Erica, 150 and working toward 170: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Erica came in at 150, aiming for 170. Steve Schwartz coached her live for about 28 minutes on both, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Erica started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Erica
- Score when recorded: 150
- Goal: 170
- Target test: Not stated
- Situation: About 7 weeks to test day, 1.5 weeks into the program, 4 to 6 hours a day of prep plus 1 hour one-on-one tutoring and group study sessions
- Focus: both
- Worked on: sufficient assumption, necessary assumption, strengthen, weaken
What we fixed in this session
Speed is not the magic bullet. Accuracy is.
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 gave her the question-stem keyword trick for telling necessary assumption (depends upon, requires, assumes) apart from sufficient assumption (allows, enables, follows logically if assumed).
She habitually looks for a weakness in the argument even when a question asks her to strengthen it, and told her to flip her first instinct since strengthen and weaken are opposite sides of the same coin.
The plan: I identified her as a type A perfectionist who rereads and double checks answers even when she is already confident, wasting time on easy questions that should be spent on harder ones.
Where the session landed: Erica agrees to trust her gut on easy questions instead of rereading them, and to apply the same recognition and reset strategies to reading comp, where she has put in no practice time yet.
If your prep looks like Erica's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Erica's words
I think it's just getting more comfortable with it. I'm assuming the more questions that I start to drill, it'll just naturally come easier.
Erica
I overthink it. I'm maybe too critical and sometimes I get caught up.
Erica
Yes, definitely.
Erica
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 Erica's case: her the question-stem keyword trick for telling necessary assumption (depends upon.
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, sufficient assumption questions, weaken and strengthen questions.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded November 2025.
Erica: I think it's just getting more comfortable with it. I'm assuming the more questions I start to drill, it'll just naturally come easier. And if I practice trusting my gut and going through and answering the questions.
Steve: That's exactly it. You want to learn to go with your gut. And if you take what we discussed here, I think you getting 20 points in the next 7 weeks is more than doable.
This is Erica and she's looking to go from a 150 to a 170 in the next 7 weeks. My name is Steve Schwartz and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Erica is going to bring me her biggest LSAT challenges and I'll help her address them as she looks to improve by 20 points. Where are you scoring right now?
Erica: The last practice test, about 2 weeks ago, was the 150, which is where I started. I've technically only been in this program for a week and a half.
Steve: And what's your goal?
Erica: Goal is always 100%, of course. But I'd be happy with a 170, that would be great.
Steve: So we're looking to get you 20 points. How long till test day?
Erica: About 7 weeks.
Steve: Just under 2 months. How many hours can you put in between now and then?
Erica: About 4 to 6 hours a day, not including the one-on-one tutoring, that's an hour, and the group study sessions.
Steve: That's plenty, a good amount of time to achieve the increase you're looking for. Now, you mentioned getting familiar with the different stimulus types. Do you mean methods of reasoning or question stem types?
Erica: Question stem types. Do I recognize that it's sufficient or necessary, or parallel reasoning, the ones that aren't obvious.
Steve: Is it difficulty recognizing which type of question you're dealing with, or how to approach a given type?
Erica: What type I'm dealing with, off the top of it. Like necessary assumption versus sufficient assumption.
Steve: But you're clear on how to approach it, it's just a matter of recognizing the type?
Erica: Yes. I understand the difference: necessary just needs to be completing the argument, make it make sense, not necessarily proving the conclusion. Sufficient is proving the conclusion always.
Steve: Good, yes. For sufficient assumption, we want to guarantee the conclusion 100%, make the argument airtight. For necessary assumption, it's something that needs to be true for the argument to work. Here's a trick for the question stems: for necessary assumption, key words are most often depends upon, requires, and assumes. Sufficient assumption questions have words like allows, enables, follows logically if assumed, and properly inferred if assumed.
Erica: Yeah, and what I'm learning going over the keywords process you guys have in the program, making sure I go back to that too.
Steve: Exactly, you can drill that, go into the course for a refresher on the keywords. I'm not big on flashcards overall for LSAT prep, but it could be useful here. The good news is recognition is actually the easier part to master, the harder part is knowing how to approach it. Since you're having trouble with the easier part, once we lock that down, you're going to get a boost. Any other question types where you have trouble distinguishing?
