Will, 150 to 160 Goal: LSAT Unplugged Coaching Session (Transcript)

This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Will came in at 150 to high 150s, top score 158, aiming for 160s (goal range of 160 to 165) on the October LSAT. Steve Schwartz coached him live for about 29 minutes on review process, and the whole session and transcript are below.

The numbers here are where Will started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.

Student: Will
Score when recorded: 150 to high 150s, top score 158
Goal: 160s (goal range of 160 to 165)
Target test: October
Situation: In school, base study time of 3 hours a day but realistically 1 to 5 hours a day depending on school schedule, previously used Kaplan with a tutor and LSAT Demon before switching
Focus: review process
Worked on: strengthen questions, most strongly supported questions, sufficient assumption questions, flaw questions involving causal reasoning

Jump to the full transcript

What we fixed in this session

You don't learn from the drill itself, you learn from the debrief, the real gains happen in the 5 minutes after you miss a question.
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 Will's mental-only review process, redoing missed questions in his head without writing anything down, was not capturing the data needed to spot patterns, and told him to start writing it out.

I corrected Will's plan to review every question by telling him to log only the ones he got wrong plus any he was unsure of or guessed on, and skip fully confident correct answers to save time.

The plan: I addressed Will's worry that an October test date was too late for scholarship money by explaining law school admissions is rolling and schools do not make most decisions until late October or November.

If your prep looks like Will's did, that's fixable in one session.

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In Will's words

How do I not make this mistake again, that's one of the things that gets me.
Will

I'm not sure if that's a good practice or not, if I should be writing this stuff down so I can make the connections later.
Will

I tried doing that this morning and I think it sort of worked.
Will

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 Will's case: Will's mental-only review process.

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: sufficient assumption questions, flaw questions, weaken and strengthen questions.

Student reviews and finished results.

Full session transcript

Recorded August 2025.

Will: 150 to the high 150s, it kind of depends. My top score I've gotten is a 158.

Steve: Got it. And when are you taking the test, what's your target test date?

Will: I'm hoping October.

Steve: Okay good, so we've got roughly 2 months between now and then. And how many hours per week could you devote to your prep?

Will: I'm shooting for my base amount of 3 hours a day. I'm going to try to do more than that, but when school starts, some days are great, some days are not so great, so I'm going to guess probably anywhere from 1 to 5 hours a day, hopefully.

Steve: Good, so 1 to 5 hours a day over the course of 5 or 6 days a week for 2 months. That's a good amount of time, especially if you're leveling up your approach by getting more personalized feedback, which you'll get through the semi-private sessions we have 4 nights a week, and more guidance through the personalized day by day study plan. What's the biggest challenge you're facing in your prep right now?

Will: Probably timing, because when I'm drilling, even with the more difficult questions, it's not always the case, but even with the more difficult questions I can get them right if I take plenty of time to understand the stimulus, the question, the answer choices. I can figure out the answer, but under 35 minutes, solving enough questions, that's hard.

Steve: Timing is the number one thing that makes students feel like they're bad at the LSAT. They say, "I get it when I'm not timed, but when the clock's running I fall apart." That doesn't mean you're bad at the LSAT, it means your brain hasn't automated the process yet. Think about driving, when you first learn every move takes conscious effort, mirror, signal, check blind spot, merge. Once you've done it a few hundred times, it's automatic, and that's what you're building with LSAT timing. What most students do at this point is panic and double down on full length exams, thinking they just need to grind out more practice tests. That's a recipe for burnout, not progress. Here's what actually works: start with untimed sets to build accuracy, move into timed 3 question sprints to develop speed, layer in section timing drills like the 10 in 10 strategy for logical reasoning, and finally simulate full test pressure, but only once the foundation is there. We're training reflexes, not just knowledge. The real win is when you see a question and instantly recognize it, "oh, it's that kind of flaw again," you're not solving from scratch, you're recognizing patterns using shortcuts you developed through reps. What resources have you been using in the past?

