LSAT Logic and Law School Spam

I hate spam. I even did a blog post making fun of spammers.

I publish LSAT Blog on a schedule - once per week - this means you'll only receive one email from me per week - and that's only if you've chosen to subscribe via email.

The emails with new blog posts are sent out automatically. I don't do anything at all with them, and I have trouble just reading all the emails I receive, let alone responding to as many of them as I can.

I really don't have the time or interest to send extra emails or to create a master email list to sell or cackle over in my free time.

So, I was pretty surprised to receive the following email from a blog reader whom I'll call "Jim."

You clearly sold (or gave) my email address to a law school -- John Marshall. I am extremely careful with this email address and don't get spam on it. I have never received an email from a law school institution and received one from John Marshall within two hours of making a purchase on your blog. I trusted your service to keep my email address confidential.

Sincerely,

"Jim"

In all seriousness, I love receiving accusatory emails from blog readers - it really makes my day.

I generally find that the more accusatory the tone is, the more likely the reader is to be incorrect. In the past, these emails have typically been related to one of my original Logic Games. In these emails, the reader assumes there's a flaw in the game itself, when the flaw is in the reader's own understanding.

However, "Jim's" email is related to an action I had supposedly performed. He accuses me not of incorrect logic, but of purposely doing something super-sketchy.

Since I see much of what goes on in the real world as instructional opportunities, I decided to point out the flawed assumptions in "Jim's" reasoning - for "Jim" himself and for all LSAT Blog readers.

I responded with the following:

Hi "Jim,"

Please do not assume that I gave or sold your email address to anyone. I would never do any such thing.

It would be a remarkable turnaround time for me to take your email address, forward it to John Marshall, then have them send you an email, all within 2 hours of your purchase.

It is common practice for LSAC (to which you have presumably given your email address at some point) to provide certain law schools with applicants' email addresses. This is almost certainly what happened.

A better approach to determine what happened might have been to ask John Marshall how they received your email address before accusing me of having shared it. Had you done so, you might have received something like the following:

We obtained your name and contact information lawfully from the Law School Admission Council, and we have used it in accordance with their Candidate Referral Service (CRS) policies. My suggestion to you is to update your LSAC profile to indicate that you no longer wish to be listed on the CRS – this will save you from receiving messages like this one.

If you don't believe me, why not reply to the email from John Marshall and ask?

I wish you all the best with your LSAT prep. Please see the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

Best regards,
Steve

I could've gone on and on in my response about post hoc fallacies with examples from specific PrepTests, but I'd rather let all of you weigh and measure the evidence and various considerations in the comments section of this blog post.

Since "Jim" was kind enough to send me an email acknowledging his mistake, I'll let him have the final words on this post:

Hi Steve,

If I mistakenly accused you sharing my email address, I apologize. As soon as I sent the email, I began to picture your Finding the Flaw in My Reasoning. I don't think it's a pure post hoc fallacy case, however, as there were several conditions increasing the likelihood that I received the John Marshall email as a result of sharing my email address with you. That said, I'll be the first (or second, in this case) to acknowledge that your sharing my email address with John Marshall was not the only possible explanation for my receiving a legal malpractice insurance email from them, and so those conditions were not sufficient to accuse you.

In fact, I checked my LSAC profile and did in fact authorize them to release my information with member schools, but not non-member schools. This action was an out-of-character oversight; I must have filled out the form hurriedly. Given that circumstance, my accusation was likely unjust and I apologize for jumping to conclusions.

I will adjust my LSAC profile and be more careful in the future before making accusations. Thank you for addressing my concerns so quickly, and, more importantly, for sending the two PrepTests I ordered.

Again, my apologies,

"Jim"

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LSAT Diary: My LSAT Prep Journey

This installment of LSAT Diaries comes from Sera, who's teaching English abroad in Asia while studying for the June 2011 LSAT.

If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please fill out this survey. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)

Please leave Sera some encouragement and advice below in the comments!