Erica: Strengthening and weakening, I definitely get those confused. When I'm trying to find something to strengthen, my brain automatically finds the weak point, and then I confuse myself and have to go back and reread the question. That's where I stumble.
Steve: So you're habitually inclined to go into arguments looking to weaken them, even when asked to strengthen. You'll make a great cross-examiner if that's the route you want to go, you want to tear things apart. Strengthen and weaken are opposite sides of the same coin, so just flip it, take the opposite of what you were thinking, since the opposite of a weakener is a strengthener and vice versa.
We built into our students' study plans something called a reset week. It's not a vacation, it's a deliberate recalibration: take the pressure off high volume drilling and put the focus back on fundamentals and mental sharpness. First, strip back to essentials, forget cramming five timed sections a day, go back to core weaknesses and work them slowly, no stopwatch, clean reps. Second, clear out the mental clutter, cut habits that are more about anxiety than improvement, like highlighting every word or rereading the same stimulus three times. Third, fix the small leaks, the tiny consistent errors that quietly bleed points, misreading question stems, rushing through conditional logic without diagramming, falling for most versus sub traps. Fourth, rebuild your confidence, because if you've been stuck at the same score for weeks you start believing that's your ceiling, and getting consistent wins on untimed focused work reminds you that you actually know this stuff. And finally, ease back into full speed, the reset week is a pit stop, not the end goal. Once you've sharpened accuracy and shaken off bad habits, reintroduce timed sections, fresher, faster, more intentional. What else? Any other types?
Erica: Explain and resolve, I miss about half of them and get about half right, and I'm not sure why yet.
Steve: Have you put much time into those?
Erica: No, these are just my notes from the last practice tests, I went through and looked at the questions I got, wrote down the type, and whether I knew it was right or assumed it was right, and broke down why the other answers were wrong. I might not completely understand it, but some of them I kind of understand if it's an easier question.
Steve: Based on what you've shared, if you're at a 150 and want to get to the 170 range, correcting the earlier issues we discussed is going to be more impactful than covering resolve. Not that resolve isn't important, but if you're crystal clear on sufficient versus necessary assumption, and on your approach for weaken and strengthen, those are some of the most common question types. Resolve is a lot less common, so the higher yield area for you is the more common types.
Every LSAT student has had the moment where they finish a timed section in just under 35 minutes and still bomb half the hard questions, and think "I just need to get faster." That's wrong. Speed is not the magic bullet, accuracy is. If your accuracy is shaky, going faster just means making mistakes quicker. So we flip the usual order: drill accuracy until it's automatic first, because once your reasoning is solid, speed naturally improves, you've seen the patterns so many times your brain fills in the gaps. Then diagnose the real problem. Bad timing comes from three issues: overthinking (reading every word twice before choosing), misreading (backtracking because you misunderstood the argument), and hesitation (knowing the right answer but talking yourself out of it). If you don't figure out which one you're doing, you'll waste weeks practicing timing without fixing the root cause. Use timing as a pressure test, not the main event, drill accuracy, then use the clock to see where your reasoning cracks under pressure. Build pacing checkpoints, solve the first 10 questions in roughly 10 minutes, build a time bank for the tougher questions later, so you can spot pacing problems midsection instead of realizing you've got five questions left and 90 seconds. And kill the myth of perfect speed, some questions are designed to be solved in 20 seconds, others take 2 to 4 minutes, and that's okay. The skill isn't a constant speed, it's knowing when to speed up and slow down. Think of timing as the last 5 to 10% of your prep, the first 90 to 95% is mastering the test so deeply that speed becomes a side effect rather than the goal.
How are you on inference, must be true and most supported?
Erica: Those are good, I think I get about 80% of those correct, I haven't tackled them completely yet.
Steve: I'd recommend finishing those off, tackle them completely, because if you can get to 100 on those, that's going to be an enormous lift. What about reading comp?
Erica: Terrible.
Steve: Really?
Erica: Yeah.
Steve: That's in a way good news, we have an area to work on. What's your current reading comp approach like?
