The LSAT Trainer: A Remarkable Self-Study Guide For The Self-Driven Student

596 Pages·2017·8.574 MB·English

by  Mike Kim

THE LSAT TRAINER
THE LSAT TRAINER is written by Mike Kim.
Artisanal Publishing, Irvine 92604
© 2017 by Artisanal Publishing LLC
All rights reserved. Published 2017.
Printed in the United States of America
17(cid:9) 2345
ISBN: 9780989081535
All actual LSAT questions printed within this work are used with the permission of the Law School Admission Council, Inc., Box 2000, Newtown, PA18940,
the copyright owner. LSAC does not review or endorse specific test preparation materials or services, and inclusion of licensed LSAT questions within this
work does not imply the review or endorsement of LSAC. LSAT is a registered trademark of LSAC.
THE LSAT TRAINER
A remarkable self-study guide for
the self-driven student.
Second Edition
BY MIKE KIM
C014TENTS
• Introductions
1. Introduction to the LSAT 9
2. Logical Reasoning 29
3. Logic Games 43
4. Reading Comprehension 55
Set up a study routine using one of the (cid:9) • Logical Reasoning Set One
0(cid:9)
various schedules available at
theLSATtrainer.com.(cid:9) 5. Flaws 69
6. A Piece 0 The Puzzle 83
7. Apples 0 Oranges 97
8. 7 + 1 # 3 109
9. Flaw Review 121
• Logic Games Set One
10. Diagramming133
11.S ubsets 147
12. Numbers Issues 159
13.C onditional Rules 171
14.O r Rules 189
15.D iagramming Review 205
• Logical Reasoning Set Two
Facts: This book contains over thirty drills and over
• two hundred real LSAT questions. Lists of drills (cid:9) 16. Answering Questions 219
and questions can be found in the appendix.
17. Flaw and Match the Flaw Questions 239
18. Sufficient Assumption and Supporting Principle 253
19. Required Assumption, Strengthen, and Weaken 267
20. Review and Assess 281
21. A Brief Return to Games 297
Ideally, you will use this book in conjunction with
• practice exams put out by the makers of the
LSAT. This will be discussed
further in lesson one.
Stay organized and keep track of your work by using
• the notebook organizer tools available
on the Trainer website.
• Reading Comprehension Set One
22. Reasoning Structure 315
23. Reading Strategies 327
24. Practice Set One 343
25. Practice Set Two and Comparative Passages 353
• Logic Games Set Two
26. Answering Questions 369
27. Minor Question Types 383
28. The Good and The Great 399
May your curse in(cid:9)
29. The Mastery Challenge 417
•
life be that your hard work(cid:9) Logical Reasoning Set Three
30. Reasoning Structure Questions 437
is constantly mistaken
31. LSAT Vocabulary 451
for talent.(cid:9)
32. Inference and Example 463
33. Disagreement and Discrepancy 475
34. Logical Reasoning Strategy Review 489
• Reading Comprehension Set Two
35. Question Strategies 503
36. More Practice and Comparative Passage Question Strategies 519
37. Reading Comprehension Review 537
38. Reading Comprehension Sample Section 549
• Final Review
39. Logic Games Review 573
40. Logical Reasoning Review 585
•(cid:9) Appendix 595
theLSATtrainer.com also has articles and infographics
• that summarize some of the key points
made in this book.
(cid:9)
1
introduction
The LSAT is the most significant part of the law school admissions process. It is unique
among all of the major American standardized exams in that respect. Your SAT score
carried far less weight when you applied for college, and if you were to apply to busi-
ness school, your GMAT score would also be of far less importance. Furthermore, there
is a strong correlation between the law school that you attend and your future career
success, much more so than in other fields such as medicine or education. All that is to
say that your performance on the LSAT can have a significant impact on the future tra-
jectory of your legal career. In particular, a top LSAT score can open doors for you that
would be very difficult to open otherwise.
But you already knew all of that. Or, if you didn't, you would have soon enough, wheth-
er or not you ever came in contact with the Trainer. What you really want from this
book is to figure out how to get a top score.
Guess what? I have the answer for you. It's not a trick answer, and it's not a gimmick.
