Ask Steve: 15 Straight Answers
Since 2005, my inbox, office hours, and YouTube comments have produced a list: the questions that come back every single cycle, asked by smart people who deserve straight answers instead of a link to a forum thread. The 15 below are the recurring cast. Each answer is the short version of what I’d say across a desk; where a full chapter exists, I’ll point at it instead of re-teaching it.
1. What happened to logic games?
Gone. LSAC removed the Analytical Reasoning section (the games) in August 2024 and replaced it with a second scored Logical Reasoning section, which is why this book keeps repeating that LR is 2/3 of your score. What it means for you: do not buy games books, do not watch games videos, and do not let a 2019 forum post set your study plan. If you’re using older PrepTests, the LR and RC sections in them are still excellent material; just skip the games sections they contain. And if some part of you is relieved, join the club. If some part of you was good at games, the diagramming instincts transfer nicely to the one-way door.
2. Is 2 months enough?
It’s arithmetic, not hope. Points needed (your circled number minus your current average) against a realistic rate, which for most students runs a few points a month once the method is running. 5 points in 2 months on the triage shape from chapter 10: real, if the hours exist. 15 points in 2 months: that’s not a plan, it’s a wish, and the honest move is the one Annie made in chapter 1, which is moving the date. The test runs multiple times a year, schools take your highest, and chapter 13’s calendar will show you what early-cycle timing is worth. Weigh the whole trade, not the test date alone.
3. Should I self-study, take a class, or hire a tutor?
Honestly, by what each one actually sells. Self-study works if you’ll genuinely hold the pen; this book is the complete curriculum, and thousands of students have made the trip with nothing but it, LawHub, and a notebook. A class sells structure and a schedule, which has real value if you can’t self-impose one, and it costs you personalization: the class moves at the room’s pace and reviews the room’s mistakes, not yours. Tutoring sells the one thing print can’t do: a live interrogator who hears your second why and immediately wants your third, which is why it pays best at plateaus and in the polished band from chapter 5’s check-in. The cheap way to find out which you need: feel the live version once. That’s what the free tutoring lesson at unpluggedprep.com/start is for. You’ll know quickly whether the solo road is plenty.
4. How many real PrepTests are there, and should I ration them?
A finite number, ever, and that fact should shape your whole plan. The exact count available on LawHub shifts with licensing, so the current figure lives on the resources page, but the planning rule doesn’t shift: fresh full tests are ammunition, not practice. You spend them in S and E phase, on schedule, with the 1:1 review attached. You do not spend them in L or early A to “see where you are” more than once; that’s what the diagnostic was. Run the chapter 4 napkin any time you’re tempted: 2 burned tests buy 2 measurements, and 1 reviewed test buys points.
5. My diagnostic starts with a 14. Is a 17 even possible for me?
Possible, and the wrong first question. The headroom is real: Anthony opened at 144 in chapter 1, and the author page at the back says what this book’s method has done from the 140s. But big climbs are priced in months, not weeks, and the students who make them are the ones who stop asking about the ceiling and start opening invoices. Your actual first question is the chapter 5 check-in, because a 145 with trap-2 habits and a 145 who’s never started are 2 different projects with 2 different timelines. The floor was never the issue. The method’s the same at every altitude; only the number of reps changes.
6. I review my misses and still keep missing the same question type. What’s broken?
Your why-chain is stopping 1 level too early, almost certainly. “I fell for the trap answer” is a symptom wearing a root-cause costume; so is “I rushed,” and chapter 6’s dead-end map exists because this exact stall is universal. The fix is mechanical: pull your last 3 templates on that question type, read your root-cause lines, and ask 2 more whys of each. If all 3 chains converge on the same belief, you’ve found the real bone, and it goes in the journal at 3 tallies, which makes it Thursday’s whole session. A miss that survives review doesn’t mean the method failed. It means the interrogation ended early.
7. I work full-time. Can this actually fit?
Yes, and chapter 10 built your exact week: the 7-to-9-hour working-parent build, 60-minute sessions, 1 protected Saturday block, the rest day and the R untouchable. The honest cost is the calendar, not the outcome: you run the 5-to-6-month shape instead of the compressed one, and that’s a feature, because tired review is checking with extra steps. The 1 sentence to keep: at low hour counts, review is the last thing you cut to fit, because it’s the only thing that makes your few hours compound.
8. I’m 35. Am I too old for this?
The median doesn’t ask your birthday. Admissions runs on the 2 numbers in your file, your GPA is already written, and your LSAT is as live at 35 as at 22, which makes it the same scholarship machine chapter 1 priced. What’s different: your study skills are rusty and your judgment isn’t. The rust costs you 2 or 3 weeks at the front of A phase. The judgment shows up everywhere else; older students hold the caps, keep the ledger, and skip the panic-shopping lap of chapter 3’s cycle at roughly twice the rate of my college students. Law schools, for their part, read work experience as a feature. The timeline is identical. Start.
