Thinking about law school? Then you’re going to have to take the LSAT. It’s an incredibly difficult exam, so like death, taxes, and hangovers after weddings, having to study for the LSAT is basically unavoidable. Whether you decide to take a course or prep for the LSAT on your all by your lonesome, we at Blueprint LSAT Prep have some things you should keep in mind.

Make a plan

You wouldn’t just disarm a bomb by cutting the red wire and hoping for the best, because it might blow up in your face. The LSAT is exactly like that. If you don’t prepare, it will actually explode. You need to have a plan of attack. If you take an LSAT course, we at Blueprint Prep feel this will be built in. If you’re studying on your own, you should make a schedule and try to stick with it as best you can. Here at Blueprint we’ve seen many people prep for the LSAT by just aimlessly “doing problems,” and the results are generally unimpressive.

Build up endurance

The actual LSAT is three and a half hours (longer if you count all the breaks and administrative rigmarole). At Blueprint LSAT Prep we’ve even heard the rare horror stories of students not getting out until mid-afternoon. You might walk out of the testing center sporting your first grey hairs. Taking the LSAT is harder than running a marathon barefoot in a hurricane, and it will make little bits of your brain leak out your ears. Because of the length, you need to build endurance. If you’re only doing 45-minute chunks of LSAT practice, the real thing is going to seem like a death march. We at Blueprint LSAT Prep thus recommend making the homework sessions as long as possible. But be reasonable. At first, it might be impossible for you to stay focused for 3-4 hour stretches. If you’re not learning anything, then you’re wasting your time. Work until you feel like you can’t work anymore, and then another 15 minutes. Keep stretching it out farther and farther until you’re comfortable with the longer sessions. And don’t forget to take practice LSATs. As you get closer to the LSAT, we at Blueprint LSAT Prep think it would be in your best interest to take more actual released LSATs as practice for the real thing.

Give yourself a break!

Studying for the LSAT is like doing a Jane Fonda workout (except less fun). You’ll be exhausted, so take breaks! At Blueprint, we’ve seen people prep for the LSAT non-stop, and they often end up having nervous breakdowns. You may have studied for your undergrad exams by staying up the entire night before, looking through flashcards with dates on them, but that’s not going to help for LSAT study. At Blueprint, we believe that prepping for the LSAT is about learning a skill, not gaining factual knowledge, and to hone that skill you need to back off once in a while, or you’re going to burn out. So build some breaks into your schedule, and if you’re really just not feeling it once in a while, put down the pencil and go do something relaxing (e.g. hello Jane Fonda). To ensure that you’ve got the time to take an occasional break, you should start studying no later than 6 weeks before the test (at the absolute latest). Most full length courses start no later than 9 weeks before the test, but we at Blueprint LSAT Prep have found that even that is a little too close to comfort for some students.

Get excited!

Something we stress at Blueprint LSAT Prep is that you have to get excited when preparing. This might sound ridiculous. Get excited? About ordering schoolchildren, or reading literary criticism, or making logical inferences about potatoes? Yes. You have to force it. Pretend the LSAT is the most exciting thing you’ve ever done in your life. It works. At Blueprint LSAT Prep we like to encourage students to keep thinking about how much money they’ll make, and how hot their trophy spouse will be. That’s motivation!

From everyone at Blueprint LSAT Prep, Good Luck!

 

Article edited by Jodi Triplett and Trent Teti, owners of Blueprint LSAT Prep. Blueprint Prep offers live and online LSAT classes across the country. Blueprint LSAT Prep was founded in 2005.