Lewis, 156 and working toward 174: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Lewis came in at 156 timed / 168 untimed, aiming for 174. Steve Schwartz coached him live for about 31 minutes on both, with a strong emphasis on pacing and endurance, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Lewis started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Lewis
- Score when recorded: 156 timed / 168 untimed
- Goal: 174
- Target test: June (moved from an original April plan)
- Situation: Not working or in school, studying full time, about 6 to 7 hours a day, feeling burned out; 2 months into prep, 4th full length exam taken
- Focus: both, with a strong emphasis on pacing and endurance
- Worked on: inference, necessary assumption, flaw, strengthen/weaken
What we fixed in this session
Speed doesn't come from rushing, it comes from recognizing patterns faster.
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 12 point gap between timed (156) and untimed (168) scores as a pacing problem, not a content or accuracy problem.
I corrected Lewis's review method from writing textbook style explanations to writing in first person about what he actually thought during the test versus what he realized on review.
The plan: I gave a concrete order of difficulty pacing target: solve the first 10 logical reasoning questions in about 10 minutes to build a time bank for harder questions later in the section.
Where the session landed: Lewis agrees to move his test date to June, adopt a 7 day timed practice rhythm, rewrite his review notes in first person, and drill inference questions and reading comp paraphrasing.
If your prep looks like Lewis's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Lewis's words
Oh, points of overlap. I never thought of it like that.
Lewis
Oh, use first person. Okay.
Lewis
Gotcha, so I just need to be more patient.
Lewis
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 Lewis's case: the 12 point gap between timed (156) and untimed (168) scores as a pacing problem.
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: necessary assumption questions, flaw questions, weaken and strengthen questions.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded November 2025.
Steve: You've taken 2 months to build that foundation, get the basic lay of the land. It's solid. Now it's time to switch gears, focus more on pacing and endurance. This is Lewis, and he's looking to improve from a 156 to a 174 in the next 2 and a half months. My name is Steve Schwartz, and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Lewis is going to bring me his biggest LSAT challenges, and I'll help him address them as he looks to improve by 18 to 20 points or more.
Steve: So Lewis, where are you scoring right now?
Lewis: I just did a full length on Saturday. I did an untimed one first, and without checking the answer key, once I was done I was done for the day. Then the next day I did the entire test again, timed, then did a blind review. The untimed one I scored 156, but the timed one I got a 168.
Steve: So timed was 156, untimed was 168, on the same test?
Lewis: Yeah.
Steve: Okay. And what's your ultimate goal for test day?
Lewis: An ambitious goal, I guess: 174.
Steve: Why not, shoot high. How long do we have till your test? When are you taking it?
Lewis: I was thinking April, but honestly, because of my own goal of 170 plus, based on my current situation I don't think if I take the test in April I'll break past the mid 160s. So why not wait for June instead of April? I think that's more realistic. What do you think?
Steve: Yeah, I think that's fair. If you're looking to improve 15 to 20 points, June, roughly 2 and a half months away, gives you a lot more time than April, which is less than a month away right now. More than doubling the duration between now and your test gives you a lot more room. One factor of course is the time you can devote per week. How many hours would you say you can put into your prep per week from now till June?
Lewis: I was told I put in too much, that I need to take a full day break without LSAT. Currently it's about six or seven hours some days. I do a test section, go over all the wrong answers, then do another section, and keep going. Recently it's started to feel a bit burned out.
Steve: Got it. 6 to 7 hours a day is a lot. Are you able to study for the LSAT essentially full time?
Lewis: Yeah, I can for now.
Steve: So you're not working or in school, just LSAT?
Lewis: Currently, yeah. I didn't renew my contract with work, so I'm fully devoted to this right now.
