Briana, 142 and working toward 165: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Briana came in at 142 (official), low 150s in practice, aiming for 165 or above. Steve Schwartz coached her live for about 33 minutes on both, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Briana started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Briana
- Score when recorded: 142 (official), low 150s in practice
- Goal: 165 or above
- Target test: June ideally, possibly August or September if not ready
- Situation: Restarted studying last Monday after a break following the January LSAT; plans 10 to 20 hours a week, no job conflict stated
- Focus: both
- Worked on: Most Strongly Supported, Flaw, Conditional reasoning/statements
What we fixed in this session
Speed is useless if you're getting questions wrong. The LSAT rewards precision, not hustle.
Steve Schwartz
This is one session, in the middle of the work. I've been coaching the LSAT since 2005, and every session runs the same way: find the real problem, fix the process, reset the plan.
I diagnosed the gap between her untimed and timed performance as an understanding issue, not a pacing issue. That matters because she already has the full 70 minutes per section with accommodations.
I had her slow way down and rewrite every stimulus and passage in her own words untimed before bringing the clock back in.
The plan: I reframed her review process around tracking question type, why she picked the wrong answer, why it was wrong, and why the right answer works, instead of just checking the answer key.
Where the session landed: Briana says she'll start incorporating the slow-down, paraphrase-everything approach and try it before her next test.
If your prep looks like Briana's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Briana's words
My score still dropped.
Briana
That's why I'm so confused as to why on practice tests my scores are still not jumping.
Briana
Just slowing down. I like your advice on taking the time to understand things.
Briana
Questions people ask about LSAT Unplugged coaching
What happens in an LSAT Unplugged coaching session?
The coach finds the specific habit that's costing points, fixes the process, and sets the plan for the weeks ahead. In Briana's case: the gap between her untimed and timed performance as an understanding issue.
Who runs the sessions?
Steve Schwartz recorded this one. Every LSAT Unplugged coach scored 170 or higher on an official LSAT, and students are matched to a coach on learning style and weak areas.
Where can I see finished results?
On the student reviews page at unpluggedprep.com/reviews, with video interviews and official scores.
Learn the fixes yourself: flaw questions, must be true questions, conditional reasoning.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded November 2025.
Steve: If you engage in these drills, you're going to be able to speed up while maintaining accuracy, because you will have developed the muscle memory. There's a limited bag of tricks they pull up again and again. This is Briana, and she's looking to go from the high 150s to the mid 160s in the next 2 months. My name is Steve Schwartz, and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Briana is going to bring me her biggest LSAT challenges, and I'll help her address them as she looks to improve by at least 7 to 8 points. Your latest score was 142. Is that right?
Briana: My practice scores lately have been in the 150s, like low 150s, before I took the January LSAT. And then on test day, I dropped to 142.
Steve: And you're looking to hit 165 or above, right?
Briana: Yeah.
Steve: Okay. What's your target test date?
Briana: June, ideally. But if I'm not scoring in the 160s by then, I'm not going to take it in June.
Steve: You're looking to take it, we're in March now, so maybe 3 months from now. You'd take it if you felt ready, but you're not in a hurry. You might go for August or another date in the fall.
Briana: Yeah, even September. I just started back LSAT studying last Monday, because I took a break after the January LSAT.
Steve: Taking time off isn't what derails most LSAT students. What derails them is how they try to come back: they feel guilty, cram, jump straight into full length tests, and beat themselves up for being slower than before. That leads to burnout and eventually quitting.
Treat your comeback like a warmup, not a punishment. Don't open your comeback week with a full length practice test. Start small, one or two sections at a time, focus on review, not results, and get your rhythm back first. Pick one section you used to be strong in, do a short focused drill, and review it deeply. Get a couple right and feel that momentum.
Then refresh your systems, not just your content. You're not just rusty on assumption questions, you're rusty on your review process, your timing strategy, and your warmup routine. Ask yourself, "How did I review wrong answers? What was my system for reading comp passages?" Write it down and rebuild the routine.