In fact, it's an answer that you will likely agree with. I'm going to give it to you right at
the end of this first lesson (please, don't peek). By the way, I also guarantee you that this
first lesson will be the easiest lesson in the book—all it involves is you reading some
words and thinking about some ideas. All of the other lessons will require you to do
work. So, find yourself a comfortable chair, sit back, relax, and please continue...
The LSAT is specifically designed to judge your ability to succeed in law school.
Keeping in mind what you know about law school classes and being a law student, if
it were your job to design the LSAT, how would you design it? More specifically, what
are the characteristics of potential law students that you think the LSAT should be
designed to test?
n(cid:9)
Lesson 1: Introduction I 9
LSAT Basics
Before we move further, let's lay out a few basic facts about the exam.
The Test Sections
Logical Reasoning
When you take the official LSAT, Two of your four sections will be Logical Reasoning sections, and Logical Reasoning questions
you will sit for six sections, only will account for roughly half of your overall score. For that reason, Logical Reasoning questions
four of which will be relevant to are the most important questions to study for the LSAT. Each Logical Reasoning section will
your score. The four scored sec- typically contain about twenty-five questions, which averages out to a little more than 1:20 per
tions will include two Logical Rea- question. Each Logical Reasoning question consists of a stimulus, which is typically a short two-
soning sections, a Logic Games or three-sentence statement; a question stem, which presents the task at hand; and five answer
section, and a Reading Compre- choices, one of which will be absolutely correct, and four of which will be absolutely incorrect.
hension section. You will also have
one experimental section, which Your success on the Logical Reasoning section depends on an equal combination of your reading
will be an additional Logical Rea- ability and your reasoning ability. Logical Reasoning also requires a significant amount of mental
soning, Reading Comprehension, discipline, in large part because the different question stems often present similar, yet slightly
different tasks.
or Logic Games section. The ex-
perimental section is used to test
questions for future administra-
tions of the LSAT, and your per- Logic Games
formance on that section does not
count toward your score. You are
The Logic Games section, more formally known as Analytical Reasoning, consists of four dif-
given thirty-five minutes for each
ferent games. Each game presents a scenario and some rules, then asks five to seven associated
section, and these five sections
questions. The section will typically have twenty-three questions in all.
can come in any order (historical-
ly, the experimental section was All games center on organizing elements relative to positions. For the majority of games, these
consistently one of the first three positions relate to one another in some sort of order (for example, five kids stand in positions
sections of the exam, but since one through five, numbered from left to right). Your ability to diagram, or visually organize, the
students figured that out, it has situation is crucial for success in this section.
been less consistently true). Your
sixth and final section will always be
the essay section. The essay is not Reading Comprehension
a part of your 180 score, and carries
negligible weight in the admissions
process, but it is sent to schools The Reading Comprehension section consists of four different passages. Each passage will have
along with your score (so don't between five and eight associated questions, and the section will typically have about twen-
write anything immature or offen- ty-seven questions total. The four passages will cover four different subject areas: law, history,
sive). When you sit for the exam, science, and social science, one passage per general subject. You don't need to have any prior
you will be given the first three sec- knowledge of the subjects discussed in these passages. Certain questions require a general un-
tions without breaks in between, derstanding of the passage, and others require a detailed understanding of specific components,
then a fifteen-minute break, then but taken as a whole, Reading Comprehension questions are designed to test your ability to read
the remaining three sections. for reasoning structure.
10 n
Sample Logical Reasoning Question
All Logical Reasoning questions involve a stimulus, a question stem, and five an-
swer choices, one of which will be correct. Most stimuli involve arguments—reasons
Although the charter of Westside School given to justify a point. Depending on howyou count them, there are about sixteen
states that the student body must include common varieties of question stems. They are all related but unique in their own
some students with special educational needs, ways. For this question, we are looking for an answer that allows the conclusion
no students with learning disabilities have yet to follow logically. To follow logically is a big deal on the LSAT—we need an answer
enrolled in the school. Therefore, the school is that, when added to the argument, guarantees that the support given leads us to the
currently in violation of its charter. conclusion reached.
The conclusion of the argument follows logi- The author's point is that the school is in violation of its charter. The reason he
cally if which one of the following is assumed? gives? The charter states that the student body must include some students with
special educational needs, and no students with learning disabilities have yet
(A) All students with learning disabilities have
enrolled in the school.
special educational needs.
