For those that are planning a career in law, the first major hurdle besides college is the Law School Admission Test. This test, administered by the Law School Admission Council, LSAC, is one of the biggest in getting into a decent law school. While having a high GPA and an excellent admissions letter are also important, the facts are that your LSAT score can count for than ¾ of the decision of getting into a particular school. A lot of law schools will not even look at an application if the score is below 150 and some of the higher schools like Harvard and Yale have a predetermined number for those that want to attend these schools.

If you are planning to take this test, make sure you understand exactly what an LSAT is and how you should go about studying for this test. Most people go into the LSAT with the wrong approach for test-taking and quickly learn how hard the monster called the Law School Admission Test really is.

Preparation for the Law School Admission Test involves, first and foremost, a proper bachelor's degree. The LSAT is hardly a relaxed exam. Your undergraduate education should include training in logic, rhetoric, and reasoning, even if only at the most rudimentary of levels. That way, you will at least have a reference point when you begin to prepare.

Free practice LSATs are commonly administered as recruitment exercises, whether online, by test preparation centers, or even by some schools. Beginning with a practice LSAT either before or after you begin to study in earnest will give you a ballpark estimate of your current skill level. Once you know where you stand and where you want to go, after considering possible target universities, you are prepared to evaluate the next step in your law school preparation.

As always, the complete classroom experience remains a superb option for those aiming for top programs or tremendous improvement. By earning the maximum grade, you will greatly influence your law school experience, even if you do not end up going to a top-tier university. Many programs offer scholarships based on academic and experience-based criteria. Also, a high LSAT score is a important factor in determining the level of financial aid that you can secure.

The tests are a total of 175 minutes long (four 35-minute sections plus an "experimental") and the writing sample is 35 minutes long. Add to that some administrative work and a break and the whole LSAT test day "experience" will take you about 4 to 5 hours. You will have to take practice tests in blocks of several hours to simulate the test day experience.

It is best to study months in advance for this test to ensure a good grade.

The LSAT test itself is broken down into five sections of around 126 questions. Of these, only around 100 questions are actually scored. The others are experimental, questions the LSAC includes to try various applications in logic for future tests, and are not graded.

The breakdown of question types on the LSAT are two logical reasoning sections, one analytical reasoning section, one reading comprehension section and one experimental section which can be any one of the other types. To every student’s frustration, nobody knows before taking the test which section is experimental but it usually comes in the first three sections before the break.

Of all the types on the test, reading comprehension is the easiest but most time consuming of all the questions as you have to read long passages and answer a series of questions based off of the passage.

Logical reasoning takes up a good portion of the LSAT exam and can be the most difficult to master. There are so many logical flaws that can make up a logical reasoning question and there are many types of questions that go about asking about this flaw in many varied ways. Whether the question asks you to find the parallel reasoning, to define the flaw in the  argument or to describe what type of logical flaw is used, logical reasoning questions tend to take the longest time to master.

A typical logical reasoning question has three parts which are the argument, the question stem and the answer choices. Some students feel that they should read the answers and then study the argument, but this is the wrong approach for this test. When taking the LSAT, you have less than two minutes a question, so you have no time to have to keep going back and forth.

The best way to tackle an LSAT logical reasoning question is to read the argument, try to find the flaw and then proceed to the question.

Remember, there is only one right answer for any question on the LSAT. This can be proven and the others can be argued out to find their flaw. You just don’t have time while taking the test to do this, so choose wisely.

Analytical reasoning questions are referred to informally as logic games. Some feel that these are the hardest questions on the test, but this comes from student’s who do not know how to go about solving these questions. If you learn a proper technique and stick with it, you will find logic games to actually be fun. There are many pre-law students who have logic game parties where they all practice solving these equations.

The learning curve for logic games can be tough, but once you understand them, the skills to solve these LSAT questions stick with you. These questions have a mathematical system and are not based on the theories of logical flaw like logical reasoning questions.

Logic games questions usually consist of one game with a set of rules and five to eight questions about this game. The LSAT does not allow any scrap paper, so it is important to learn to do all your work efficiently on the test page.

The main advantage to studying on your own is cost. Most LSAT test prep course cost more than a thousand dollars and a majority of students usually have to attend twice because of a failed sense of expectation on their LSAT score.

The main disadvantage is in the nature of the Law School Admission Test itself. This is a very difficult test that does not rely on accumulated knowledge but your ability to understand logic theory and to find the flaws in an argument. Most students have had no formal logic training before the LSAT and tend to do poorly when they study on their own. Taking an LSAT prep course or hiring a private tutor might be costly, but the LSAT is the single most important factor in getting into laws school and having a career as a lawyer.

Balanced against your future, the price of a LSAT preparation course is minimal.

For more information on the LSAT, visit www.lsac.org .

I have included a video about studying for the LSAT below.