Then set a short term goal and don't overdo it. Don't start with "I want a 175." Start with "3 solid study sessions this week and one practice test by Sunday." Taking time off is normal, and it's not a setback unless you treat it like one. What's the biggest challenge you're facing right now in your prep?
Briana: When I drill questions, I tend to get most of them correct. But when I actually take tests, that's when I start seeing that I'm not getting things.
Steve: Okay. So it's transitioning from the untimed work into the timed sections, or the full exams, more in terms of simulating test day, would you say?
Briana: I think so.
Steve: I'm also curious to dive in a little to what might have happened on the January test for you.
Briana: I'm wondering if it's anxiety, but I got accommodations for that, so I still don't know why.
Steve: Mhm. What were the accommodations like?
Briana: I had extra time, and stop and start breaks.
Steve: So you were taking the January test with double time, 70 minutes per section, and the stop start breaks.
Briana: My score still dropped.
Steve: It still dropped, okay. If you're plateauing in the 170s going into June, for example, then even if you drop a couple points on the actual official, down to 168, 165, you're still at your goal.
Briana: And that's my goal. It's just to do well enough on the practice tests, not well enough, but really well, that I could afford a point drop if anything.
Steve: That's the goal. Let's raise up your baseline. We're looking to raise your PT average 20 to 30 points from the 150s, or 30 points from the 142. We want to build you a strong foundation.
Speed is useless if you're getting questions wrong. I'd rather see you answer 15 questions with 14 correct than blow through all 25 and still only get 14 right. The LSAT rewards precision, not hustle.
Pick a section and tell yourself, "I'm not here to finish, I'm here to get every question I touch 100% right." If that means only getting through 17 questions in 35 minutes, that's 17 deliberate, on purpose attempts. Once your accuracy is solid, then we work on speed.
Don't celebrate lucky guesses. Every time you get a question right, ask yourself, "Was my logic airtight? Would I make this same choice again if I saw this question tomorrow?" If the answer is no, go back and review.
Build slow confidence first. Most students try to go fast to feel confident, but that's backward. You build confidence by going slow and seeing yourself succeed, then you naturally speed up because you trust your instincts. "Go slow now so you can go fast later."
18 solid answers will always beat 25 guesses. Speed without accuracy is wasted effort, and accuracy without speed is temporary. But once you have both, that's how a 160 becomes a 170. Are there particular sections or question types that give you more trouble than others?
Briana: Most strongly supported. For some reason I always feel like I have it down, but then when I go into the questions I'm always struggling there. Flaw, I could still use more help on flaws. And I think in general I struggle with conditionals, conditional statements.
Steve: So those are three areas: most strongly supported, flaw, and conditionals. Good, I'm glad they're coming up. Sometimes before that we even want to build a foundation in argument parts: what's the conclusion, what's the evidence, the differences between causal reasoning and conditional reasoning, correlations too. Those are groundwork level things that cut across all question types.
Also think about the highest leverage, highest yield areas, because some question types are more common than others. There's only a couple of parallel reasoning questions per test. If you hate both parallel and flaw, work on flaw. Most strongly supported is a little less common than flaw, so I'd prioritize flaw over that. Conditionals cut across multiple types, so that's the one I might prioritize most out of the three you mentioned.
Let's talk about the mid 150s plateau. You've put in the hours, taken the practice tests, read the books, but your score won't budge, 154, 156, maybe 158 on a good day. You're not broken, you're just solving the wrong problem.
At the beginning, everything works: you drill, your score goes up, you watch videos, score goes up. Then you hit a plateau and nothing's changing. Most people double down: more drilling, more sections, more burnout. But working harder doesn't work at this level, because you're no longer missing questions from lack of effort, you're missing them from a lack of strategy.
First, stop treating all questions the same. You didn't just miss a logical reasoning question, you missed a weaken question with a comparative conclusion. Track the question type, why you picked your wrong answer, why it was wrong, and why the right one is better.
Second, your review process probably isn't real review. Checking the answer key and reading the explanation is passive learning. Real review means resolving the question from scratch, defending your answer like you're in court, explaining what trap you fell for and how you'll avoid it next time.
