The Law School Admission Test
The Law School Admission test (LSAT) is a (roughly) half-day standardized test administered by the lovely folks at the Law School Admission Council (LSAC). Pretty much all the common-law schools across North America think the LSAT is a pretty big deal for admitting students, which is a pretty good reason for you to care about it. Unless you're not applying to law school, which means you're probably reading this for someone else. That's cool too.
Essentially, the LSAT is a multiple-choice test administered online since switching to its most recent format due to the pandemic. The nature of the questions hasn't really changed so older tests still make for great practice material, they simply moved things online (and slightly changed the format). There's generally a test administration scheduled for every 1-2 months.
Structure
The test is made up of four sections, each 35 minutes long. There is one break between sections two and three, and otherwise the sections are taken back to back. The sections of the test are given relatively randomly, but there will definitely be:
Logical Reasoning
There will be two scored sections of Logical Reasoning (often referred to as the Arguments section). There used to be two of these, but in 2020 it switched to only having one. But then in 2024 it switched back to having two again. In this section, you'll be faced with 25-26 short texts, each of which will be followed with a single question dealing with the argumentative implications of the text.
Overall, Logical Reasoning will be responsible for roughly a third of your LSAT score.
Reading Comprehension
There will be one scored Reading Comprehension section. In this section, you'll have four extended reading passages, each of which will be followed by a 5-8 questions about the contents of the passage that you read.
Overall, Reading Comprehension will be responsible for a bit more than a third of your LSAT score.
Analytical Reasoning
As of August 2024, this section no longer exists!
"Why?", you might ask? Well, it's ... complicated.
Experimental
In addition to the others, there will be one extra section that we refer to as the 'experimental'. This is actually going to be an extra one of the other sections (so you could end up with a second Reading Comprehension section, for example). This extra section, however, is not going to be scored.
Why does it exist? LSAC basically uses this section to generate data about new questions they plan to use on future tests.
Will you know which one is experimental? Nope, that wouldn't make for a very good experiment now, would it?
Scoring
The LSAT is scored on a scale of 120 (just for writing your name) up to 180. There is no weighting between the different questions, so each question is worth exactly the same (no matter the difficulty). Essentially, your score is calculated by adding up the number of questions you got correct, and this total is then converted into an LSAT score.
Because tests do vary in difficulty between each other, LSAC also slightly adjusts the number of questions that you have to answer correctly to get a certain score from test to test (often referred to as the 'curve'). For example, while one test might require 56 correct answers to score a 160, another test might require only 54 correct answers to score a 160.
As far as LSAT scores are concerned, 120-180 is definitely an arbitrary scale, but the significance of each score is that it effectively ranks you against other test-takers. Each score corresponds to a specific percentile ranking, which stays pretty stable. That means that, for example, if you score around a 161 (generally a comfortable score for most Canadian law schools), that means that you're scoring roughly in the 80th percentile, which means you're scoring better than ~80% of all test takers.
To get an idea of how raw scores convert into LSAT scores and what percentile ranks each LSAT score converts to, feel free to select one of the options below. Note, however, that while LSAT scores vs percentile ranks stay pretty stable, raw score conversion into LSAT scores can vary significantly.