9. English is my second language. Does the method change?
The method, no. The timeline and 1 emphasis, yes. The vocabulary stall from chapter 6 is a legitimate month-1 root cause for you, not an excuse, so the dictionary rule applies without shame: when a logical operator (“unless,” “only if,” “presumes”) is foreign to you, the rule is a definition, and you log it and move on. Add a daily habit the native speakers can skip: 15 minutes with dense English prose (court opinions and serious op-eds both work), read for structure the way chapter 9 teaches, votes and pivots over vocabulary. And take real comfort in what this test actually grades: not idiom, not speed-reading, but structure, and structure is the most learnable part of any language. I’ve coached students to the 160s in their third language. Their journals were bilingual. Their scores weren’t.
10. My real problem is test anxiety, not skills. What do I do?
First, check the claim against the numbers. “Anxiety” is where 2 different problems like to hide. If your practice average is fine and your official scores crater, that’s chapter 11’s first archetype, and chapter 12 is your fix. If your practice scores are also below target, then some of that “anxiety” is just your brain telling you the truth: you’re not ready yet. The fix is the method. That’s the honest good news. For the real thing in the room on test day: anxiety shrinks when surprise shrinks, which is the entire engineering principle behind the panic page, the rehearsals, and the morning protocol. And said plainly, because someone should: if anxiety is wrecking your sleep, your relationships, or your daily functioning, that’s not a prep problem, and a good therapist will move your score more than any chapter I can write. I mean that as a coach who’s watched it happen.
11. Should I cancel my score, or use score preview?
The durable principle (the exact rules sit on the resources page, since LSAC revises them): schools generally work off your highest score. So a delivered score is usually worth more than a cancelled one, even when it disappoints. It’s data, and chapter 11’s whole diagnostic runs on it. A cancelled score protects your feelings and starves your retake plan. The cases for cancelling are narrow (a genuine derailment, an illness, a catastrophe you can name), and if you’re in one, you’ll know; ambivalence is not a case. Current preview windows, fees, and deadlines: unpluggedprep.com/books.
12. What about accommodations?
If you have a documented condition that affects testing, apply, and apply early, because the process takes real time and the worst version is a legitimate request stuck in review while your test date arrives. Two things worth saying straight. Accommodations are about accurate measurement, not advantage; extended time for someone who needs it makes the score mean the same thing it means for everyone else, which is the entire point of a standardized test. And your prep doesn’t change: the method, the phases, and the ledger are identical, with your accommodated conditions used in every practice test from S phase on, because fidelity is fidelity.
13. My practice scores were great and my official was terrible. What happened?
Chapter 11, archetype 1, and I mean that as good news: the skills produced your average for months, and 1 morning failed to deliver them, which makes this the most fixable gap in the book. Do the official-test reconstruction this week while the memory’s fresh, then run the handling build: full-fidelity rehearsals, the panic page drilled until the scripts bore you, the taper honored, chapter 12 treated as the curriculum instead of the garnish. What you should not do is re-enter A phase and grind content, because the content was never the leak. You don’t rebuild an engine because the delivery truck got a flat.
14. Do I need formal logic? Should I learn all the diagramming?
You need the one-way door and its 1 legal reverse, which chapter 8 taught in plain sentences, and you need them as reflexes. Past that, notation is a preference, not a requirement: if arrows and slashes speed up your scratch work, use them; if some other book’s symbol system left scar tissue, you have my blessing to never draw another arrow. Chapter 8 said it once and it stays true: the test grades conclusions, not penmanship. Be suspicious of anything marketed as a trick. Tricks live at costume level, and costumes change weekly. The bones don’t, which is why the journal beats every shortcut ever sold.
15. When should I actually book my test date?
Work backward from the application calendar, using the math from chapter 10. Your phase plan plus 2 spare weeks sets the earliest honest date. Chapter 13’s rolling-admissions calendar sets the latest smart one. Book the retake into the plan on day 1, not bolted on in shame later. The 2 most expensive bookings I see, every single cycle: the date chosen by a friend’s schedule, and the date chosen by fear, pushed so far out that the prep loses all shape. A date is a forcing function. Pick the one your arithmetic supports, write the backup next to it, and let the calendar start deleting your nightly negotiations.
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Those are the 15. If yours isn’t here, it might be in a chapter (the index of instruments in the appendix is the fastest map), and if it’s new, send it: [email protected]. The list got to 15 the same way chapter 6’s dead ends got to 5.