Third, focus on decision making, not just getting it right. A lot of people get a question right for the wrong reason, guess, and celebrate it like a win. That's a red flag. You want to say, "I picked choice C because I saw the flaw was an equivocation between correlation and causation, and choice C directly attacks that." When we help students break out of the 150s, they stop thinking like students and start thinking like analysts.
If you're stuck in the 150s, the problem isn't how much you're studying, it's how strategically you're studying. You're just one strategy shift away from the next level.
So I want to look at that a little with you, to see what insights we can gain. I see we have the question in the exam, the question type, conclusion, the premise, what you chose, the right answer, why the right answer is right, why the tempting wrong answer choices are wrong, why did I choose the wrong one, why did I not choose the right one, and what to do differently in the future.
Briana: Mhm.
Steve: So all these columns are great. This is very much in line with the way that I teach breaking it down. You're on the right track here, working through it bit by bit. What does the yellow highlight mean?
Briana: It just meant I had that question twice. I got it wrong 2 times.
Steve: How far apart were those 2 attempts?
Briana: Maybe a week.
Steve: Try to understand the stimulus and choices before diving in. That's a really important insight, because the question stem and the choices only make sense in the context of the stimulus. You've got to slow down and understand the stimulus, the conclusion, the evidence, as you noted in column C, column D. Then think about the gap, the disconnect between the two. That cuts across every single argument on the LSAT, and most stimuli on the LSAT are arguments. When it comes to the disconnect you mentioned between untimed and timed work,
Briana: Yeah.
Steve: talk to me a little about how you allocate your time over the course of the section.
Briana: I think because of the clock I'm just trying to get through it faster. My reasoning is different than when it's untimed. I take a lot of time to reason out and get the correct answer, and when it's timed I don't have the time to do that.
Steve: Almost every LSAT student I've worked with does the work, drills, reviews, puts in real hours, and their score doesn't move for weeks. At some point they think, "Am I just not improving?" No, you are improving, you just can't see it yet.
LSAT score jumps are like software updates. You click install, and for a while it looks like nothing's happening, then suddenly you're at 97% and done. Your brain is learning new reasoning patterns even when you can't feel the growth in real time, and your next practice test can be 8 points higher. Pattern recognition doesn't work on a schedule, it builds in layers, and when the foundation is strong enough, the score jump happens fast.
Don't change your whole study plan, don't throw away your review process, and don't assume you're getting dumber. Double down on what's working. Signs you're actually progressing: you're spotting wrong answer traps faster, you're noticing the author's attitude in reading comp, and you're making fewer dumb mistakes, like misreading a question stem or forgetting what "unless" means.
The score doesn't show up the day you learn something. It shows up after you've learned it, reviewed it, practiced it, and finally trusted it. If you were to do a section in full, and not really be watching the clock, how much time do you think you would spend?
Briana: Around 70 minutes, which is what I have with the accommodations.
Steve: Right. So if you were not in a hurry, if you were taking your time, you'd spend 70 minutes.
Briana: Yeah, but that's why I'm so confused as to why on practice tests my scores are still not jumping.
Steve: Right, because you're giving yourself the time you need. It may not be so much a pacing issue as it is just an understanding issue.
Briana: Okay.
Steve: So that's okay, since you're not in a hurry. If we just slow down, take that time, understand the argument, the conclusion, the evidence, can I rewrite these, paraphrase them in my own words, which you're doing in this document, right? I'd encourage you to take 100 or 120 minutes, and for all 25, 26 questions in the section, rewrite them in your own words, every single stimulus in the entire section.
Briana: Okay?
Steve: Then go back through and actually do the questions with your summaries in mind, with that additional understanding. This isn't realistic for a test day, but it'll give you a sense of what it looks like to solve questions when you understand what they're saying. Build the foundation first, even before you get into evaluating answer choices, because pacing is a thing, endurance is a thing, but accuracy first.
Briana: That makes sense. I'm going to start incorporating that.