Sera's LSAT Diary:

I never imagined a test would so thoroughly take over my life and overwhelm the greater contents of my psyche, but here I am. I graduated from college in the spring of 2009, after which I worked for six months, had a job offer fall through, and ended up teaching English in Asia at a private school.

I desperately wanted to gain international experience because I wanted to study international law or foreign affairs. The day before I got on the plane, I purchased an LSAT study book.

As a political science major, I always loved law classes and had never really ruled out the possibility of seriously studying the subject. I was pretty intent on applying for my MA in foreign affairs though, and I think possibly deep down I may have been a little bit intimidated by law or thought it wouldn’t be something I would enjoy.

Then, one day, I signed up to take the LSAT. I took a practice test, and scored fairly well without any prior experience with the material (upper 150s.) I realized the stuff was pretty suited to my strengths even more so than the GRE had been (I had always loved logic games and reading since I was a kid.) Easy stuff, I thought. I went into the October exam with little practice and sadly scored much lower than my practice exams. 157.

I was completely shocked I could score so low after scoring consistently in the 160s on practice exams in the month leading up to the test. Yet, I knew deep down I hadn’t fully committed myself to it and I had allowed nervousness to overwhelm me.

There were points during the exam in which I was so overtaken with fear that I’d stare at a question for a good two or three minutes without being able to think. At this point, I had realized how much I truly wanted to be a lawyer and that it was the career path I desired. I had put so much pressure on myself to obtain a certain score so I could attend school the following year that I caved.

It was not only that, but also my studying techniques were pretty poor.

I was lax with time. “Eh, so I finished the Reading Comp in 40 minutes… the real thing will be different!” I studied with little sleep. I very rarely took an entire exam in one sitting under tightly timed restrictions. I had no routine or set guidelines for my studying goals. Given my love for multitasking, I took exams on buses and amid screaming children in my classroom.

If one thing is for sure, remember what position Abby is in relation to Bart and what kind of language the two speak or don’t speak is far more difficult when one is intermittently telling a 10-year-old to stop throwing things during our test. Oftentimes, I prepped while they were taking tests (I swear I’m not that bad of a teacher, and my students are fairly well-behaved!) Finally, I never practiced question types separately or truly dissected my incorrect questions.

What I now realize is yes, 98% of my incorrect answers can be chalked up to carelessness, but this carelessness can be avoided through repetition under timed conditions AND more importantly, dissection and getting adjusted to each question type.

Also, I completely underestimated the Reading Comprehension section. Reading was always an area in which I excelled, and I found it to be the “easiest” section. Currently, it’s the section I struggle with the most, with some days receiving anywhere from a perfect score to 5 wrong.

Today, being one of “those” bad days, also brings up another important aspect of studying I discovered: burnout. I’m currently studying in the mornings before school (I teach from around 3-10 p.m.), about five hours each day and from 3-5 hours on the weekend. Sometimes, come Friday, I’m burnt out. My reading comprehension score drops considerably on these days. Take a walk. Take a break. Studying more will NOT increase your score at this point and only make you feel worse and lose confidence. Look at your raw score and your mistakes.

In a nutshell, here is my advice for you.

-Quality over quantity. Yeah, studying a lot for this test is important. But it’s more important that the time you spend studying is at regular intervals (i.e. 5 hours a day, 5 hours a week,) incorporated in some sort of routine. Don’t try studying when you are absolutely exhausted and make every practice test you take count.

-Read this blog.

-Relax.

-Exercise.

-Get adjusted to the time bit by bit. I use my iPod timer set at 30 minutes, and then give myself 5 more minutes. I try to finish each section in 30 minutes, even though I rarely do. This way, I don’t panic in the final five minutes of the section. I do the first 10 questions in the “arguments” section within 10 minutes, and I aim to finish 20 in the first 20 minutes. I usually get to question 22 (but aim for question 23) by 30 minutes so I have the final 5 minutes to do 3-4 questions. The last two are usually pretty easy, so it works.

-Act like you own it. Envision yourself succeeding.

