The Law School Admission Test (LSAT)®, the most common standardized test for law school, tests logical thinking, argumentation and exceptional reading ability. If you plan to take the LSAT, knowing the ins and outs of the test is the first step to getting the score you want.
An above-average LSAT score can help you gain admission to your target law school and may even indicate how you’ll perform in the first year of your studies. Regardless of your pre-law major, it’s important to prepare for the LSAT.
In this article, we unpack everything you need to know about the LSAT, including exam costs and structure, how long the exam takes and common LSAT score ranges.
Why Should You Take the LSAT?
If you’re wondering how to become a lawyer, the first step is taking the LSAT. Developed by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC)®, the LSAT is the only standardized test designed for admission to law school.
This exam tests skills that are necessary to succeed in law school, thereby measuring your readiness to enroll in a juris doctor program. So if you’re wondering, “Should I go to law school?”, taking the LSAT can help you decide.
Many law schools accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) require applicants to take the LSAT.
What Topics Does the LSAT Cover?
The LSAT taps into the skills that are most essential to practicing law. The exam is divided into five sections: reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, logical reasoning, writing and a variable section that’s used to assess new exam questions.
Each section evaluates skills that are critical for prospective law students. These may include critical reading, the ability to identify key facts in a case or text, deductive reasoning and writing with organizational structure.
How Long Does the LSAT Take?
The LSAT takes around three hours to complete. The exam includes a multiple-choice portion and a writing portion. The multiple-choice portion comprises four sections. Each lasts 35 minutes, with 10-minute breaks between the second and third sections. Test-takers have 35 minutes to complete the writing portion.
Time is of the essence in the LSAT. Each section comes with dense reading material, and there are roughly 25 questions per section—which doesn’t leave much time for each question. The good news: Though the test is multiple-choice, wrong questions are not counted against you.
How Much Does the LSAT Cost?
Test-takers typically must pay the LSAT exam fee, LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service (CAS) fee and the law school report fee, among other LSAT-related costs.
Exam Fee
The LSAT, including the writing portion, costs $215. Each retake also costs $215. LSAC does not offer the writing portion as a standalone test. However, if you are content with your LSAT writing performance and want to retake the rest of the exam, you may do so without retaking the writing portion.
Credential Assembly Service Subscription
Most ABA-approved law schools require LSAT test-takers to submit their scores using CAS, which simplifies the application process. A CAS subscription costs $195 and remains active for five years.
Through a single account, CAS provides access to electronic application processing for all ABA-approved law schools.
CAS Report Fee
CAS also compiles a full report of your required documents and LSAT scores for each school to which you apply. Each CAS report costs $45.
Optional Costs
The LSAT score preview lets you view your results so you can decide whether to keep or discard the score. This costs $45 if purchased before your test day and $75 if purchased afterward.
You can also buy an official LSAT score report, which includes all LSAT scores earned, including nonreportable ones. This costs $50.
If you would like your LSAT score reassessed, a score audit is available for $150.
How Is The LSAT Scored?
Completing the LSAT results in two scores: a raw score and a scale score. The raw score is the number of correct answers you have–incorrect answers do not count against your score. This raw number is then converted into a scale score ranging from 120 to 180.
Between the raw and scale scores, your scale score is the most important when it comes to law school admissions. According to an LSAC study that correlated LSAT scores to first-year law student success, the median LSAT score was 153.
LSAT Test Structure
The multiple-choice portion of the LSAT consists of four sections. The first three sections are analytical reasoning, reading comprehension and logical reasoning. The fourth is assigned randomly among the three skill areas mentioned above, and it is not scored.
These sections are administered in no particular order. The LSAT writing portion takes place separately.
Reading Comprehension
Studying and practicing law requires strong reading skills. Legal practitioners must be able to comprehend dense argumentative and expository texts such as court cases, contracts, decisions, evidence and legal codes.
This competency goes beyond simply understanding the text and grasping the subject matter. Law professionals must be able to synthesize these texts, compare them and apply them in practice.
The LSAT’s reading comprehension section entails four sets of reading questions, each containing reading material and five to eight related questions. The first three questions each feature a single reading passage. The fourth question presents two shorter passages that are related to each other. The test-taker must compare these passages to demonstrate their ability to determine the relationship between two texts.
The texts in the reading comprehension section come from various subjects, including those unrelated to law. Subject matter may include social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. The texts are challenging due to their density and sophisticated vocabulary.
The questions may ask test-takers to determine the main idea or purpose of a text, identify explicit and implicit information and analyze a text’s organization and structure.
Analytical Reasoning
The analytical reasoning section of the LSAT is also known as “logic games”. This section assesses your ability to determine what could or must be true based on facts and rules or groups of facts and rules.
This section presents a set of questions based on a particular passage and describes a scenario. These questions are usually unrelated to the law. However, the questions measure the same skills you might use when analyzing a set of regulations, the terms of a contract or the facts of a legal case.
The LSAT’s analytical reasoning section tests your deductive reasoning skills in many ways. In this section, expect to determine the correct solution to a problem based on a set of relationships; reason with conditional, or “if-then”, statements; recognize when two statements are logically equivalent; and infer truth based on facts and rules combined with new hypothetical information.
Logical Reasoning
Because argumentation is central to practicing law, the ability to analyze, evaluate, construct and refute arguments is paramount. The LSAT’s logical reasoning section measures these skills by assessing an individual’s competency in legal analysis.
Similar to the other multiple-choice sections, the logical reasoning readings are not necessarily related to law. The arguments in this section come from sources like newspapers, academic publications and advertisements, requiring the test-taker to examine, analyze and evaluate arguments found in ordinary language.
This section asks test-takers to read and comprehend short passages and answer one to two questions about each. These questions are central to legal reasoning. They may include recognizing the parts of an argument and identifying flaws, drawing well-supported conclusions, reasoning by analogy and determining how new evidence affects an argument.
Writing Sample
Prospective law students must be able to take a position based on given evidence and defend the position logically in writing. This separate, unscored section of the LSAT measures test-takers’ argumentative writing ability. Being a strong writer is critical for success in law school.
The writing portion of the LSAT is open eight days before the multiple-choice portion. This section can be taken on demand and is proctored using software installed on the test-taker’s computer. Candidates must complete the writing portion of the LSAT to view their score on the multiple-choice portion.
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