Steve: You do not need to finish every question on the LSAT. Trying to finish every single question might be the reason your score is stuck. You see the clock ticking, you're on question 20, 5 questions left, so you start rushing, skim the stimulus, panic through the answer choices, and miss 3 or 4 of them. That doesn't make you faster, that makes you sloppier.
You're not graded on how many questions you touch, you're graded on how many you get right. This isn't like high school, where you get points for effort. Timing is the last thing you optimize. When we start off with new students, we don't give timing drills right away, we start with accuracy, pattern recognition, decision making under zero pressure, and only introduce the clock once that's solid.
Step one: slow down and master your first 15 questions. On most logical reasoning sections, the first 15 are easier and more predictable. If you can consistently get 13 or 14 out of 15, you're already ahead of most test takers.
Step two: budget your time where it counts. Not all questions are worth the same. Some are traps designed to eat up your time and crush your confidence. If you hit question 21 and it's a brutal parallel question with 6 lines of conditional logic, skip it, flag it, come back later if you have time, but don't die on that hill.
Step three: redefine what finishing means. There's a big difference between "I got to all 25 questions" and "I confidently answered 20 of them and didn't waste time on the others." That's not a timing problem, that's a strategy problem, and it's totally fixable. It's not about doing more, it's about doing the right things better. That's what separates a 155 from a 165.
Briana: And I think maybe another thing that's pulling me down is my RC is just not good. I can't get through more than 2 passages even within the 70 minutes, because I'm spending so much time reading up front so that I can get all the questions correct. I'm just spending way too much time.
Steve: So how much time would you say you're spending?
Briana: The whole 70 minutes. I think a half hour per passage, and I only get through 2 passages, maybe have time for the third one but not to finish it.
Steve: You could apply the same approach here, where you're taking the passage text, the 450 words, and rewriting the entire thing in simpler language as a drill, untimed. Take 10 passages and do this over the course of a week, explain it like I'm 5, in simple words. Ask yourself what is the main idea, the primary purpose, the author's opinion, if they could leave me with only one core central idea, what is that idea? That'll help you knock out the global questions: main idea, primary purpose, passage organization, best title, tone, author's opinion. You have the double time, which is an asset, but that's still only bumping it to 17 and 12 minutes per passage plus questions, which means we've got to cut the passage read itself down to maybe 8 minutes.
Briana: But I still need to find another way, because I still need to fit 2 other passages within that time.
Steve: If you engage in these drills, you're going to be able to speed up while maintaining accuracy, because you will have developed the muscle memory of the patterns, the structure of passages, or the reasoning patterns in the LR stimulus. There's a limited bag of tricks they pull up again and again. The only difference between me and you is that I've had way more exposure to these patterns, so when I see a new question, I can relate it back to something I've seen before. Some patterns you'll see on every exam. Others you'll only see once every 5 or 10 exams, so you need more exposures for those grooves to become ingrained in your muscle memory. If you slow down, you'll absorb the patterns faster.
Reading comp doesn't feel hard because you're bad at reading, it feels hard because you're using the wrong tool for the job. Most students treat reading comp like a memory test: they try to absorb every word, highlight everything, then get to the questions and realize nothing stuck.
Stop trying to memorize and start trying to navigate. The goal isn't to memorize everything, it's to know where to look when the questions come up. First, summarize each paragraph in your head: what was the purpose of that paragraph, not the facts, the purpose. That gives you an anchor point for later. Tag transitions and tone shifts, words like "however," "but," "interestingly," "in contrast," these often signal where the author's opinion showed up, which the LSAT loves to ask about.
Stop highlighting everything. Only highlight when the author clearly gives their opinion, or there's a phrase you'll need to jump back to. If you're highlighting because a sentence sounds important, that's just decorating the screen.
Stop trying to understand everything. You're not being graded on your comprehension, you're being tested on whether you can extract what the author is doing, find the line that supports a claim, and distinguish between subtle answer choice wording. "I don't need to absorb this, I need to map it." Treat reading comp like a navigation challenge, not a memory test, and everything gets easier. How many hours can you devote to your prep per week on average, would you say?