Steve: Okay, amazing. That could really be a huge asset for you. Of course we don't want you doing too much, we don't want you to burn out, but having the availability to study is going to help. This most recent result, timed, was a 156. I'm going to focus on timed because test day is timed. The untimed results tell you whether accuracy is the issue or pacing. You got a 168 untimed and a 156 timed. That 12 point gap tells us everything. Your accuracy is clearly strong. When you have time, you get questions right. But under pressure you run out of time and leave 15 to 16 questions blank. This isn't a content problem, it's a pacing problem. Speed doesn't come from rushing, it comes from recognizing patterns faster. The fix is more timed practice, more exposure, more full exams, back to back timed sections, and not spending all your time reviewing in untimed mode. At a certain point you've got to simulate the pressure, because that's what unlocks test day performance. When it comes to that 156 result, are there any particular weak areas, sections or question types that give you more trouble than others?
Lewis: For PrepTest 105, I noticed a lot of inference questions, and those are the ones I got wrong the most.
Steve: Okay, so inference questions might be an area to focus on. But beyond that it sounds like pacing is really the biggest issue.
Lewis: Yeah, I was told pacing will come naturally because I only started studying 2 months ago and I'm still relatively new to the test. But I'm not sure. My improvement felt so slow the past couple weeks.
Steve: Pacing does come with time. You speed up as you develop more understanding, but you can also work on pacing in isolation by doing a ton of timed sections and full length exams, putting the untimed stuff aside since test day is timed. If pacing is your issue, let's take advantage of those 5, 6, 7 hours a day, not saying you have to do 7, but more than 5. Either way, you're putting in time doing timed exams and timed sections. How many practice tests have you taken, and how many timed sections have you done?
Lewis: Honestly, that was my first time full length timed. I was told to focus on accuracy, so I've been doing everything untimed until now. That was my fourth full length overall. For sections, I don't know the count off the top of my head, but I have about 11 or 12 completely clean tests I haven't touched yet, saved for full lengths later.
Steve: The math here is interesting. If you have 11 or 12 full exams you've never seen, and about 11 weeks give or take till the June test, that could be one exam a week, full length, timed, real test day conditions, then reviewing afterward. How does that sound as a plan?
Lewis: Yeah, that sounds good. Some tests I've only seen one question from a section because of live sessions, where they pick random ones from different sections. But I have about 12 clean ones. What you said is what I'm planning to do as well.
Steve: Perfect. So that's a good action plan for timed exams. I'm curious about your review process. We've got PrepTest 152 here, necessary assumption, conclusion, evidence, your analysis running through all five answers, your takeaway. For the first one, the stimulus analysis was really detailed. For the next one, it was a lot more brief with more discussion in the choices. Are these examples fairly typical?
Lewis: Yeah, I think for some questions there isn't much going on, it's straightforward, not much conclusion to discuss, especially fact sets, so I skip those.
Steve: Well, that's interesting, because inference questions often contain fact sets, and that's where you're having a bit more trouble. For those, I agree there's not as much to dive deep into, but you could still look for points of overlap. If there are sentences where combining two pieces of information yields new insight, the right answer will likely relate to that connection.
Lewis: Oh, points of overlap. I never thought of it like that.
Steve: That's what an inference is. With conditionals, you have A requires B requires C. B is the variable, the point of overlap between the two, and you connect based on that overlap. That's what yields the inference or takeaway. You might benefit from drilling inference questions on the side, just looking at the stimuli and asking what the point of overlap is. There's always going to be something.
Lewis: Yeah, I'll do that. What I was doing prior to this practice test, for flaw questions and strengthen or weaken questions, was drilling by looking at the stimulus and trying to find the gap in reasoning without looking at answer choices, really training the critical reasoning and reading aspect. That really helped, so I'll do that for inference too.
Steve: Good. Divide and conquer. If you notice any question type giving you trouble, drill it until it's no longer a concern, then come back to pacing with the individual sections.
I think you're overall on the right track here. This one's a little tighter, this paradox question, because you're not spending time going over all five choices. You don't necessarily need to. You're not writing explanations here, you're looking at your thought process: what went wrong initially, and upon reflection what could you have done differently?
Lewis: These look a bit like explanations to me, which is good, but I don't see a first person voice here.