Will: I used Kaplan for a little while last year, it was okay but I don't think it worked great for me. I also tried LSAT Demon, it helped a little, but they seemed a little smarter than me, that's just what it felt like. They weren't big on teaching any kind of theory, it was basically just drill every day. They did say dig into the answer choices and review, like you guys say too, but they didn't go into great detail about how I'm supposed to do that, what connections I'm supposed to make between the answer I chose and a detailed explanation of why it was wrong and how I'm not supposed to make this mistake again. That's one of the things that gets me, how do I not make this mistake again?

Steve: Totally hear you on that. It's all about getting to the root cause of the issues you're facing so you can avoid falling for those same tricks and traps. That's the killer combination of theory and application, which is what we do with the Socratic review method, digging down to the root causes through a refined and repeatable process for your postgame analysis of every practice test and every timed section. If you're struggling, that doesn't mean you're not smart enough. That feeling where you look around and think everybody else has it figured out, that's impostor syndrome mixed with LSAT panic. You're early in the process. The LSAT is not a test of your raw intelligence, it's measuring how well your brain can recognize patterns it's never been trained to recognize before, and like any new skill the first few weeks are going to suck. When we work with students, we expect them to feel like this in the beginning, I'd actually be concerned if they didn't, because if you don't feel confused early on it means you're not pushing hard enough. The students we see make the biggest jumps, 10, 20, even 30 points, are never the ones who felt confident on day one, they're the ones who say "I'm confused but I'm curious, I'm frustrated but I'm still showing up." That's the real skill, resilience, the willingness to slow down and actually learn how to learn. With these programs, were you able to talk to anybody and get feedback on your approach, or was it more drilling and videos and prep groups?

Will: I was able to talk to a tutor for a while during Kaplan, but it was still kind of early in my prep, so I'm not sure how useful it was. It felt like I had to do more of the questions and see more of a test before I was able to ask really good questions about what we were doing differently, why I solved the question wrong. It was early days and I was just figuring out the test. LSAT Demon, I didn't talk to anybody, it was just one of the plans I was signed up for, basically videos and drilling.

Steve: Let's say you do 50 LSAT questions today and miss 18 of them. You look at the answer key and say "ah got it, okay, next." That's not studying, that's grading yourself for sport. If you're missing the same kinds of questions over and over, what's the point of doing more of them? You don't learn from the drill itself, you learn from the debrief, the real gains happen in the 5 minutes after you miss a question. Most people look at the right answer and go "oh okay that makes sense now" and move on, that's passive recognition, not review. Here's the checklist we use with our students: what made the wrong answer tempting to me, what made the right answer unappealing at first, why is this answer right, not just why is the other one wrong, and how can I flag this pattern the next time it shows up. Even reviewing 5 hard questions deeply is more powerful than drilling 50 without thinking. It's not about volume, it's about insight. Now, when you do your review process, what does your current review structure look like when you're analyzing questions that give you trouble?

Will: Currently what I do is I basically try to redo the question without the answer I picked, look at it again, see what I missed, did I miss a word, pick an answer choice that was too strong or wasn't supported, try to find the correct answer choice and connect it in my head, why did I get sucked into the wrong choice and why did I not pick the right choice. I don't necessarily write any of it down, it's just kind of in my head. I'm not sure if that's a good practice or if I should be writing this stuff down so I can make the connections later.

Steve: I would definitely recommend writing it down, to force yourself to articulate it clearly, because when you do it in your head it's too easy to think "oh I get it now" and move on. Until you can truly articulate what mistakes you're making and why, you may end up making the same mistake again. Articulating it forces you to paraphrase the argument to make sure you fully understand it, then articulate what specifically about the wrong answer might have been tempting and what about the right answer might have been unappealing, and the key insight you'll apply in the future to avoid the same mistake. As you document it over 10, 20, 30 questions, patterns will start to emerge, whether they're about question stem types, methods of reasoning, or particular answer choice traps. If you do it in your head, you're not capturing that data.