Briana: Maybe 10, 15 hours. I do about 2 hours a day.
Steve: Okay, that's a good average. And what about weekends?
Briana: Haven't really studied on weekends, but I could fit weekends in, because I don't work on weekends. Would you say on weekends I should still do 2 hours a day, or since I don't really have anything else to do, more, like 4 hours or something?
Steve: What are you willing to do?
Briana: I'm willing to fit 4 hours in if needed, but I know a lot of tutors would tell you not to overextend yourself.
Steve: There's no one size fits all for what's needed. You don't want to fatigue the body or the mind, but if you have free time and you want to go from that 142 in January to 165 or above by June or August, I would put this above a lot of other things. That might mean putting it above Netflix, above going for a walk, or you only reward yourself with those other things once you've put in the time here.
Briana: Exactly. How many hours do you think I should be putting in per week to get a huge score jump?
Steve: There are 2 factors: number of weeks or months, and time devoted per day or per week on top of that. There's no one size fits all answer. If you want to reach your goal by June, I'd say you want to do more like 15 to 20 a week, just to maximize.
Briana: I feel like that's what I want to do.
Steve: And I'd say put in the time now, and if you're hitting 165 consistently with a month before your test, you can slow it down and say, "I'm going to reduce to only doing one timed exam a week and reviewing it in depth."
Briana: Have you ever seen anyone get stuck in the 150s and not be able to get to the 160s? Because sometimes I get really discouraged and scared that that would be my case.
Steve: Of course, people plateau. There are people who apply to law school with scores in the 150s, and that's their choice, but if you can break into the 160s, or especially 165 plus, your outcomes are better, you're going to the best law schools. 150s means you're applying a lot of the strategies for a lot of the question types, but either not doing so consistently, or not for enough of the question types. We need to look at what are the most common types you're still not getting, the question types, but also the methods of reasoning, and formal logic could play a role, like you talked about.
Briana: Makes sense.
Steve: And in reading comp, you have natural science, social science, humanities, and law. If there are certain topics you like less than others, we can help you feel more confident in those. The breakdowns and paraphrasing will help with that too.
Briana: Good. I feel like I could tackle it differently, and hopefully I see my scores jump, because I really am dying to be in the 160s. I'm going to try this method and hopefully it works.
Steve: Let's talk about LSAT burnout, the sneaky kind, when you're doing everything right, taking practice tests, reviewing your mistakes, doing your drills, but you still feel tired, annoyed, and like nothing's working. This is productive burnout: it feels like effort, but you're going through the motions, and your brain knows it. It's not laziness, it's a breakdown of strategy, from piling on more content without getting any real clarity from it.
First, cut the volume. If you're doing multiple exams a week, reviewing them in depth, and adding drills on top, stop. Cut your study load by 30 to 40% for a couple of days and give yourself space to reflect.
Second, audit your review process. Most students think they're reviewing, but they're just checking answers. Real review means: can you explain why your wrong answer was tempting, why the right one was better, and how they'll try to trick you next time.
Third, add clarity, not more content. You don't need 10 more practice tests, you need to do one test really well: pause after each section, write down what felt hard, spot themes in your mistakes, and ask what you'd do differently next time. We call this meta review, reviewing how you're studying, not just what you got right or wrong. Burnout doesn't always come from doing too much, sometimes it's doing too much of the wrong thing for too long. It's not a sign to quit, it's a sign to pause, regroup, and get strategic. What would you say is the biggest insight you got from our call today?
Briana: Just slowing down. I like your advice on taking the time to understand things, and that could just be by reading the passages and summarizing everything, not necessarily going into answering questions, but learning how to understand the passage. I guess that practice will naturally allow me to go into passages on test day and understand them.
More coaching sessions: Zabdi, 141 to 155, Abigail, 147 to 160, Leah, 153 to 170, Dominic, Alina, 157 to 170. Student results and reviews.
I've written free explanations for every question in LSAT PrepTest 159, 158, 157, 156, 155 and 154, with the right answer and why each wrong answer fails. All LSAT explanations are here.
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