Steve: Right, I'd look at what your thought process was going in initially, then upon reflection what you could have done differently. There's no "I initially thought X, so I picked this choice, but I realized later I had misread this keyword, so actually the answer is this other one for this reason."
Lewis: Oh, use first person. Okay.
Steve: I would try to do that, because we're not looking to be the all powerful, all knowing explanation writer. That's not what these are for. A wrong answer notebook or journal should really look at what wrong answer choices you're picking and why: I misread the stimulus, I misunderstood the question stem type, I was tempted by this particular element of a wrong choice, or I found the right choice unappealing.
Lewis: Okay, okay, I understand what you're saying now.
Steve: I'd try to take it more in that direction, it'll yield more insight for you.
Lewis: Gotcha. So it's kind of a postgame analysis of what could and should you have done differently, what can you do differently going forward. Is there an action plan or takeaway from your analysis of any given question?
Lewis: Right now my analysis is what was going through my head when approaching the question. I realized the way I present this conclusion is very textbook, like an explanation, because those were the actual things going through my head as I read the stimulus. But for harder questions, what separates hard from easy is really the answer choices. Easy questions have four options you can eliminate if you understand the stimulus. Harder questions usually come down to two or three choices I'm stuck on, some subtle things. I'm not sure how I should improve on picking up the subtlety.
Steve: It's a test of pattern recognition. You pick up on subtleties by being exposed to the tricks and traps a greater number of times and a greater variety, so you recognize how a small difference in word choice can make a massive difference in meaning. It's about seeing what's actually there, not what you think is there or hope is there. They have a whole bag of tricks on this test, and over time, as you get exposed to more of them and highlight those takeaways, you'll be more likely to avoid the same mistakes next time.
Lewis: Gotcha. So personalizing it, using a first person perspective on why I picked what tempted me, can present a trend I can spot when I review and avoid falling into the same trap again.
Steve: Exactly. I'd aim to be more direct and clear about the thought process during the test versus the thought process during review, after having the clarity of knowing the right answer. Thought process during, versus thought process after: distinguish between those two.
Lewis: Gotcha, okay, I'd adjust the review document that way to give that more emphasis. I think that combined with drilling inference questions will help a great deal.
Steve: The other big thing is more time to work over these next few months. You've taken 2 months to build the foundation, get the basic lay of the land. That's solid. Now it's time to switch gears, focus more on pacing and endurance. You'd been writing beautifully structured explanations in your review document, like you were teaching a class. But that's not what review is for. The goal isn't to sound smart, it's to get real about what your brain was doing in the moment. Switch to writing in first person: I thought this because, I fell for this because, what I missed was. That's the framework that helps you not make the same mistake again. When you review like that consistently, you start spotting patterns in your thinking, and that's where the real growth happens.
Lewis: So how do I work on pacing and endurance?
Steve: By doing more work on pacing and more work on endurance: individual timed sections, 35 minutes, full section, no breaks, no stopping the clock, and more timed exams, four sections back to back, only a 10 minute break between sections two and three. With your schedule you could do at minimum two timed exams a week, reviewed in depth. On days you're not doing full exams, do two timed sections back to back, some endurance work without the full load of an exam.
Lewis: Two timed sections back to back, okay.
Steve: So out of the 7 days in a week: two full timed exams, four days of two timed sections back to back, one day off to rest. You could take that as a full day off doing zero LSAT, or make it a much lighter day with minimal review if it would stress you out to do nothing. This routine trains both speed and stamina. If you do it consistently for a few weeks, you'll notice two things: you start finishing more questions, and your brain stays sharper in sections three and four, where most people crash.
Lewis: What I noticed doing timed tests is I feel pressured seeing the clock ticking down, so I feel like I need to keep moving. I read the stimulus once, half understand it, then jump straight into the answer choices, and because I don't fully understand the stimulus, everything looks tempting, so I have to jump back to the stimulus and waste a lot of time. But when I do blind review, even though it's slower, I really make myself understand what the stimulus is saying and what the author is trying to ask. Then when I move to the answer choices, one really just jumps out. That speeds things up. I think that's something I need to work on, not getting stressed by the time.
