I am in my last year of an undergraduate degree in a Canadian university and it occurred to me just the other day that law school sounds neat, why not give it a shot? My GPA, so long as I maintain it, is in line or above the stated mean of the previous-year’s accepted students in every Canadian law school. The only thing left? Taking the LSATs (for the first time) in February. Given the research I’ve done on law schools in Canada, I believe that my GPA in conjunction with a high lsat would guarantee my admittance into the Canadian school of my choosing. So, the question then becomes, how do I most effectively prepare for the LSATs in February given just 3 months (I have university obligations too, but I’m on top of all those).
My one ace in the hole is a practically limitless budget. I have the means and inclination to obtain whatever resources, hire whichever consultants/tutors and take whatever actions required to maximize my chances for success. I am not looking for a short-cut or easy-way-out, and please understand that my intention is to dedicate every waking moment I can spare to studying. That being said, I feel that I can optimize my study-time by availing myself of the expertise of professionals (though I’m not sure what to look for in my hires? i think I can do better than the 1st year law-students typically teaching courses). The basis for this strategy is hardly unorthodox, in fact many prospective law students use Kaplan or Princeton Review seminars to increase the effectiveness of their studying. The difference with my strategy is that believe that by spending perhaps ten or twenty times what these courses cost, I can obtain a higher calibre of instruction that caters to my individual needs, as well as perhaps invest in other resources that might help (i.e. hiring a programmer to create a custom database of all the practice-questions I’ve gotten wrong in the past, though that functionality perhaps exists in public programs too).
I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for asking this question. Due to no fault of my own, I was born into a life of opportunities that many other people do not have. I certainly face my fair share of unique challenges and bad luck too, but one thing I do have is money. I think it would be stupid to not use money, in addition to my intellect and work-ethic, to kick the LSAT’s ass and ensure my ability to pursue the worthy and noble profession of law.
So with a very large budget and three months to prepare, what untraditional avenues would you suggest I pursue to tackle the LSATs?
You sound like kind of an ass. But to answer your question, the LSAT is not necessarily a test you can really study for, but you absolutely have to get some experience with the type of questions that will be on the test to do well. Buy any commercial study book and spend some quality time reading it and doing timed practice tests. I think paying money for a classes and tutors is a waste, but by all means utilize your “life of opportunities” to hire some tutors if it makes you feel better. I just don’t think it will help you that much.
You’d do just as well taking a practice test every day for two months, and reading a book on LSAT strategy, and donating the rest of your money to a worthy cause.
You don’t seem like the type to do that, so let’s just leave it at, “It doesn’t test learnable skills, but you CAN get used to the questions.”
That’ll be fifteen thousand euro.
In case you didn’t pick up on the satirical ostentation purposely implied by my thread title, I am well aware that there isn’t really a diplomatic way to ask for the information I require. I hope “it makes you feel better” to have responded to a young student clearly facing immense challenges by instigating an unprovoked, unsubstantiated ad hominem. I would assume that a true ‘ass’ is the type of person without the good sense and common decency to put themselves in other peoples shoes before shooting off needless insults.
oh in regards to the efficacy of preparing for the LSAT:
“The importance of this report is that it provides information for the first time about how test takers prepare, as well as some description of test takers who prepare in different ways. However, it is a descriptive not a causative study. That is, it does not provide information about the effects on subsequent test performance of using different preparation methods. The most definitive conclusions evident from the descriptive data are (1) test takers who prepare in some way perform better than those who do not and (2) test takers who make use of multiple methods of preparation tend to perform better than those who use a single method.”
Yes, people are going to be irrationally jerky towards you Mr. Moneybags, but you also could have phrased your question without even mentioning how fabulously wealthy you are. It’s a two-way street.
As for the actual content of the OP, I have no idea. I’ll be going now…
Just a thought. While it may be a difficult question to diplomatically ask, it might have helped if this wasn’t your first post on a message board where no one knows who you are.
That said, perhaps you could hire some attorneys in the field of practice that you’d like to get into. They might be able to help you more than anonymous strangers on a message board. Or perhaps hire some people in the field of the study of the LSAT, like someone in the review services or someone who did particularly well on the exam.
I think the OP’s being very sensible: he may be wealthy now, but fortune’s a fickle thing - just look at the stock market - and maximising his chances of success is a very good thing. Alas, as for an actual answer to his actual question, I cannot help. Beyond that, I’m not sure that boning up for the LSAT while preparing for university finals is such a good idea.
If your resources are unlimited, buy the company and issue any score you want to to yourself. Also, there are private law schools out the to be bought.
Although the LSAT test is lengthy, there are really only few types of questions on it. For the most part, the questions are the same old same old, just reworded to look different from each other. You need to learn how to spot each type, and learn how to quickly solve each type.
Most people run out of time during the test, leaving questions unanswered. Your score will be based on how many correct answers you can identify in a limited period of time. The best strategy is to quickly spot and answer those questions you can easily answer quickly, rather than waste time working on hard questions, for you do not get any extra credit for solving hard questions, and every few seconds you spend pondering a toughy is another point lost for failure to answer an easy one by the time the test concludes.
The LSAT is no more then an extended time trial in which you plug wooden blocks of various shapes into corresponding holes in a board, but rather than simply doing this very mundane task, many people do poorly because they are distracted by stress. You will need to be mentally functioning in high gear for several hours, which will require you to understand your own physical and mental abilities and weaknesses, and be prepared for the environmental conditions you will face prior to and during the test. If you have not already leaned this about yourself, you might wish to get some assistance from someone in your university’s psych department.