Erica: Read it five million times until I understand something that maybe looks like one of those answers could possibly be true.
Steve: So you find yourself rereading a lot. When you read, what are you reading for, what are you looking for?
Erica: Before I was just reading the passages to see if there's a conclusion and what's the point of it, mostly just main points. After watching your videos I'm trying to look for specific words that give me clues, whether it's evidence, background information, a fact, where's the conclusion, is there a subconclusion, and seeing if I can cut out filler sentences that don't matter because what's behind or in front of it will negate any of it anyway, so I can read less and have more time for the questions. If I need to go back, I know exactly which paragraph to check.
Steve: A lot of students treat reading comp and logical reasoning like they're reading a mystery novel, line by line, savoring every detail. The problem is the LSAT is not entertainment, it's an obstacle course, and reading it that way is the fastest way to run out of time and leave points on the table. Your goal is not to get into the story, it's to understand the structure and purpose behind what's being said, structure meaning how the passage is built, purpose meaning why the author wrote it. Once you nail these, you can answer most questions without rereading every word. Think of each passage like a skeleton, a few key bones (the main point, the author's opinion, any shifts in perspective) hold the whole thing together. Everything else, the vocabulary, the specific examples, is just skin, nice to have but not essential. We train students to find that spine on the first read, so even if they forget a detail, they know exactly where to go back to find it. You can anticipate the major question categories, main point, author's tone, detail lookup, and inference, so as you read, mentally flag things that feel like they could be a question, keeping you actively engaged. And the final thing, don't aim for 100% comprehension on the first pass. What you need is the big picture, a mental map of where the details live, and an awareness of the author's attitude. Anything else you can skim or skip until the question sends you back there.
A lot of your intuitions sound pretty good to me. How much time have you put into reading comp relative to logical reasoning?
Erica: I have not put any in at all this past week and a half.
Steve: So it might just be a matter of putting in the reps. You can work through the lesson videos covering theory and strategies, but then you've got to apply it on actual passages to bring it to life. You've been reading your whole life, so a lot of habits are deeply ingrained, and you're going to need exposure, almost trial by fire, to see that LSAT reading comp is different from a lot of reading you do elsewhere, because you're not reading for information or content, you're reading for structure, how the author is making the argument and what role each statement plays.
Most LSAT students don't properly review. They open notes, skim highlights, nod, and think "yep, I remember this." Real review feels uncomfortable by design, it forces you to go back into the problem as if solving it for the first time, except this time you interrogate every thought you had. We sometimes have students narrate their reasoning step by step, like a cooking show: first I read the stimulus and noticed the conclusion at line 3, then I saw the evidence but didn't check for gaps, that's where I slipped up. Here's a simple structure for a high impact review session: first, identify the trigger, where did your brain take a wrong turn, a word you skimmed, a conditional you flipped. Then label the flaw, give it a name like irrelevant comparison or confusion of necessary and sufficient. Then rebuild the solution, solve it again without looking at the correct answer until your reasoning is airtight. Finally, in your error log, write a key takeaway, a single sentence future you can read and instantly recall the lesson. Do this for three to five questions a day and you'll recognize your own patterns faster than you think. It's slower than blasting through 50 questions and checking the answer key, but way more effective.
Erica: I overthink it. I'm maybe too critical and sometimes I get caught up. I take too much time on the first ones because I feel comfortable and don't want to miss anything. When it comes to breaking down answer choices, I'm like, well it could be wrong here but right here, and then I go to the next one and do the same thing, and reread them again even if I feel like I have the right answer, just to make sure. Even on inference ones I completely understand, I still do that. So I probably take the same amount of time whether I'm confident or not sure and just have to pick one.
Steve: I hear you. Do you consider yourself a type A personality? That's what I'm getting here.
Erica: Yes, definitely.
