Logan, 172 and working toward 175: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Logan came in at 172, aiming for 175 on the August LSAT LSAT. Steve Schwartz coached him live for about 26 minutes on timing, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Logan started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Logan
- Score when recorded: 172
- Goal: 175
- Target test: August LSAT
- Situation: Already scoring a 172 official score, studies about 5 hours a week and takes 1 timed practice exam weekly; timing has historically been an issue but has improved; wants to squeeze out the last few points before an August test date.
- Focus: timing
- Worked on: logical reasoning (general, order of difficulty), flaw questions, reading comprehension
What we fixed in this session
The question isn't do I have more time, it's do I know what to do with more time. Treat your review like data analysis, not just correcting mistakes, and that's how you make the jump from good to great.
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 that Logan was spending too much time being cautious on the easy early questions in logical reasoning, then getting rushed on the hardest questions at the end, and told him to bank time by finishing the first 10 questions in about 10 minutes.
Logan's 1 hour of weekly review was almost entirely accuracy focused (5 to 10 questions) and recommended adding a second hour of postgame time analysis, tracking how long each section and passage actually took.
The plan: I traced a bombed first section on a recent practice test to not being warmed up, and recommended doing 5 to 10 already seen warm up questions before every timed practice test and on test day itself.
I told Logan to judge his readiness for the August test using the average of his most recent 5 practice tests taken over 3 to 5 weeks, rather than 1 or 2 scores. That matters because scores naturally fluctuate a couple points in either direction.
Where the session landed: Logan says his biggest takeaway is that he needs to spend a lot more time on post-test analysis, diagnosing time allocation and how he felt during the test, not just accuracy.
If your prep looks like Logan's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Logan's words
I think I lose track of time a little on some difficult questions, and if there are 4 or 5 questions like that on the test, that makes it really difficult to complete the section.
Logan
I think in practice I wind up often kind of doing the opposite, being very cautious, and then as time starts to run out I have to speed up.
Logan
I don't think I spend as much time as I should really running through the test and figuring out what went wrong, not just in terms of accuracy, but time allocation.
Logan
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 Logan's case: Logan was spending too much time being cautious on the easy early questions in logical reasoning.
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, Reading Comprehension, passage structure.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded July 2025.
Steve: We do want to get you minimum 35 points at least so that even on your worst day, you're still getting a 175 plus. This is Logan and he's looking to improve from a 172 to a 175 and beyond in the next 3 and a half months. My name is Steve Schwartz and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Logan's going to bring me his biggest LSAT challenges, and I'll help him address them as he looks to improve by 3, 5 points and beyond.
Steve: Tell me a little bit about what led you to reach out today and how I can help.
Logan: I have a 172 under my belt, an official score. I'm trying to get that up to a top score. I'm making a lot of progress keeping accuracy in the amount of time you're given, since timing has been an issue for me, but I'm getting better with that. I'm just trying to work through how I can take that 172 to a higher score like a 175 and above. Given how the curve can shake out, that could just be one or two more questions, so I want to know how to approach that.
Steve: A couple questions can make all the difference, but we do want to get you minimum 35 points at least, so that even on your worst day you're still getting a 175 plus. How long do we have till your test?
Logan: I'm planning on taking it in August.
Steve: Good, so we've got roughly 3 and a half months to get you at least 3 to 5 points. A 172 is already an amazing score, but it doesn't mean you're done. Logan wasn't asking how to go from average to great, he was asking how to go from great to elite, and that jump from 172 to 175 and above is often harder than going from a 155 to a 165, because every single question matters. One careless misread, one minute lost, one question rushed, and you drop back below your goal. Your review process has to evolve, it's no longer about fixing gaps in understanding, it's about fine-tuning how you take the test. Your edge is going to come from time management, pacing, and surgical level review. You mentioned taking more full-length timed simulated exams. Do you feel like you're taking enough of those right now?
Logan: I feel like I am, though I don't think I've gotten enough of them under my belt this go around. I'd like to have more at this point before I take the test. But I think my schedule is pretty good, I've been taking one a week for the past 4 or 5 weeks and I'd like to continue that.
Steve: Do you see yourself continuing one a week for the next 3 and a half months?
Logan: I think so, with a couple exceptions here and there, but so far the pace has been pretty good.
Steve: Just to put hard numbers on it, 3 and a half months is roughly 14 to 15 weeks, so you'll probably get to take say 12 exams between now and the test. Do you feel like 12 could be enough, or do you want to increase the frequency?
