Sure, there are other aspects to the law school application process that require your extensive devotion. On top of keeping a solid set of grades throughout your undergraduate career, you’ll also have to hunt down that perfect professor to write your reference letter for you, chronicle all your life experiences into a neat CV, and write numerous personal statements highlighting why you’d make the perfect law student. Those statements will have to be written, proof-read, and re-written countless times until you’ve perfected them – your competition will be doing no less.

Yet even taking all that into account, the Law School Admission Test is still by far the most important single event shaping your success in the admissions process. Unless you’re aiming for McGill; you might have caught a break there. Otherwise, this single half-day test will be weighed by law schools almost as much as your entire undergraduate career (in some cases, more). Those countless all-nighters spent ensuring you clinched those A’s in your courses, fueled by little more than rock-solid perseverance and a steady supply of Red Bull, could potentially all be sabotaged by little more than four hours and an unfortunate pattern of answers on a Scantron. To say that the LSAT is a high-stakes test would be an understatement, and a severe one at that.

Interestingly enough, the LSAT doesn’t actually test any knowledge whatsoever, which can be both good news and bad news. The good news is that you don’t have to spend countless hours cramming for this test the few nights before. The bad news is that you can’t spend countless hours cramming for this test the few nights before. This has led to a myth that the LSAT is an aptitude test – one that people are either ‘naturally’ good at, or not. This couldn’t be further from the truth, however. Well, it probably could be, but it’d take some work and likely involve leprechauns. Regardless, the LSAT tests for a very narrow and particular set of skills – skills that, although they take time to develop, are learnable. Most, if not all, people already possess these skills to some extent, but need to further develop and hone them to perform on the LSAT.

Think of it as basketball – even as a horrible player, you can probably dribble and throw the ball around (albeit with questionable accuracy). There’s probably no amount of practice that will turn you into a good player overnight, or even over a week. But give yourself a couple of months and a solid practice routine, and you could probably outplay most people out there. The LSAT is pretty similar – it tests for a skill set that can be developed. Unfortunately, far too many people simply don’t give themselves enough time to thoroughly develop the skills required.

So, how long should you devote to studying for the LSAT? In my personal experience, I’ve found one to three months to be a pretty ideal time frame for most people, so long as you’re able to regularly devote time to studying (at least 10 hours a week). Of course, this will vary with some requiring more and some requiring less, but three months of dedicated study are sufficient for the vast majority. That said, you don’t want to rely on it being ‘probably’ enough time for you, so make sure you have a backup in terms of test dates. The LSAT is administered four times a year, in February, June, September/October, and December. The absolute latest test law schools will take for the following year is the February test, but a significant number of seats are already filled by that point so you generally want to avoid this last ditch effort. The December test is the last one for the following year that will still keep you competitive. Thus, you generally want to either take the September/October test, or even the prior June test; this way, should worst come to worst, you always have at least one test date to which to defer.

Finally – how does one study for a test that requires no knowledge? Find a solid approach and practice. Sounds simple, but both should be done very meticulously. For a solid approach, there are numerous resources available from printed commercial books, online discussion boards, classroom courses, and private tutors (the latter two of which, in terms of shameless promotion, HarvardReady does an excellent job of providing). In terms of practice, make sure to clock plenty of hours; every minute spent on theory should have countless hours spent on practice, which should be accompanied with very careful analysis of every mistake you make.

It’s an arduous process, but with time and effort, the LSAT can be thoroughly beaten; approached properly, it can often turn an application that is mediocre at best, to one that is highly competitive.

- Yoni