I wanted to share my experience to advocate the fact that with the help of this blog, which provided me with guidelines to approach my studying in a far more efficient manner. But also, I haven’t heard of many people with learning disabilities/issues on this blog or other law school sites. I have ADHD and if I’m able to get through the arduous banality that is the LSAT reading comprehension, then anyone can. I am now consistently scoring in the 170s, with the very occasional 167 (twice in the past few months) and several 175s. Right now, with the newer practice tests, I’d say my score is a 171.

One more month and a half until the LSAT comes to Asia and I’m looking forward to kicking its butt. My goal is a 175. :)

Photo by bdorfman

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Logic and Games

* New class of "career associates" at many law firms. [NYTimes]

* The number of female law school students has been decreasing since 2002. Why? [The American Prospect]

* Mom sues Chuck E. Cheese's for illegal gambling. [Westlaw Insider]

* Supreme Court tells California to cut prisoner population, Scalia and Alito vigorously dissent. [NYTimes]

* NYPD accused of ticketing cyclists for actions that aren't even illegal in NYC. [Gothamist]

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Logic and Psychology Today Article about Black Women

A recent article in Psychology Today asked, "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" (alt link). It lead to a lot of uproar, which I won't rehash.

However, as I read through the article, I naturally began to construct counterarguments as if the article were composed of many Logical Reasoning stimuli. This is something I often do when I see flawed arguments.

It's also something you should do when reading any article containing arguments - especially when you see an article making strong claims without sufficient evidence and lots of assumptions, as this one does.

More than a few questions came to mind as I read this article.

I'll raise a couple of big ones to get the ball rolling, but I'd really like to see all of you analyze this more in the comments and have some fun identifying the various flaws in the article.

Questions:

The interviewers:

Who were the interviewers rating the various women? To what extent are they representative of the population in general? How many interviewers rated each woman? How many interviewers were there?


The women:

How many women were part of the study? How was the race of each woman determined? To what extent was the sample of women representative of a particular state, region, country, etc.? Were the attractiveness ratings limited to facial features, as the photo accompanying the Psychology Today article suggests, or do they include body type?


The "explanation" and other unsupported claims:

In the final few paragraphs, the author makes a number of problematic and insufficiently-supported claims regarding BMI, intelligence, genetic mutation, and hormones. He concludes that the supposed racial difference in attractiveness is due to higher testosterone levels in black women because this is the only explanation he can imagine.

In order to improve his argument, he would need to first conduct a perfect (or close to it) study to establish his claim regarding attractiveness, addressing the questions I raised above.

Suppose he was able to do this (no easy feat, given the slippery and normative concepts of both race and attractiveness).

He would then need to systematically dismiss as many other potential explanations for his conclusion as possible. In his article, he only addresses a few, and even those are not supported or sufficiently explained.

***

Your Turn:

What flaws / information gaps do you see in the cited study?

What flaws / assumptions do you see in the author's consideration of (or failure to consider) potential alternative explanations?

What flaws / assumptions do you see in the author's selection of one potential explanation?

What, if anything, did the author do well in making his argument?

What could the author have done better in making his argument?

What could the author have done better with the information at his disposal and/or his topic in general?


Photos by Wikimedia Commons and MiKeARB

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LSAT Prep Diary: Retaking The LSAT

This installment of LSAT Diaries comes from Sarah, a 22-year-old college student studying for the June 2011 LSAT.

If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please fill out this survey. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)

Please leave Sarah some encouragement and advice below in the comments!

Sarah's LSAT Diary:

Hey fellow LSAT-ers! I write to you as I procrastinate a little bit longer on my studying.

I turned 22 years old (suckily enough, right in between taking the LSAT, and getting my score back. Can you say wasted-birthday-wish?). I spent the last 3 years working full-time, and going to school full-time. I have pretty much completely my undergrad but due to so many changes and new developments, I’m still working through the remainder of my undergrad, chalking up a minor in Humanities to partner my major in Criminology. My GPA has been at mediocre to decent all throughout. I have my great references and extra-curricular activities and all that and eventually placed a lot of pressure on my LSAT.