Will: Do you write a log for the questions you get right too, or just the ones you get wrong?

Steve: Definitely the ones you get wrong, and for the ones you get right, if there was any doubt around it, if you were down to 2 and guessed and got lucky but it easily could have gone the other way, I'd review those too. But if you got it right and were confident with no doubt, I wouldn't spend the time, there are probably higher leverage areas to devote that to. You've got thousands of LSAT questions, plenty of opportunities to rack up mistakes to learn from, since every question you get wrong is an opportunity to learn something new.

Will: What do you think is the best way to compile this so I can easily see it and have it affect my practice going forward? One girl on the program had an Excel spreadsheet, but I'm not good with Excel. Can I just write down a wrong answer log, or a log of questions I'm not 100 percent sure on, and go back through that maybe every day, look at a couple questions I got wrong in the past, what I missed, and what I'd pick going forward?

Steve: Definitely. There are 3 options I like: a physical notebook, a Google Doc, or a spreadsheet. If you're not a spreadsheet kind of person, I'd go for a Google Doc, because digitally you have a template you can copy paste and repeat every time: the date, the prep test number, section number, question number, a section for stimulus, question type, the wrong answer you picked, and the right answer.

Will: And what would that look like for RC, basically the same?

Steve: Yeah, for RC it's the same, just instead of stimulus you have a passage, and maybe more notes on your analysis of the passage since it's a lot bigger, you could break it down paragraph by paragraph. Let's talk about the most common silent score killer on the LSAT: thinking you can review everything in your head. You finish a section, miss 5 questions, think "oh yeah I see what I did wrong, won't do that again." But you will do that again, because mental review is just code for I don't want to deal with this right now. That friction, the moment it doesn't click right away, is where the real learning happens, and if you don't write it down you're skipping the most valuable part of the study session. Open a Google Doc or Sheet, title it something like "LSAT mistakes that shouldn't have happened." Every time you miss a question and truly understand why, write it out in your own words, not copy pasted from an explanation. What was the trap, what made it look good even though it was wrong, what's the label for this kind of mistake, and what will you do differently next time. This document becomes your LSAT playbook, and it gets more valuable the more mistakes you log.

Will: I don't have my plan yet. Say I have a busy day and only have an hour or 2, and I'm looking at my plan with a certain amount of work to do, what should my focus be, just the drilling, or attending a class and doing the questions that go with it?

Steve: It's all valuable, the question is what do you personally need. What do you see as your weak areas?

Will: Probably just learning from my mistakes, the review process.

Steve: So we have a lot of lessons inside the program specifically on Socratic review, I'd look at some of those, I can have the team send you specific lessons where I walk through review for both logical reasoning and reading comp. I'd start there, then go to class, do the questions in advance that are posted on the agenda, and when you come to class you can ask about review, ask how to analyze, why you chose a particular wrong answer, what you could have done differently. You can make massive progress on the LSAT in just 60 minutes a day if you use it right. The problem is most people waste their time trying to do too much at once. Here's what to do instead when time is tight: pick one focus, not 3, just one high lever task. If I had only 60 minutes, I'd pick 3 to 5 questions I missed recently, the ones that bugged me, then deep dive them, not just look at the right answer and move on, ask what trap did I fall for, what was the test maker trying to tempt me with, what could I do differently next time. Then log it, take a minute and write a quick takeaway, for example "I got baited by a strengthener that didn't touch the conclusion, next time I will verify the link." Do that consistently, 5 days a week, 3 questions a day, that's 60 quality reviews a month.

I also had a general question about the writing sample. Do you recommend putting significant time into it, or just do a couple practice ones under timed conditions?

Will: Practice under 50 minutes or whatever, timed conditions, and then just take it.

