit pages you already read to see if there's any nuance you missed the first time.

You can contribute to making this better

This is version 0.6 of the lightweight LSAT. In other words, it's still a rough draft. There's considerable room for improvement.

Your feedback is essential for improving this site for other students!

If you find yourself confused by anything here, someone else will probably be confused by it too. Please share your confusions and questions in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

I'd also love to hear about your successes. If something here helps you get better at the LSAT or makes studying less unpleasant, share that too!

If you're feeling especially thankful, you can buy me a coffee .

If you'd like help more substantially, email volunteer@lightweightlsat.com with some ideas about how you'd like to get involved.

Note

You'll need a GitHub account to comment.

As an alternative to the comments, you can send your thoughts by email to feedback@lightweightlsat.com.