(B) The school currently has no student with The author has made a flaw of reasoning here—he has assumed that those with
learning disabilities. learning disabilities are the only ones with special needs. It could be that students
(C) The school should enroll students with have special needs for other reasons. In order for this argument to work, we need to
special educational needs. know that those with learning disabilities are the only ones with special educational
(D) The only students with special educational needs, and answer choice (D) gives us that information. (D) is therefore correct.
needs are students with learning disabilities. No other answer choice gives us the information we need to guarantee the author's
(E) The school's charter cannot be modified in conclusion.
order to avoid its being violated.
This is a question from a previously administered LSAT, and so I've notated where
PT 34, S 2, Q10 it is from, as I will all official LSAT questions we will use in this book. The notation
below the question means that the question is from "Practice Test 34, Section 2,
and it is Question 10."
Sample Logic Games Scenario, Rules, and Question
All games begin with a scenario and rules, and all games involve placing elements—
in this case the five cities—into a set of positions. In this example, we can imagine
the positions being defined by the order in which these cities were visited. About
A bus travels to five cities—G, H, I, J, and K. It
two out of every three games place the positions in a similar sort of order. A typical
will visit each city exactly once. The following
game will have between five and seven associated questions. The right and wrong
conditions apply:
answers to these questions will generally not be determined directly by the rules as
The bus visits H before it visits K. they are written, but rather by the inferences that can be made when the rules are
The bus visits I either first or second. brought together.
The bus visits exactly one city in between its
For this question, we are told that each of the answers could be true except for one.
visits to I and G.
Our job is therefore to find the one answer that must be false. The answer that must
If the bus visits G third, it must visit H before G.
be false is answer choice (B). Looking at the given rules, we know that the bus must
visit I first or second. If it visits I first, it must visit G third, and thus H second. If it
visits I second, of course it can't visit J second. Therefore, the bus must visit either I
or H second, and there is no way J can be second. (B) can't be true.
Each of the following could be true EXCEPT:
It is virtually impossible to consistently answer Logic Games questions by doing all
(A) The bus visits H first. of this type of work in your head, and all top scorers that I have worked with depend
(B) The bus visits J second. heavily on diagramming techniques to help make the task of keeping track of all
(C) The bus visits K fourth. rules easier and to help see how they go together. Developing effective diagram-
(D) The bus visits J before G. ming techniques is the key to Logic Games success, an (cid:9)be a big focus of our
(E) The bus visits J last. training.
Note that we have not included an example of Reading Comprehension here, but if
you would like to take a quick look at an example, you can do so by jumping to page 56.
Lesson 1: Introduction(cid:9) I 11
How Is the LSAT Scored?
The four scored sections will typically contain a total of 100 or your overall score on the 120-180 scale. There is no scoring dif-
101 questions. The LSAT is scored using a simple system that tal- ference between getting questions wrong or leaving them blank,
lies up the number of questions you got right (your raw score) and each question is worth the same amount. The raw score to
and compares that with how other people perform on the same scaled score conversion rates are slightly different from exam to
exam (or, to be more specific, compares that with a prediction of exam. Over time, however, the scoring scales, and the exam it-
how other people will perform on the same exam, a prediction self, have stayed remarkably consistent. The consistency of the
based on data from experimental sections of previously admin- exam is a testament (one of many) to its fine quality.
istered exams). How you do relative to others then determines
Misses 2 6 12 19 27 44 60 75
Percentile 99.9 99.5 97.5 92 80 44 13.5 2
Score 180 175 170 165 160 150. 140 130
The statistics on this chart represent the average performance to score conversion rate for exams
57-61, reported in terms of the total number of questions missed. The percentile represents how
the test taker did relative to other test takers, and the overall score is on a 120-180 scale.
How Effective Are Traditional Study Methods?
Not very. 180
The numbers speak for themselves: the common study methods
have not been particularly effective for most people. Taking a average scores for...
course or using a guide does not, in and of itself, raise scores sig-
nificantly over the average, even though that average includes a
large number of people who choose to do nothing at all to prepare
for the exam.
