If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please email me at LSATUnplugged@gmail.com. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)
LSAT Diary: Conan, The Graduate Student
If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please email me at LSATUnplugged@gmail.com. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)
Logic and Games
* 2013 U.S. News law school rankings released. [U.S. News; Above The Law]
* Judge skeptical of both sides in law school jobs data litigation.
* Paul Campos suggests that Stanford Law School decrease its tuition by 33%. [Above The Law]
* How The West Wing inspired a generation to go into politics. [Vanity Fair]
* Judge skeptical of both sides in law school jobs data litigation.
* Paul Campos suggests that Stanford Law School decrease its tuition by 33%. [Above The Law]
* An analysis of jurors using social media during trials. [WSJ Law Blog]
* How The West Wing inspired a generation to go into politics. [Vanity Fair]
Should You Retake The LSAT?
Maybe you took the LSAT already and didn't get the score you wanted. Here are some thoughts on deciding whether to retake it. (Also see How to Study for a Retake.)
LSAT Diary: LSAT Score Release
If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please email me at LSATUnplugged@gmail.com. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)
Logic and Games
* A suggestion that removing the B.A. requirement for jobs would help to narrow the gap between rich and poor. [ABA Journal]
* Blogging's not only for LSAT tutors anymore - this article suggests that law students should be doing it, too.
* If you do poorly on the LSAT, you can always become a billionaire by inventing Spanx (HT: AboveTheLaw). [Forbes]
* Faced with a rising sea level, the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific look to the law for protection. [ABA Journal]
* A chat with one of the hackers behind Anonymous. [Gawker]
* Blogging's not only for LSAT tutors anymore - this article suggests that law students should be doing it, too.
* If you do poorly on the LSAT, you can always become a billionaire by inventing Spanx (HT: AboveTheLaw). [Forbes]
* Faced with a rising sea level, the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific look to the law for protection. [ABA Journal]
* A chat with one of the hackers behind Anonymous. [Gawker]
February 2012 LSAT Scores Released
As you know, February 2012 LSAT scores were finally released yesterday. Hope you all rocked it!Unfortunately, LSAC doesn't release February exams, so you won't get to look over your test or answers. All you'll get is that little (or hopefully not-so-little) 3-digit number.
Now that the dust has settled and it's a new day (and you may be waking up to a hangover whether you aced the LSAT or bombed it), it's time to figure out where to go from here.
Feel free to use the comments on this blog post to gloat about your score if you rocked it, to vent if you bombed, and to discuss with each other how to go forward from here.
How'd the LSAT turn out for you? Better than expected? Worse? What are your plans going forward?
Discuss it all in the comments!
Photo by vincealonji
LSAT Diaries: LSAT Studying and Motivation
If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please email me at LSATUnplugged@gmail.com. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)
Logic and Games
* A profile of the lawyers suing law schools for misleading employment statistics. [NYMag]
* A federal judge files a complaint over his own racist email.
* How prisons deal with inmates who have dementia. [NYTimes]
* A Chinese TV show interviewing prisoners before their executions has become a big hit. [Daily Mail]
If The LSAT Were A Computerized Test, Cheating, and Theft
LSAC has thought about computerizing the LSAT for several years. In May 1999, LSAC published a study titled, "Item Theft in a Continuous Testing Environment: What is the Extent of the Danger?"In this study, LSAC and ETS consider "the possibility of organized, large-scale item theft" by "professional thieves" as a result of turning the LSAT into a computerized exam.
(Sadly, they weren't talking about an Ocean's Eleven-style heist or even about hacking.)
If the LSAT were computerized, it'd probably be offered on most weekdays, like the GMAT and GRE.
Since it wouldn't be practical to write hundreds of unique exams each year, questions would be recycled. This group of questions is called an "item pool" by standardized test nerds (psychometricians). "Items" are test questions. (See my series on how the LSAT is constructed for more details.)
Your average "thief" is someone of average ability who remembers a few test questions and passes them along to friends. This has some impact on future test-takers' performance.
However, if "professional thieves" took the exam for the purpose of memorizing test questions and passing them on to future test-takers, this would have a more significant impact. (In the early 1990s, Kaplan employees took the GRE for the sole purpose of memorizing test questions - also see LA Times. It seems they were doing it to embarrass ETS rather than to give their own students an edge.)
In order to counteract these kinds of shenanigans, it's likely that if the LSAT were ever computerized, there would be several different pools of questions. Each one would be large enough so any benefit gained from memorizing previously-administered questions would be minimal-to-none. Besides, the topics of Logical Reasoning questions repeat so often that they tend to blur together in your mind unless you've done the question a few times.
For more details on what LSAC scientists do in their spare time when it comes to simulations about question-stealing, read the LSAC study. If you skip the mathematical parts, it's actually kind of entertaining.
Photo by extraketchup / CC BY-SA 2.0
Photo by grimages / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
LSAT Diary: Balancing LSAT Prep, College, and Dead-End Job
This LSAT Diary is from Ian, a 31-year-old assembly-line worker.If you want to be in LSAT Diaries, please email me at LSATUnplugged@gmail.com. (You can be in LSAT Diaries whether you've taken the exam already or not.)
Logic and Games
* Judge rules that graphic cigarette labels violate 1st-Amendment freedom against government-compelled speech. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Research in Motion wins lawsuit denying others the right to trademark the term "CrackBerry." [Corporate Counsel]
* Scientists say that people aren't smart enough for democracy to flourish. [Yahoo]
* Indian reservations experience higher crime rates, yet they also experience lower prosecution rates. [NYTimes]
* An Above The Law blogger gets jury duty. [Above The Law]
* Research in Motion wins lawsuit denying others the right to trademark the term "CrackBerry." [Corporate Counsel]
* Scientists say that people aren't smart enough for democracy to flourish. [Yahoo]
* Indian reservations experience higher crime rates, yet they also experience lower prosecution rates. [NYTimes]
* An Above The Law blogger gets jury duty. [Above The Law]
Virtual LSAT Proctor / Timer: MP3 Download
Blog reader Ryan recently emailed me:I think that using the LSAT Proctor DVD can be a great asset during studying, but I also can't justify spending $25 dollars on it. This led me to create a similar mp3 with the Proctor prompts and noise distractions built into it. I have thrown the mp3 up on my blog for free download /or play.The mp3 version for free download is "good if you are going to play it on an mp3 player, iPhone/iTouch or want to always have access to it."
The version for streaming play is "good if you are at a computer that you can't download to or are away from your main computer."
Of course, this is sound-only, so it lacks the visual component that the SimuGator LSAT Proctor DVD has.
However, it's still a good alternative to the DVD if you:
-don't have $25 to spend for the DVD
-want to try out something with distractions before getting the DVD
-want to take PrepTests while traveling but won't have a DVD player/laptop with you
The mp3 is only 35 minutes long (the length of one LSAT section). However, if you download the mp3, you can "loop" it to repeat. This will allow you to take LSAT sections back-to-back with distractions. Alternatively, if you're only streaming the mp3 from your computer, you can take a second or two to click and replay the mp3 to do multiple sections.
The mp3 doesn't have various levels of distraction like the DVD does. However, you can adjust the volume level of the mp3 depending upon how much you want to be annoyed while you're taking a practice test.
Big ups to Ryan for creating this mp3!
Photo by liveu4
