"The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is an examination administered by the Law
School Admission Council (LSAC), intended to provide law schools in the United States
and Canada with (to quote LSAC) "a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal
reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants."
The test currently has six 35-minute sections. Five are multiple choice sections, one of which is unscored (see below); one section is a writing sample. Several different test forms are used for each exam, each presenting the multiple choice sections in a different order; this is intended to make cheating more difficult. For a free sample test, click on the image!
*Logical Reasoning*
The test contains two logical reasoning sections, commonly known as "arguments" or "LR". Each question begins with a paragraph which presents either an argument or a short set of facts. The paragraph is followed by a prompt asking the examinee to find the argument's assumption, an alternate conclusion, logical omissions or errors in the argument, to choose another argument with parallel reasoning, or to identify a statement that would either weaken or strengthen the argument. Most paragraphs are followed by only one prompt, although a few are followed by two.
*Reading Comprehension*
The test contains one reading comprehension ("RC") section. Through the February 2007 administration of the exam, the RC section consists of four passages of 400-500 words, one passage each related to law, arts and humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences, with 5-8 questions per passage. The questions ask the examinee to determine the author's main idea, find information in the passage, draw inferences from the text, and describe the structure of the passage. Starting in the 2004-05 testing year, the reading comprehension section increased in difficulty, with the average passage length and question set length increasing slightly.
*Analytical Reasoning*
The test has one analytical reasoning section, informally known as the "logic games" section. Each test's section contains four different "games". The material generally involves grouping, matching, and ordering of elements. The examinee is presented with a setup ("there are five people who might attend this afternoon's meeting") and partial set of rules that govern the situation (e.g. "if Amy is present, then Bob is not present; if Cathy is present, then Dan is present..."), and is then asked to deduce conclusions from the statements (e.g. "What is the maximum number of people who could be present?"). Individual questions often add rules and occasionally modify existing rules, requiring the examinee to reorganize information quickly.
*Unscored section*
Each exam includes one experimental section, used to test new questions for future exams. The performance of the examinee on this section is not reported as part of the final score. The examinee is not told which section of the exam is experimental, since to do so could skew the data. To reduce the impact of examinee fatigue on the experimental results, this section is always one of the first three sections of any given test. Because multiple versions of the exam are issued, alert examinees who have two different versions of the test can identify the experimental section by noting which sections they had in common.
*Writing sample*
The writing sample is always the final section of the test. The examinee is given one of two types of prompt: a decision prompt or an argument prompt (as of the June 11, 2007 administration of the test, all examinees will be given a decision prompt). The decision prompt provides the examinee with a problem and two criteria for making a decision. The examinee must then write an essay favoring one of two provided options over the other. The decision generally does not involve a controversial subject, but rather something mundane about which the examinee likely has no strong bias. For the argument prompt, the examinee is given an argument similar to a logical reasoning prompt and then asked to critique that argument. The decision prompt has been used continually since the addition of the writing sample, while the argument prompt was added in June 2005. In June 2007, however, LSAC will retire the argument prompt.