This section will be especially important to review carefully, as here we’ll discuss how to best prepare for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and how to register with the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), a central processing agency that gathers all your relevant materials for your law school application.
The LSAT is a standardized examination that is given four times a year (February, June, October and December). It’s an aptitude test consisting of five 35-minute multiple choice sections designed to measure Reading Comprehension, Analytical Reasoning, and Logical Reasoning, followed by an unscored thirty minute writing sample. One of the five multiple choice sections is unscored and is used for test reliability and validity purposes. The LSAT is scored on a 120-180 scale. Somewhere between 151 to 153 is a typical 50th percentile for the test. Please see the LSAC website to learn more about the exam. This exam is the most important single component of your entire law school application.
The LSAC is a nonprofit corporation whose members are law schools in the United States and Canada. The Applying to Law School section explains how you can complete almost the entire application process through your online LSAC account. From there you will be able to register for the LSAT, access required forms (such as the transcript request form and the letter of recommendation form), and track your applications.
The LSAC website provides an extensive database of all ABA-approved law schools with very detailed information pertaining to each school. Students can look up law schools by state, or can plug in their grade point average (GPA) and LSAT numbers and get predictions of the likelihood of admission based on last year’s numbers. This is probably the single best resource for researching law schools and narrowing the search down to a group of reality schools, long shots, and safety schools.
The LSAC offers a variety of books and videos for purchase, which can help candidates in choosing a law school particularly suited to their needs and to learn more about careers in law. Candidates can also purchase various LSAT preparation materials from the LSAC.