Actually, before I even get to that, I pretty much didn’t study for my LSAT until about a month prior to it. Up until that point, I fooled myself into thinking I was studying. To be fair, up until that point, I also thought I would be heading to England for law school who didn’t need an LSAT score or anything, really. However, because of the difficulties in returning to Canada to pursue a career in law with an international degree, my plans changed, and I realized I had to actually study for the LSAT.

After researching several schools and realizing my slim shot of getting in, I found a couple I would probably be considered competitive for. I’m one of those people that needs to be organized and I need to have a plan for everything. Everything that's happened up until this moment appears to be hindering my main plan. What’s my main plan? Pass my LSAT, get into a law school, practice law, be fabulously rich? Well, close. Even still, I stressed in so many different ways, I think my body went into shock from being stressed as I don’t think I’ve ever really been significantly stressed, ever. I put this enormous pressure on myself to study and do well on my LSATs but also found it difficult to study. Granted, I was doing one class a week, which is nothing compared to some of you but between work and my own personal pressures breaking me down slowly I got very little accomplished.

So, let’s see. I submitted my law school applications (for Canadian schools) by November 1, because that was their deadline and I was under the impression I would be leaving, so I just didn’t care all that much. Usually, my obsessive-compulsive need to be ahead of the rest, need to have everything prepared and ready to go when needed would have had these applications in by September 31 (the day applications are accepted) in an express post FedEx envelope.

Alas, my lack of caring for Canadian schools won over and I procrastinated and somehow managed to get everything in by November 1. Pathetic. I realized I wanted to actually go to a Canadian law school by end of the second week of November and immediately realized studying for the LSAT was an absolute must. I assumed the maybe combined 3 days of studying I’d done since the summer would give me a tiny head start. I was so wrong on that one, it was almost funny.

Anyway, I started studying, of course I hated that it would interrupt my life after work so most of my studying took place at work where I’m a receptionist for a big investment banking firm, and something else that I don’t totally understand. To be fair, I also went home each night, dead tired from the day that I knew if I took out an LSAT book and saw those misleading bright colors I would shoot myself in the foot just to get away. So, I went to work each day, played out Genius Plan Number 1 and worked through about 4 logic games in the span of 8 hours (not because I was insanely slow, just because of all the disruptions).

By disruptions, I’m talking about everything: the creepy delivery men chatting it up to me, the visitors that happened to be downtown that thought they should come say hi, numerous layoffs resulting in me doing actual work, actual work I had to do, and above all else, my colleagues coming up to me and just to give you a really good picture, I’ll transcribe a full transcript of the conversation I went through about once an hour:

Colleague: ooh what are you studying for?

Me: The LSAT

Colleague: Wow! Law school? Nice!

Me: I know, really trying to get some studying in.

Colleague: Oh! Give me a question, let me see if I can do it..

This happened so often, I think the rest of the employees did more questions combined than I did. The best was when they’d do a question so much faster and bitch about how easy it was… that was just fantastic, just absolutely-kick you-in-the-crotch fantastic. So, to sum up, I did basically nothing and got very little done, but I figured I could make it all up with Genius Plan Number 2. Ready? Take the week before the LSAT off and do 2 tests a day (including the Friday before my Saturday test). I should mention here, I was super-sick and coughing and sneezing and flu-y all over. Fast forward to week off, I studied every single day. I woke up around the same time needed for the test, burnt myself out each night by 7, passed out, and did it again. This happened till Thursday.

At this point, everyone told me to stop studying and I finally listened, and I went to my office Christmas party. As usual, I got quite drunk, went home at 3:30am, woke up at 8am to get back to my house on campus, slept till 12, woke up and did a test from about 2-5pm, my boyfriend came to pick me up at 6pm to drive to another city about an hour and a half away for us to write our tests, we get there at 8pm, go to a grocery store, find a nice coffee area and work out some questions, realize nothing is being done, head to the sleazy motel (which was EXACTLY like all horror movie motels, I didn’t know those actually existed), fell asleep around 12am, woke up at 7am, coughing and sniffling (EVEN MORE!) and with a slight fever and went to write the test.