Steve: The writing sample is not scored, so I wouldn't devote nearly as much attention to it as the scored portions. Get yourself into the 165 range and then you could think a little bit about it. It just doesn't matter nearly as much, but I'd lock down the scored portions first.

Will: I've watched some of your videos on climbing. I'm generally able to get the first 10 to 15 questions correct, and then usually as I get into the danger zone I start getting more and more questions wrong. What's the best way to get faster at those first 10 to 15 so I can have more time for the harder questions and not miss them?

Steve: So getting more of the first 10 to 15 right, faster. Accuracy comes with better understanding, it's as simple as that. If you build your confidence and your depth of understanding of how to analyze these easier questions so you can trust your gut, you'll be able to go faster on them without second guessing yourself, and devote more time to the tougher questions that truly need it. You could try going faster now and see if your accuracy drops or not, maybe it won't.

Will: I tried doing that this morning and I think it sort of worked. I get the one question I should have gotten, that's the worst, when there's a question I should have missed and I miss a word or something.

Steve: I'd say the biggest bang for your buck is going to be focusing on review, since that's what you've identified as the area you need to work on. Through that review, through extracting those insights, you'll be able to avoid making those same mistakes, and you'll be able to trust your gut on the easier ones, which will help you speed up and aim for that benchmark of solving the first 10 questions in 10 minutes. Let's talk about trusting your gut on the LSAT. It might sound like a terrible strategy, are we really supposed to take the most important test of our careers based on a feeling? But when people say trust your gut, they don't mean guess randomly, that's gambling. I'm talking about a calibrated gut, one trained by hours of smart review, deep pattern recognition, and brutal honesty about your own mistakes. Think about chefs: a great chef can taste a sauce and say "needs more acid," they don't need to measure it, their gut knows because they've done it 10,000 times. Same on the LSAT. You're on question 7 of logical reasoning, you read the stimulus and think "okay this is causal, they're assuming correlation equals causation," and your gut just diagnosed the flaw, not by magic but by repetition. With our students we treat gut instinct like a muscle, it starts off weak and unreliable, but once you've logged a couple hundred questions and dissected why each wrong answer fooled you, your brain lights up when it sees the same trick again. That's not guessing, that's speed through certainty. So build it: review every question you get wrong or feel unsure about, write out the trap, not just why it was wrong but why it fooled you, label it, tag it, and create your own mental LSAT dictionary. Do this enough and your gut will start to speak up before your brain does, you'll skip over answer choices with confidence, move faster without sacrificing accuracy, and stop wasting time second guessing questions you already understood.

Will: You don't think October is too late, right, in the application process?

Steve: No, not at all, October is early in this cycle.

Will: Okay, because I just wanted to make sure that if I shoot for my goal of 160 to 165 and want to get some scholarship money out of one of these schools, it's not going to be all gone at that point, is it?

Steve: No, not at all, especially if you apply with the score. If you got the score and you're early enough in the cycle, applying anytime this calendar year, you're on the earlier side. Law school admissions is a rolling process, applications open in September but that doesn't mean they fill up the class right away. In reality, law schools don't start making most of their serious decisions until late October or even November, some wait until after the holidays. If you're targeting the October LSAT and using that extra time to prep well and make a real score jump, you're not behind, you're right on time. Let's say you're deciding between taking it in September and scoring a 159, or October and scoring a 166. Which gets you into better schools, which gets you better scholarships? The answer is obvious, and I've seen it happen again and again, students push back their test by 6 to 8 weeks, stick to a structured plan, and walk in with more confidence and a dramatically higher score, and suddenly they're not just getting in, they're getting paid to attend law school. The real question is, can you make real improvement between now and October, and if the answer is yes, waiting is not a risk, it's a massive opportunity. Early with a weak score, you get ignored. Later with a stronger score, you get offers. So if you're on the fence, take a breath and make the decision that gives you the best shot at a 5 to 10 point

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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Will, 150 and working toward 160: a live LSAT coaching session