Hey law students, still suffering feelings of inadequacy about your LSAT score? Hey, who couldn’t use a little boost? Remember, your fellow law students are not as easily impressed as your parents and high school guidance counselor.
And here’s the best part: You don’t even have to take the test again! This is part of a whole new test-taking strategy that I am developing. My slogan is:
The LSAT: Don’t Prepare, Repair!
That’s correct! Switch your focus from what you do before the test to what you do after the test! No matter how well you did on the LSAT, you see, your score can be made vastly more impressive through the judicious use of a few well-placed excuses. Quick quiz: Who got the more impressive results on the LSAT?
a) Joe Bloggs scored a 161.
b) Beth Bloggs - after never having looked at a test-prep book — drank a case of Keystone Light and got 20 minutes of sleep the night before the test, and was then awakened by her boyfriend calling to break up with her, after which she scored a 149, even though she really wanted to go to business school at the time and didn’t really care how well she did.
Beth Bloggs by a mile and smile! That’s a future senator there! You may ask, “Okay, but is this fair?”
Yes it is — and here’s why: The actual question-and-bubbletron portion of the LSAT is an extremely poor predictor of your success in law school and your legal career. Ordering colored beads on a necklace according to rules such as “Every green bead must be next to an orange bead,” is a skill which — believe it or not — is entirely useless in the world of law. On the other hand, your ability to embellish stories, hide mistakes and pull facts straight out of the thin air is not only highly indicative of your potential, it’s practically essential to your mere survival in the legal profession!
The LSAT, in fact stands for “Law School Admissions Test,” because it tests whether or not you are naive enough to admit that you worked hard to prepare for the test and still didn’t do as well as you would’ve liked.
I know what you’re all saying, “But I was asked to order colored beads on necklaces for three months straight at the law firm I worked at over the summer.”
Whoops! If you didn’t immediately work up some story about your vicious bead-specific carpal tunnel syndrome, then you didn’t pass the test. If you were really working it, you would have cut off the circulation at your wrists until your hands swelled up blue, and then staggered into your supervising attorney’s office and passed out. They love that stuff.
“Okay, smarty pants,” you’re saying, “So if you know so much, how well did you do on the LSAT?”
Well, as a matter of fact, after dealing with the traumatization having been beaten with No. 2 pencils and orange beads throughout my childhood ...
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[I wrote this Backbencher classic when I was a 1L. Some editing aside, it originally appeared in the Harvard Law Record in 1997.]
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