Logan: I think that could very well be enough. It's possible more might be necessary, but that would put me in a lot better place than I am now.
Steve: 12 is a decent number, the question is what you're doing with those 12. It's not just quantity of exams, it's quality of review afterward. How many hours are you typically devoting to studying overall in a week, and to review in particular?
Logan: Probably 5 or so hours a week, about 2 and a half for the test itself and another 2 and a half drilling or reviewing. The review process in total is maybe an hour or so each week.
Steve: So you're spending 1 hour of your 5 studying hours on review, reviewing the handful of questions you got wrong or had difficulty with. When you're scoring in the 170s you're not getting that many wrong. How many questions are you reviewing over that hour?
Logan: Anywhere from 5 to 10 questions, max.
Steve: So 5 to 10 questions, roughly 8 to 10 minutes per question.
Logan: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Steve: Do you feel like that's adequate?
Logan: I think most of the time it is.
Steve: Normally I'd say an hour to review a single exam isn't enough, and 5 hours a week isn't enough to study, but the LSAT isn't one size fits all, since you're already scoring quite well. That said, if we could get you an additional couple hours a week to study and a couple more to review, that might yield benefits, because the higher your score, the more you've got to fight for each additional point.
Logan: Right, that makes sense.
Steve: The question isn't do you have more time, it's do you know what to do with more time. That extra hour can't just be more drills, it's got to be postgame analysis, tracking time per section and why you're getting bogged down. Do you have time to study more? Would you want to?
Logan: I think I would have more time and I'd like to do that if I knew how to spend it effectively.
Steve: So the thing holding you back is not lack of time, it's knowing how to make it effective.
Logan: I think that's the main thing.
Steve: If you had to spend one additional hour, just 20% more, to make it 6 hours a week, where would you want to spend that time?
Logan: I'm not sure exactly what areas, whether more questions. Broadly, I'd be thinking about how to get to the right answer faster on difficult questions when I'm taking the test, because I think I often spend too much time on some difficult questions, which affects my performance on the whole section, or makes it harder to get easier questions right because I have less time for those.
Steve: So would you say the reasons you're getting questions wrong aren't necessarily the question type or a lack of understanding, but rather time allocation?
Logan: I think it's time allocation.
Steve: That can be huge. The cool thing about working on pacing and time management is you don't actually have to increase your understanding, you've just got to get better at shifting where you devote your time. Are you finding you're getting bogged down or stuck on certain questions?
Logan: I think I lose track of time a little on some difficult questions. I might feel like I'm only spending a little more time on a question than others, but in reality maybe I'm spending 3 or 3 and a half minutes on it, and if there are 4 or 5 questions like that on the test, that makes it really difficult to complete the section.
Steve: That can have a huge impact, since you're not getting to devote time to other questions that might need it even more.
Logan: Right, and there's some anxiety there too, especially toward the end of a section, since those tend to be the harder questions. When I see the time I have left, I know I might not have enough time to really understand and get those questions, and that affects my performance too.
Steve: Are there patterns in the types of questions you get bogged down in?
Logan: There's one general pattern, it tends to be the most challenging questions on a section, where the answer choices aren't particularly strong. There might be two or three clearly wrong, but between the remaining two, neither seems like a particularly strong answer, and it's hard to figure out which is correct. Or a more concrete example, if a stimulus has multiple flaws and two answer choices touch on some of those flaws but don't fully capture it, I have trouble picking out which one is correct.
Steve: Good that you're recognizing this after the fact. Proper review isn't just reviewing the questions that gave you trouble from an explanations perspective, your postgame analysis should look at your time management to determine what you could do differently next time, noticing the patterns in where you allocate your time and where you get stuck, so you can extract that meta lesson and avoid the same pattern in the future.
Steve: So this is the sort of thing I might want you to work on with one additional hour, maybe an hour from the explanations and understanding perspective and another hour looking at how you allocated your time across all 4 sections, maybe 15 minutes per section, to see where you spent time in a less than optimal manner, and shift where you're devoting time to squeeze out even one or two more points.
Logan: I think that certainly would be possible. In terms of feeling rushed, it varies from section to section, but at best I might finish with maybe a minute of extra time, and at worst I have 2 or 3 questions I'm really not able to engage with because of not having enough time at the end.
Steve: That's a huge issue, running out of time so you can't properly engage with 2 to 3 questions. If you'd be happy with anything between a 155 and a 160, that's not a huge deal, because 2, 3 questions you'll still likely be in that range, but 172 to 175 could be just 2 questions. We've got to make sure you have the time to tackle every question with ideally around 3 minutes to spare.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense.