Interesting note: I JUST got rid of that same cold about 2 days ago. By the way, the week I took off was filled with sleepless nights of coughing and sneezing, and when I did sleep I was grinding my teeth, to the point that it got so bad I had to get a night guard for them because they started to shake. Oh, also to add, to all you women out there and more mature males, I stressed myself to the point of being late by 2 weeks! That is very significant!

My first section was the RC, got through 3 passages, thought I did well, ran out of time and guessed the last one. Then came LR, which whatever, I thought I did fine. Then came LG, which was super easy and my delusional fevered self hoped and prayed it would be scored. Guess what, section 4 was also LG, yay! Failed that, pretty much got through 1, guessed 2 and a half because that first question in all LGs can basically be solved by reading the rules and elimination. By the way, during the break in between my boyfriend felt my forehead and I was literally burning up. The fifth section was LR, which not to brag, because I have so little room to do that, I did AWESOME. I <3 the writing sample, I love writing, it was actually fun.

Anyway, they call time and say we can leave. I literally run out of the room with my boyfriend behind me and we’re walking to the car and he tells me about how it went for him. Now, just to divert a bit, my boyfriend started studying about the same I did (second week of November) and did MAYBE 3 sets every 2 days. The week before the LSAT, he didn’t stress AT ALL, and did MAYBE 4 tests in all that time. He slept well everyday, actually, he played videogames all night and pretty much let nothing affect him.

I decide to not cancel mine (even though I wish I had) just because my applications would have been completely invalid. In retrospect, the applications just made the deadline, definitely not as good as I could have made them, it probably wouldn’t have been the biggest loss of 700$. Damn. I’m having one of those super-annoying realizations right this second about how cancelling would have been smart. Ah well, can’t dwell on that.

So, I hope and wait for my score. This is quite a depressing moment of the story and I’ve tried so hard to forget this number, so I’m going to just rip it off bandaid style, I got a 147 (practice tests = 160/163). My boyfriend got a 160 (practice tests ranging from 150-170). I cursed myself for not being more carefree like him and realizing that stress will hinder my ability. Neither me or him have ever thought that it was because he’s smarter academically. Rather, we’ve realized how our styles of benefited him and failed me completely.

This is getting pretty long, so I’ll start wrapping up. I eventually found LSAT Blog and read everything I could about it. I bought the 4 month LSAT study schedule.

I know it seems strange that I would have any good advice to give in this situation, but believe me I do. With comparing my situation and my boyfriends: don’t stress, don’t lose sleep, don’t cram.

Those are three things that can influence so much of your score. Being sick the day of the test will affect you in ways you don’t even see until you’re looking at it from a different perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I did not study even a fraction of how much I should have and that played a LARGE role in my score, obviously. Keep in mind that external factors can have a huge toll on your performance.

This time, I'm studying with the ever-so-helpful accompaniment of Steve’s LSAT study schedule, and focusing on what he says. I’m going to pretend I haven’t studied anything for this test and I’m just going to do a gradual study for the next 4-5 months as opposed to cramming it into a week or so. I don’t want to have to do this three times, not even for the obvious reasons of schools looking down on it or anything to that affect, I cannot bear the thought of studying for this crap again. So, this time, I will not stress, I will eat healthy, I will remind myself that cramming is useless, I will tell myself that I need to take a break, and doing 2 tests per day is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had (at least for myself, it might work for some of you, but I highly discourage that).

But seriously, good luck to all you test-takers, I’ll be right there without you, where we’re all going to sit down, write this test, and move on with our lives. It’s not the end of the world. I know it’s easy to say it, but another to live up to it, but it’s just so true. I realize that now, unfortunately too late, but still, its not the end. Stressing to the point of being unhealthy and sick is just not worth it. Writing this has now made me more positive and ready to conquer this. Now, I'm no longer scared of that 147, but rather it's a reminder of how I went wrong, and what I need to do to improve and what strategies absolutely did not work. It's my motivation now.