Steve: We don't want you getting stressed by the time, but we also want you able to solve the questions in the time allotted. When it's untimed, you can double check and triple check, get full clarity, but that's not test day. So can we let you read the stimulus thoroughly once, get it down solid, maybe spend an extra 10 seconds slowing your pace slightly, and then go to the questions? If the first read was going to take 30 seconds, now it takes 40. I'm making up numbers, but by giving yourself an additional 33% to read the stimulus more thoroughly, could that save you time in the long run by avoiding a full reread after going to the choices? You have time to experiment, since you're studying full time, and you have two and a half months, so try one approach on one section and a different approach on another and see what yields better results.
Lewis: Yeah, sure, I can experiment. Since I'm changing my test date to June, I have 3 months to really experiment.
Steve: You also have a lot of material available, the 11 or 12 untouched exams you can do at a rate of one a week from now till the test, plus a lot of individual sections from other exams you haven't used yet, is that right?
Lewis: Yes. I feel like, because I'm really striving for 170 plus, there's a lot I need to work on, I need to pretty much master every question type. If you're not aiming that high, there are certain question types you don't need to pay as much attention to, like parallel reasoning and maybe formal logic, you don't have the same pressure to get every level four question right. But it's frustrating that I'm still getting level four questions wrong. In the PrepTest 105 section one, I actually got all the level three and four questions right, but the ones I got wrong were surprisingly all level ones and twos. That's never happened before. I don't know what to think of that.
Steve: Was it possible you were overthinking on them, or second guessing yourself?
Lewis: I think so. Also, I didn't read as carefully, I kind of skimmed and fell for the traps.
Steve: With anything on the LSAT, especially when you're doing fairly well, above the 155 range, your abilities are beyond that but you haven't unlocked it yet. You still need to read everything thoroughly, you can't skip the basics. But you can use the order of difficulty to your advantage. In logical reasoning, the first 10 questions are going to be on the easier side, level ones and twos largely, so those are as straightforward as they seem, no crazy tricks. Go with your gut there. For pacing, with standard timing, aim to solve the first 10 questions in roughly 10 minutes, a minute a question on average. You're then building a time bank you can apply to the tougher questions later in the section that truly need it.
Lewis: Gotcha. During the timed ones I finish the first 10 in 15 minutes right now.
Steve: Okay, just shave a little more, reduce it over time: 15 minutes, 14, 13, 12, ideally down to 10. Lewis told me he got all the level four questions right, but missed a bunch of level one and level two questions. That's usually a sign of overthinking. When we're aiming for 170 plus, we try so hard to be perfect that we start second guessing the easy stuff. First 10 questions, trust your gut, go fast on those, save the mental energy for the curveballs later. Perfection is the enemy of pacing. You can't afford to waste 3 minutes on question 4 if it means you never even see question 23. Build a time bank early and spend it wisely.
Lewis: Lastly, for reading comp, I guess I'm solid, averaging around minus 2 to minus 4, or minus 3 a section. I'd really like to get to minus zero if I can. I don't find any passage boring, but when the topic isn't one I'm familiar with, I find it hard to digest, especially humanities or history stuff with many different perspectives, I get lost, and that leads to me missing the inference or strongly supported questions. Do you have any tips for that?
Steve: Absolutely, a lot of students find law and humanities passages hard. Just because it's the topic doesn't make it any easier, those can be just as complex and the wording just as tricky as anything else. My recommendation is another drill. Take some older passages, and there are two drills. One: take the passage text, those 450 words, and rewrite the entire thing in simpler language, in your own words, paraphrasing like you're explaining it to a 5 year old. That process of translating and boiling it down more simply will show you whether you've truly got it, and force you to carefully consider every sentence and phrase. Once you understand it well enough, the questions become easier. A lot of the time, just like in logical reasoning, the question is hard because we don't fully understand the stimulus, or in reading comp, the passage. The other drill is to read the passage aiming to take away only the main idea, the big picture, the author's opinion, and then solve only the questions tied to that: main idea, primary purpose, best title, tone, author's opinion. I'm recommending this even though you mentioned inference, because it's the orientation for the passage, making sure first and foremost you've got the basic gist down, keeping you oriented and focused on the core of the passage.