Steve: So it may be that in addition to not getting bogged down, you also want to look at where you can speed up to be faster than average. There's that general order of difficulty in logical reasoning, questions get tougher as the section goes on, so you don't want to be running out of time at the end when you hit the hardest questions, but you want to tackle the easiest questions at lightning speed to build up a time bank for later. For any student above a 165, I'd want you to attack the first 10 questions in about 10 minutes total, a minute per question, faster than your average of approximately a minute 25, so that you build up an additional 5 minutes or so to apply to the harder ones later that truly need it.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense. In practice, in those first 10 questions, what does that speed look like, quickly scanning the answers and picking what I think is right, or still reading through each choice and thinking it through?
Steve: Good question. You do want to go through all 5 choices to be safe, but I also want you to trust your gut, not second guessing or double and triple checking just because you probably got it right. In a perfect world we'd double check everything, but the LSAT is strictly timed, so I'd rather you not double check these so you have more time for the trickier questions that truly need it. If you read a question in the first 10, have a prediction, and see it in the choices, quickly look through the remaining choices to confirm, but that's it. Don't second guess yourself and think it couldn't possibly be that easy, because in the first 10, it could be. Question 21, in contrast, might not be that easy, and if you picked choice A and moved on without looking at D and E, you might miss that D and E also look good and require more analysis. But in the first 10, go with your gut, be ruthless, and maintain your speed so you can move on to the harder ones later.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense. In practice I think I wind up doing the opposite, being very cautious, then as time runs out I have to speed up and can't be as judicious.
Steve: That's a really common issue. If we could take even the wasted 5 minutes you're devoting to the first 10 questions and instead devote them to the last 5 questions, that alone could get you another 3 points, because they'll be more impactful spent on the harder questions that actually need the time.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense.
Steve: It sounds like your primary blocker right now is where you're allocating your time. So carve out that one additional hour a week to look at the postgame analysis for every test, and see, did I spend too long on this reading comp passage, did I spend too long on the first 10 questions. Watch the clock and mark when you finish each passage, so you can see the harder passage needs more time, the easier one needs less than average, and the same is true for logical reasoning.
Logan: Another issue I've had on occasion is a really off section, often the first section of a prep test. On my last prep test I got 5 questions wrong in the first logical reasoning section, the first section of the test, and only 2 other questions wrong on the entire rest of the test including the quasi experimental section. That was a really off section, and if that happened on the actual test it would really bring my score down. How should I analyze that?
Steve: When we look at why a section was off, there's a variety of potential reasons, and it comes down to tracking the data. Do you have any hypotheses as to what might lead your performance to be off?
Logan: Part of it might be not being fully warmed up, fully in the head space of the test. I think it's also timing, I haven't found the right rhythm for the section. In that last prep test's first section, I was running out of time, I got to every question, but the last 5 questions were pretty rushed and I made several mistakes there.
Steve: We've covered the time management aspect. Regarding warm-ups, that's a pretty easy fix. If you feel like you need to get warmed up, do some warm-ups before you start your timed sitting, a couple gimme logical reasoning questions you've seen before and feel smooth about, or a favorite reading passage you feel comfortable with. These aren't to judge or trouble yourself, they're just meant to go through the motions, like picking up a barbell with no plates just to get your form down and your muscles warmed up, so the actual movement has better posture. Even if you already know the answer, that's okay, the point isn't to measure yourself. If you did this for your next 4 or 5 practice tests, you could see whether it was effective, whether you felt ready the second the scored section began. With a dozen practice tests weekly from now till the test 3 and a half months out, you have plenty of time to experiment and see what works.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense.
Logan: Another time related question, I'm struggling sometimes with difficult questions where I'm not getting the answer. I might have it narrowed to 2 answer choices and I'm just not sure. I'll go back to the stimulus, reread it, reread the answer choices, try to figure out how they're different, and sometimes I'm still at a loss. Do I just guess and move on, or how do I approach those when I'm stumped?
Steve: Great question, this is the entire point of the review process after the fact. The real solution is to never be in that situation in the first place, by reviewing all your previous exams, since you already have a large data set, to see what types of situations get you stuck between two choices. During your postgame analysis, look at the finer points of what makes a wrong answer choice tempting and what ultimately makes it wrong, and what makes a right answer choice unappealing and what ultimately makes it correct, like the degree of certainty in the conclusion or qualifiers limiting the scope. If you review that thoroughly for all your prior questions, you're less likely to be in that same situation again. In the moment, look for those small distinctions, even though it may be hard given the stress of the timed setting. But if you can't get it, drill down during review into exactly what put you in that position so you can avoid it next time.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense.