Steve: That's the perfectionism, I get it, I'm the same way. You feel like you can't afford to leave any points on the table. The thing is, on the LSAT that backfires, because the test is so severely time constrained, it's not reasonable to complete all the questions in the time allotted, even for those with time and a half or double time. You've got to learn to let go, trust your gut and your abilities to the point that on the easy questions, you've got them, you can go with your gut, and you can't afford to double or triple check because that comes at the expense of another question later that actually needs the time. There's an enormous spectrum of difficulty on the LSAT, some questions a middle schooler could get right, some a PhD would get wrong. You need to spend less than half the time on an easy question as on a hard one. If in 20 or 30 seconds your muscle memory tells you this is classic correlation causation or confusing necessary sufficient, move on to something with a more complex trigger trap embedded within it. And on reading comp, there will be topics and passages you feel comfortable with, topic shouldn't matter but I'll admit it does.
When most people plateau on the LSAT, their instinct is "I just need to do more tests." But doing more tests without fixing the root problem is like putting more miles on a broken car, you're just wearing it down faster without getting anywhere new. The LSAT is a mirror, it reflects your strengths and weaknesses, and if you keep taking it without fixing those weaknesses you're just reinforcing bad habits. So we slow down the practice test schedule until the foundation is solid: for now, one test a week might be plenty, only if you're reviewing deeply. Spend at least twice as much time reviewing as taking the test, so if your test takes two and a half hours with standard timing, plan for at least five hours of review. Take your analysis and start targeting the question types that kill your accuracy, make those your daily reps until they stop being weaknesses. And drill with purpose, take the one or two question types that gave you the most trouble on that exam and drill those in small focused sets, maybe 10 flaw questions back to back. The magic isn't in the number of practice tests, it's in what you do with them. The LSAT rewards precision, not hustle.
Were you more a humanities person or a science person?
Erica: Science.
Steve: Cool, that's unique, a lot of pre-laws are the other way. If science comes more naturally to you, maybe a social science or law passage just doesn't connect, and you get that instinctual fear reaction, that's normal. That means maybe you want to go faster on the science passages, speed up there since those will take less than your average, so you have more time for the humanities ones that need the extra time. The LSAT is as much a test of time management and judgment in how you allocate your time as it is the content itself. What else?
Erica: I think it's just getting more comfortable with it. The more questions I drill, whether through LawHub, it'll naturally come easier. If I practice trusting my gut and answering, then checking later, because sometimes I'll answer and think, did I get it right, and then I didn't, so why not. Maybe I should just answer 10 questions how I would if timed, then go back and check, I felt it was right, it was right, and annotate whether I was completely confused, completely confident, or teetered between two answers, and explain to myself later why.
Steve: That's exactly it. You want to learn to go with your gut. And if you take what we discussed, I think you getting 20 points in the next 7 weeks is more than doable, it becomes inevitable if you take what we talked about: necessary versus sufficient question stem recognition, learning to go against your natural instincts on weaken and strengthen (if you like weaken, flip it around), and reading comp is going to be another huge area of improvement if you apply what we covered. How's the tutoring been going?
Erica: Really good. We've identified a couple ways, mostly for strengthening and weakening, since that's ironically my weakest point, not getting confused, and there's a lot of those questions. We set up a game plan, following the study plan you guys provided, going through some of those, and then setting up for the next week and going over how I felt, what I did.
Steve: Most students hate looking at the questions they got wrong, it's uncomfortable, the brain wants to skip past and say "that one was weird, I'll get it next time." That's the LSAT equivalent of sweeping dirt under the rug. Your wrong answers are your gold mine, the road map showing exactly where your next 5 to 10 points are hiding. But to mine that gold you can't just glance at the explanation and move on, you've got to interrogate your own thinking. We call it the post-mortem autopsy: first, restate the question in your own words without looking at the answers. Then pinpoint exactly why your reasoning went off the rails, misreading a conditional, mixing up necessary versus sufficient, or just rushing. Then write down the lesson learned in a way future you will understand, not just "read more carefully" but something like "always check if the conclusion is about X before eliminating Y." Then build a mini drill based on that mistake so you can test yourself again in 48 hours. If you make this a habit, every miss becomes a free coaching session with yourself. It's slow and tedious, but it works, you only need a handful of these lessons-learned moments to permanently close the gap between your current score and your goal.
Sounds like you're on track. Keep at it, Erica. If you have any questions or need anything, feel free to reach out, email or text anytime, I'm always happy to help.
Erica: Thank you.
Steve: Of course. It was a pleasure. Be well. Talk to you soon.
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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