Good luck everyone!

Photo by lij

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Logic and Games

* UChicago Law Dean's response to NYTimes article on conditional law school scholarships. [UChicago Law]

* High school kid challenges Rep. Michele Bachmann to debate about Constitution. [HuffPo]

* Law student plagiarizes his graduation speech - says he just "forgot" to give credit to author. [News Observer via Gawker]

* Unabomber's personal possessions to be auctioned off. More than a little creepy, but proceeds will benefit the victims. [Thought Catalog]

* Texas debates harsh catfish ‘noodling’ law. [Gawker]

* Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly debate Common's visit to the White House. [YouTube]

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New Option to Withdraw Your LSAT Registration From LSAC

Since June 2009, LSAT test-takers have been in a tricky position with regard to deciding whether they're ready to take the LSAT.

LSAC would make you let them know ~3 weeks before Test Day if you weren't taking it. If something came up between that date and Test Day, or if you weren't sure whether you'd be ready but , you'd have to either just not show up, getting a notation of absent, or show up and cancel your score.

Although LSAC had its reasons, this was annoying, problematic, and stressful for many test-takers.

However, starting with the June 2011 LSAT, LSAC has decided to modify this policy - almost completely reversing its position - this is a good thing.

The test date *change* deadline (aka "postponement deadline") is still approximately 3 weeks before, just as it was before the policy change.

However, LSAC now offers a withdrawal option, meaning you can now decide up until the day before the LSAT whether you'll be taking it. If you withdraw, law schools will never even know you were registered for that exam date in the first place.

Unfortunately, withdrawing after the postponement deadline (which is also the partial refund deadline) means you won't get any refund at all for your registration fee of $139.

However, this is a small price to pay for no longer suffering the indignity of an "absent" on your record when you knew you weren't taking the LSAT that day anyway.

You can now rest easy, knowing you still have those 3 weeks before Test Day to keep taking practice tests, brushing up on weak areas, and boosting your practice scores.

You can take the LSAT when your scores are close to your goal score, not feeling the pressure of having a absence or cancellation note on your record.

And if you're not feeling ready the day before the LSAT, just withdraw your registration and set your sights on the October 2011 LSAT.

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Logic and Games

* Florida Senate fails basic biology, accidentally outlaws sex. [Gawker]

* Prosecution screws up witness intimidation claim with MySpace evidence. [Above The Law]

* Google lobbies Nevada to allow self-driving cars. [NYTimes]

* Star Wars-themed article parodying the Bin Laden killing. [Galactic Empire Times]

* Kids react to Osama bin Laden's death. [YouTube]

* This may actually be the worst allergies season ever. Anyone reading this use a neti pot? I'm considering it. [WSJ; The Hairpin]

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Law School Chances: LSAT vs. GPA

How exactly do admissions officers weigh your LSAT score and GPA? Well, it's complicated.

Law School Admissions Index: LSAT vs. GPA

LSAC's website will help you calculate your chances at various law schools. It uses each law school's "admissions index" (a formula unique to each school weighing LSAT scores and GPAs).

Enter your undergraduate GPA and (presumed) LSAT score. Sort the results by likelihood in descending order to see at which schools you have the highest likelihood of success.

This tool is based on info that each law school submits about its admission index, so it's accurate as far as LSAT and GPA are concerned.

Factors that it doesn't consider are diversity, legacy, personal statement, recommendation letters, disciplinary record, etc. Obviously, LSAT and GPA are the big two, but the others have some impact as well.

Enjoy!

Photo by johnwardell

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Logic and Games

* Keeping up your law school GPA for that merit scholarship may be harder than you think. Must-read. [NYTimes; AboveTheLaw; U.S. News]

* Was Bin Laden's killing legal? [Der Spiegel; The Guardian; Reuters]

* China develops a new government agency to focus on Internet censorship. [WSJ]

* 5 news stories that Bin Laden's death ruined. [Gawker]

* Best Manhattan movie map ever. [Gothamist]

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