Lewis: Okay, sounds good.
Steve: So to recap, big picture takeaways going forward: more focused on timing, two timed exams a week, reviewed in depth. Adjust your review document to focus more on the first person: my thought process before was this, upon reflection I now realize that. On days you're not doing full exams, do two timed sections back to back and review those too. Try to take one day off a week, or at least do very minimal work that day. Drill inference questions, drill reading comp like we discussed. That's pretty much it. Keep joining the live classes, and if you need adjustments to your study plan, reach out to the team and they'll make those adjustments for you.
Lewis: One last question. From your perspective, when you see someone like me with a really big point difference between timed and untimed, over 10 points, what are your thoughts? Is my goal really achievable?
Steve: Yes, it's achievable, for a couple reasons. One, you still have two and a half months, given that you're moving your test date to allow more time, more than doubling the remaining duration. You've done relatively little timed work up to this point, having focused more on the foundation. This discrepancy between timed and untimed is telling us your focus on fundamentals has gotten your accuracy pretty good, but you haven't yet worked on timing, which is why your performance suffers under timing. With a 168 untimed, you're doing pretty well. I know you want to be higher, at 174 plus, and you'll get there with time. The accuracy improvement will come from more detailed review and drilling your weak areas like inference, and the timing will improve as you do a lot more timed exams and timed sections, which is why I'm recommending these adjustments to your study plan.
Lewis: One concern: 3 weeks ago I did an untimed test and got 167, only a one point increase, so I was very concerned. Granted, I think the curve was a bit tough, since without counting the experimental I got minus 8 but that was a 168. I feel like the improvement is so minimal at the moment, I don't know if I can really break through to minus 5. It sounds insane.
Steve: I hear you. One other thing: we have very few data points here, just two different exam results, and scores fluctuate. If you'd taken five exams recently and the average was only one point higher, I'd say there hasn't been much improvement. But you will improve through additional practice alone. You haven't done enough timed exams, period. If you did 10 more timed exams, that leads to significant improvement, both with pacing and endurance naturally, since they're timed full sittings, and your accuracy would also improve from the added exposure, another thousand or so questions. I think you need more exposure to the exam itself under these conditions, plus the detailed review. That's what's going to get you those next 15 to 20 points.
Lewis: Gotcha, so I just need to be more patient.
Steve: Yeah, give it more time, but also shift the focus of your studying away from foundation and fundamentals to more of the test day run throughs.
Lewis: Okay, sounds good.
Steve: It was a pleasure, Lewis. Before we sign off, what would you say is the biggest takeaway from our call today?
Lewis: One is the review process, changing how I review into a more personalized method, really highlighting why I picked the wrong answer and why it's wrong, so I don't make the same mistake again. We also went over shifting gears into more of a performance focus on timing, changing up strategies under time pressure and testing out different ways. For reading comp, it would really be drilling the paraphrase part, that's probably the best way to know if you understood it. Einstein said if you can't explain something to a 5 year old, you don't really understand it. I think that's pretty much it.
Steve: Awesome, Lewis, it was a pleasure. You've got this, keep at it, follow the plan. If you have any questions or need anything, you can always reach out, I'm happy to help.
Lewis: Yeah, thank you very much. Have a good rest of your day.
Steve: Have a good one, Lewis, take care.
Steve: Lewis asked me at the end of the call, can I really do this? 156 timed, 168 untimed, and now he wants a 174 or better on test day. My answer: not only is it possible, it's likely, because he's already got the hardest part, the accuracy is there. What's missing is repetition under pressure. He's got the time, the discipline, and the plan. All that's left is execution. If you're watching this thinking, is it even realistic to go from the 150s to a top level score, the answer is yes, but not by doing more of what got you stuck. You've got to shift from passive review to active performance. That's the path Lewis is on now.
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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