The Law School Admission Test (LSAT®) is designed to measure how well your analytical, logical and critical thinking skills stand up under the pressure of time constraints. To prepare yourself for this pressure, you likely will spend significant time completing and reviewing practice LSAT® tests. There are three basic categories of practice LSAT® testing materials: actual past tests with answers; actual past tests with both answers and explanations; and, finally, mock tests that have been written solely for practice and explanation purposes. To choose the best practice LSAT® materials, you will need to consider your personal learning style, particularly whether you learn better by trying to answer questions on your own or by having the answers explained to you.
If you learn most effectively by working through problems on your own, the best practice LSAT® tests are those that include answers only. Dozens of previous tests have been published by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC®), the company that administers the LSAT® and holds the copyright to the test questions. You can purchase these tests individually or in bundles of 10. Answers are included on a page at the back of the test booklet.
If, on the other hand, you learn best by having your problem areas explained to you in detail, you should choose practice LSAT® materials that include both answers and explanations. Typically, the explanations take you through each step of the thought process that leads to a correct answer. The explanations can also provide you with valuable strategies for answering particular types of questions that you find to be difficult.
There are, however, two issues to consider if you choose to use practice LSAT® tests with both answers and explanations. First, if you want to use practice tests with authentic LSAT® questions your options are relatively limited. Second, it’s important to understand that practice tests produced by publishers other than the LSAC® do not include authentic LSAT® questions. Rather, the practice tests are written to mimic the type of questions found on an actual LSAT® test.
Numerous practice tests are produced by many different publishers, so it might be difficult to gauge the quality of each individual product. You also might have trouble gauging whether the level of difficulty is equivalent to an authentic test. These are issues you don’t have to worry about when you use actual past tests in your preparation.
In the end, you might find that the best choice is to use a combination of practice LSAT® testing materials. For example, you can begin by taking practice tests that include explanations. Then, after you feel comfortable with the common question types and general answering strategies, you can begin taking the numerous practice tests that are available with answers only.
