In his words

If you don't know something well enough to explain it to somebody, you don't know it well enough.
James

Knowing your weaknesses and your strengths, and honestly addressing those, is the biggest thing you can do to help your score.
James

I only had about 4 minutes left for those 5 questions. It was the fastest I've ever done a Logic Game.
James

What actually moved his score

I've been coaching the LSAT since 2005. James scored 5 points above his practice average on test day, which almost never happens. It wasn't luck, and it wasn't more hours. He'd burned out on hours already.

He reviewed to understand, not to lower the miss count. Every wrong answer got a why before he moved on.

He spent his time where he was weak and skipped where he wasn't. Reading Comprehension was fine, so he left it alone and went after his weak section.

He had a reset for panic. Breathe, name the distraction, get back in. It's what saved his last section when the clock was gone.

Individual results vary. Score increases depend on starting point, study time, and effort.

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Full interview transcript

Recorded September 2021. Logic Games was still a scored section then. It was removed from the LSAT in August 2024.

Recorded September 2021.

James: I started with a 157. When I was about to test, I was averaging about 163, and I had a couple of high end scores, like a 167 and even a 169 at one point, but those were outliers. When I finally took the test, I was pleasantly surprised and got a 168. That was at the higher end of where I thought I'd be, a net 11 point improvement over my initial diagnostic.

I came across one of your videos, and one of the things I really liked was what you said about where you study from mattering. The more I looked for supplementary resources, particularly for Logic Games, the more I found that it does matter. Kaplan, for example, I wasn't really liking, because it didn't make sense and seemed very different. I got more involved in your lessons for Logic Games, since that was mostly where I needed to improve. Your philosophies lined up with more than just studying for a test. Strategies like addressing your weakness: it doesn't make sense to focus on getting perfect Logic Games if you're minus 2 there but minus 5 on Reading Comprehension. Those kinds of philosophies resonated with me.

I did find out you can study for too long. I thought I was a workhorse, because I usually am with most other things, but it does get tiring after a while.

The biggest help for me was once I stopped just trying to shoot for a lower score and actually understood the test, making sure I understood why I got something wrong, not just in a cursory sense, like "I'm silly for missing that, how could I possibly have missed it." At first my thinking was that I missed a question and I was never going to see it again, so it was hard to find value in reviewing it. But the more time I spent with it, the more I understood the underlying logic behind it and saw how it connected going forward. Once I saw that, I started knocking questions out, and my study time went down too, because I was missing less. I'd miss maybe 5 to 8 questions and think, good, I only have to spend an hour on this now.

I came in as a nontraditional student, so I had a fair bit of work experience. One of the key things I understood from that, especially as a supervisor, is if you don't know something well enough to explain it to somebody, you don't know it well enough. I found that to be true with the LSAT too, even with stuff I thought I already knew. I really enjoyed hearing other people's struggles and helping them through those struggles. If I wasn't familiar with something, I learned something new. If I was, I could reverse engineer it to explain a concept to someone else. That helped me immensely.

There were two things about my LSAT experience I wanted to share that were unusual. One was with Logic Games. I was very confident in my Logic Games ability and was consistently scoring within a minus 1 or minus 2. When the test happened, the last game only had 4 or 5 questions, very short, and that made me nervous, because I know how those games tend to be very difficult. Fortunately it was the last one, because I did not like bouncing around, since that messed with my internal clock on timing. Your internal clock helps a lot: you get a feel for the right amount of time to spend on something.

I got to that last section and it was a game I had never seen before. It had elements similar to other games, but I couldn't get past the orientation question, the very first question, and I got the follow-up wrong too. I started to panic, thinking, how am I missing this, this is worth like 20% of the Logic Games grade. So I just stopped, breathed for a second, allowed myself to acknowledge it, and refocused. It was killer, because I only had about 4 minutes left for those 5 questions. I told myself I'd just go with what it appeared to me, and not try to overcomplicate it. I finished question 1 without feeling confident, question 2 without feeling confident, but I had to move on. Question 3 made sense, seemed simpler. By question 5 I felt like I completely understood what it was saying, and I knocked out each one in about 45 seconds. It was the fastest I've ever done a Logic Game. I had to guess on the last one, because I didn't even have time to read it. I was very pleased with that, because I was freaking out. I'd never seen a question like that before.

The second thing was distractions. There were a lot more than I thought, even at home. I made sure my fiancée knew exactly how important this was, but she'd still walk up and down the hallway and I'd hear her boots clacking. My dog, Laredo, would come up to the window, which I had to open because I like the outdoors, it's calming for me, and check on me. It was distracting, but I found that acknowledging distractions in the thick of it works a lot better than trying to ignore them. Take a second, breathe, say, yeah, I'm allowing myself to be distracted, and 2 seconds later refocus. It's so much better for your psyche than trying to ignore it.

I feel confident, because getting into a good law school really takes a lot of the pressure off. That's what's really comforting to me, and it enables me to relax during my time off for the most part.

One thing I want to add, because it was the biggest thing that helped me throughout my LSAT prep, was just knowing my weaknesses and my strengths. I never studied for Reading Comprehension. I didn't crack open a book. I didn't feel I needed to, because I knew what I was weak in and where my areas for improvement were. I also knew when it was time for me to take a break, and I didn't push myself past that, because I'd done that before and it wound up hurting my scores. Knowing your weaknesses and your strengths, and honestly addressing those, is the biggest thing you can do to help your score, and your mental health, which is something you do have to take care of.

Steve: Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't already, to be notified of new episodes as I release them. Feel free to reach out if you need anything at all as you move forward with your prep. I'm happy to help however I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best. Take care.

Individual results vary. Score increases depend on starting point, study time, and effort.

More student stories: Zach, 151 to 176, Annie, 153 to 170, Stanford Law, Judy, 161 to 171, Columbia Law, Natalie, 147 to 170, Kenny, 154 to 164, full scholarship All LSAT Unplugged 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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James went from a 157 diagnostic to a 168

In his words

What actually moved his score

Full interview transcript