The following LSAT tips are presented by Thomas O. White, the author of Peterson s LSAT Success. White is former president of Law School Admission Services and a principal designer of the LSAT. He draws on twenty-five years of experience as a lawyer, a law professor and dean at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, and Vice President of Educational Testing Service. White has monitored the test s development and knows what it takes to succeed on this most difficult of all standardized tests. Can You Rely Upon Academic Prowess? Academic success is probably a major contributor to your interest in law school and the legal profession that have, in turn, led you to the challenge of the LSAT. You probably have some confidence in your academic ability. You have learned that a superior academic performance depends upon superior conditioning and study and test-taking techniques. Therefore, you reason that the conditioning and techniques that have produced good academic results for you in the past should also produce a superior LSAT score. For your reasoning to be correct, the LSAT should be a form of academic performance -- but this is not the case.
The LSAT Is Not An Academic Exercise For this reason, relying upon academic conditioning and techniques may actually place barriers that impair rather than enhance your LSAT performance. By training to circumvent these barriers, you can dramatically improve your score potential.
Avoiding Effective Academic Techniques Can Actually Improve Your LSAT Score. Skeptical? Sure you are. Skepticism is one of those successful academic techniques. You have been conditioned to question, and you insist on being convinced. And unless I can convince you that your academic conditioning must be put aside, your test training and LSAT performance will suffer, so here we go.
Isn t the LSAT a Test Like Any Other Test? No, it is not -- at least not the kind of test with which you are familiar.