Logan: In terms of measuring progress, I already have one test under my belt, I want to make sure I'm ready whenever I take the test. I'm aiming for August but don't want to take it just for the sake of taking it if I'm not ready. How do I gauge that, especially since registration is well before August and each question can make a major difference?
Steve: Scores do naturally fluctuate by at least a couple points on each end, so the way to mitigate that is a larger sample. If you have only 2 exams and one's a 172 and one's a 177, that's a really big range at that high end. Instead, look at a sample size of 5 exams, your most recent 5 scored practice tests, for a better indication of where you stand. If you take them over a more compressed time frame, max 5 weeks, maybe even 3 weeks, that might be even more accurate. 5 exams over 3 to 5 weeks gives you a reasonable gauge of how you're likely to do on test day. Discount it by a couple points just in case the stress of the real thing or a bad proctor impacts you a little. There are registration and postponement deadlines, but you can still withdraw even the day before the exam if you don't feel ready, and law schools would never know. Look at what happens as we get into June, July, early August, and make a more informed decision.
Logan: That makes sense, that's super helpful.
Steve: A lot of students review by reading the explanation and saying "that makes sense," but that's reading, not review. Real review means diagnosis: where did you spend too much time, did you panic at the end, was your pacing consistent. Treat your review like data analysis, not just correcting mistakes, and that's how you make the jump from good to great, and in your case, from great to elite.
Logan: In terms of my review, it seems like I need to devote more time to that post-test analysis, figuring out what went right and wrong. I generally take a prep test on the weekend and review it then or throughout the week, but I think there are still things I could be doing throughout the week. Should I be doing practice sections here and there, which I've been doing on occasion, or something different? How should I spend that extra time throughout the week?
Steve: A couple different ways. Doing individual timed sections would help, since pacing has been a recurring theme, especially when you don't have time or space for a full exam. You could also meet with your coach, join the small group semi-private classes in the evenings for additional exposure to different coaches' takes, or join study groups to immerse yourself more in the LSAT community. With your scores you'd be on the higher end there, but that's great because you can also learn a lot by teaching. Different ways to get at the issue, teaching, more questions under your belt, more sections under your belt, it's all going to help.
Logan: Okay, that makes sense. Pacing is kind of the biggest issue right now, but hopefully I get that figured out. There will still be some questions I'm getting wrong here and there. Reading comprehension isn't much of a timing issue for me anymore, I've pretty much gotten that down, but I still usually get one or two questions wrong on that section each time, without a consistent theme, just a mistake in the moment or a really tricky question. How do I drill down on those?
Steve: Sometimes you're getting hard questions wrong just because they're hard, and the solution is more review when things seem opaque or difficult to parse. In the moment it could just be difficult, but afterward, reviewing on your own or discussing it with your coach, you can find an angle from which to attack it where it makes sense. You can also engage in drills, if it's not understanding the passage thoroughly, try rewriting the entire passage in simpler language, like explaining it to a 5 year old. If it's a difficult logical reasoning style question, work on similar logical reasoning questions of that type, since reading comp is like one massive logical reasoning stimulus, and highlighting those parallels can help. But it's going to come down to review.
Logan: Yeah, that makes sense.
Steve: Any other questions, Logan?
Logan: I think that's pretty much all I had.
Steve: It was a pleasure. Before we sign off, what would you say is the biggest insight you got from our call today?
Logan: The importance of really spending a lot of time on review. I do take review seriously and recognize it's important, but I don't think I spend as much time as I should really running through the test and figuring out what went wrong, not just in terms of accuracy, but time allocation and the test as a whole, diagnosing how I felt about the test and how I was doing in the moment.
Steve: Good, I'm glad you found it helpful. You're on the right track, you're doing the right things, but don't become complacent because you're already doing well. Think about how 5 hours a week got you here, what if you upped it by just one additional hour, or 5 additional hours? How much more could you improve with the time to engage in that deeper review, to look at how you're allocating your time in addition to a more explanations centered approach? It's 3 and a half months till the test, but if you doubled your studying now for that short period of time, it could have a massive unlock for the rest of your legal education, your law school career, and beyond.
Logan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Steve: Well Logan, it was a pleasure, if you need anything at all, just reach out, I'm happy to help.
Logan: Great, thank you so much.
Steve: My pleasure.
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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