Here are three suggestions for you concerning the LSAT:
Take the Princeton course and write as many past actual LSAT/LSAC tests as you can get your hands on. First learn to identify each type of question, then learn to correctly answer each type of question, then learn the shortcuts to answering each type of question (e.g. when it comes to guessing, learn how to quickly eliminate the wrong answers so that you increase your chance of guessing the correct answer). Then write test after test after test under timed conditions until you can do it in your sleep.
Take all the other courses and write all the other practice tests as you can, with a view to juxtaposing them against the true LSAT tests – that way you will develop a better insight into how the LSAT questions are written.
Identify how you can best physically and mentally prepare yourself for the test, and identify the environmental conditions you will be facing at the test and in the days prior to the test.
Remember that many Canadian law schools average you LSAT scores, so don’t write the test unless you are fully prepared.
Since the LSAT is just a means to an end, you might wish to also consider the following, given that some Canadian law schools only look at grades and LSAT scores, while others look at you as a person:
Pick up your grades. Being at the mean is not good, for that the mean includes people who made it into law school with sub-mean grades but who had other desirable attributes, such as high LSAT scores, community involvement, or minority status.
Pick up your life. Many Canadian law schools look at who you are as a person, with particular emphasis on what you give back to the community. If two applicants have similar grades and LSAT scores, but one has volunteered for years at a local community clinic, while the other has not, you can guess which one will be accepted. If your life is lacking in this respect, you might consider taking a year or more off from school to build this aspect of your resume.
Get some wizardly wonderful letters of reference by highly reputable people who know you well and with whom you have worked closely, and be sure that these letters are very specific in what your attributes and what the evidence is to support the referees’ opinions.
Apply to every Canadian law school. They are all good. If you don’t get into the one you want, you might get in to another, and that will at least get you into the career. Where you go from there is up to you.
On a final note, as you can see from the response to your thread, you have not been received positively. Take the hint. How you conduct yourself will affect how well you do in law school and how well you do in the profession.
I’m accepting the premise of the question as stated.
Hire one of the top people currently/formerly working for Kaplan or one of the other prep companies. Have them give you individual tutoring. Invest another chunk of your money in courting good recommendations. Consider US law schools in addition to Canadian law schools, unless you’re dead set on practicing in Canada. I have a feeling money talks more here than there.
Be aware that at top law schools, most applicants are going to have high GPAs and LSAT scores. Your essays and recommendations are going to be the deciding factors there.
I don’t have much to add here. I agree with the posters who said your fabulous wealth won’t really be all that useful for preparing for the LSAT. The best way to prepare for that test is to take practice exams, and you can buy old ones from the LSAC website. The great advantage of the LSAT prep courses, as I understand it, is that they will force you to take a lot of practice tests, and give you individualized feedback. Useful stuff, if you can afford it (and you clearly can), but not essential. I didn’t take a prep course, and I did well enough to get into a good (American) law school.
Another thought - you mentioned that you’d like to have an electronic “database” of prep questions. There is plenty of LSAT prep software out there, but I strongly recommend you focus on the old LSATs you can purchase from LSAC. First, those have actual LSAT questions, while Kaplan’s stuff (as I understand it) just has questions meant to be similar to those on the LSAT. Also, the LSAT is a paper-based exam - it’s best that you practice having to actually take the time to fill in those little circles.
Finally - uznuS, you might want to give more thought to going to law school. Don’t get me wrong - I’m in my third year, and I love the place. I think it is “neat” - but I have many friends who absolutely hate law school. It can be extremely stressful, and it will take over your life, and at the end of it, you’re a lawyer - and not everyone who comes here is sure that this is what they want to be. Are you? Why do you want to go to law school? If it’s for the money - don’t do it. There are other ways to make a good living, and it sounds like you’re all set in that department anyway.
The best reason to go to law school is because you love the law, man, and because you genuinely want to do some good with it. Think about this. The world has enough miserable lawyers who entered the field because it seemed the thing to do.
By the way, there is a simple way that you could have rephrased your OP that would have kept you from rising the ire of other posters: Do it as a hypothetical.
“Given an unlimited budget, how would you prepare for the LSAT? Private tutors? Flying Scantron monkeys? Or just a big pile of prep books?”
Heck, just including the flying Scantron monkeys in your OP would have done the job. We love flying monkeys at this board.
Having written the LSAT, and having gained admission to the Canadian law school of my choice (and graduated), I’d suggest just a lot of practice with the LSAT itself. Get used to the questions and write practice exam after practice exam under timed conditions. I don’t recall many of my classmates admittng to have taken the Kaplan or Princeton courses; though to be fair, there wasn’t much point in talking about our LSAT experiences once we were in school. We had other things to worry about at that point.
Muffin’s advice about getting involved in the community is dead on. Even at the schools that seem to consider grades and LSAT scores above all else, some sort of life away from or outside of school can only ever be a plus.
Remember, once you’re in law school, all the money in the world won’t help you much. I’m doubtful you can buy your way into it; I am certain that once in, you won’t be able to buy your way through it. That’s why I’m a little concerned about your view that “law school sounds neat, why not give it a shot?” If you’re looking for a place to kill three years while you figure out what you really want to do in life, maybe law school isn’t the place for you–it’s a lot of work and a lot of competition with folks who tend to be driven, Type A sorts, and if you cannot keep up with them, you may well end up flunking out. There must be other places in academia where you could have an easier time of passing three years, if that’s what you’re looking for. Of course, if you have given careful thought to this idea and really do think law school is right for you, then go for it. But if you haven’t, maybe you want to give it some thought.
Meh, Canadian lawyer here - use your fabulous riches to buy yourself a stopwatch and a pile of practice LSATS. Write a practice LSAT, using the stopwatch to time yourself, allowing yourself only the allowed time per question. Repeat and repeat.
Do this for a month, writing say two exams a day, I guarantee a good enough score. By the end of it you will be able to write the LSAT in your sleep and do better than most applicants.