In
Still, the fact that most students do not improve significantly does
not mean that there aren't some students who do figure out how co
to improve significantly. These are the students who get the high 150
scores.
all
The emperor wears no clothes. In order to improve at the LSAT, e at ook
it's helpful to know that you shouldn't study how most other peo- par p b
ple study. pre pre
n't e a
o s
d u
All statistics in this book are based on information published by LSAC. o a) o
h bbee h
The numbers on this table represent test takers from the 2070 - 2011 e w ft1 e w
academic year. pl pl
o o
e e
p p 120
12 n
What Is the LSAT Designed to Test?
The LSAT is designed to gauge your Your Ability to Read for Reasoning Structure
ability to succeed as a law student.
What do law students have to do?
The reading skill that is most consistently tested and rewarded on the LSAT is your abil-
ity to read for reasoning structure. Reasoning structure refers to the organization of a
First of all, law students have to
passage relative to its purpose; to understand reasoning structure is to understand Ehy '
read a lot of very dense text—
the author has included the various parts of a passage. Your ability to read for reasoni
sometimes, they have to read and
structure will be relevant to the vast majority of Logical Reasoning questions, and it will
critically evaluate cases that are
also be the primary skill that is tested by the Reading Comprehension section.
hundreds of years old. Typically,
the key to correctly reading these
passages as a law student is not the
Your Understanding of Certain Words
ability to absorb every single detail
of everything you read (that would
Of course, a necessary and integral part of one's reading ability is an expansive and cor-
be pointless and impossible) but
rect vocabulary, and the LSAT does test your ability to understand and use certain words.
rather to prioritize._ t he important
However, they are not the words you might expect. LSAT writers are not particularly
information that is relevant to your
interested in testing the sophistication or depth of your vocabulary. They are much more
purpose.
interested in testing your exact understanding of certain commonly used words. The
words they care about are the words we all use when we create reasoning relationships,
Secondly, law students have to
words like "or," "only," "therefore," "must," and "unless." Your specific understanding of
think about what they read. They
these words will be put to the test in both the Logic Games and Logical Reasoning sections.
have to constantly think about how
ideas relate to one another (say, for
example, how state and federal laws
Your Ability to Bring Two or Three Ideas Together
come together), and they have to
think about how reasoning leads to
a conclusion (for example, whether One of the two ways in which the test writers will test your reasoning ability is by creat-
the evidence provided is enough to ing situations in which two or three given statements can, when taken together, yield
convict someone of a crime). additional inferences. That is, the exam presents situations in which you have to figure
new things out by bringing information together. This skill is most important for the
The LSAT is designed to test these Logic Games section, for which these inferences will be what typically differentiate
types of reading and thinking abili- right answers from wrong ones. This skill is also necessary for certain Logical Reason-
ties. But, of course, the LSAT is a ing questions.
multiple-choice, one-hundred ques-
tion standardized exam, so at its
Your Ability to See Why Reasons Don't Justify a Conclusion
best, it can only test these skills in
a very limited and abstract sort of
way. The LSAT is thus primarily The flip side of being able to see when two or three ideas come together to form a valid
designed to test four Very specific conclusion is being able to see when two or three ideas do not come together to form
skills, two of which we will think of a particular conclusion. In fact, this ability—the ability to see why reasons given do not
as reading skills, and two of which justify a conclusion reached—is the key reasoning issue that is tested. This will be central
we wilt think of as reasoning'skills. to your success in both the Logical- Reasoning and Logic Games sections.
Simple Examples to Illustrate Issues
(cid:9) (cid:9) (cid:9)
reasoning structure word meaning inferences reasoning flaw
Why are these two What does "or" mean, Every day, Sarah eats either Going back to the two
statements different? exactly? eggs or toast for breakfast. examples for reasoning
When she eats toast, she structure, if you wanted
A: Jane went to college, so A: You can pick a boy puppy always eats jam. Sarah did to counter both of those
she must be a good student. or a girl puppy. not eat any jam with her statements respectively,
breakfast this morning. what might you say?
B: Since Jane is a good stu- B: To check in at the airport,
dent, she must have gone you must have a driver's What can you infer?
to college. license or a passport.
n(cid:9) Lesson 1: Introduction I 13