Oh, logical reasoning, that most important of sections. Half of your LSAT score will be based on how you do on these little paragraphs, which is one reason why we at Blueprint LSAT think you should study this section a lot. You’re going to answer roughly 50 logical reasoning problems, as opposed to 28 on reading comprehension and 22 on games. Remember those riddles in The Hobbit that Bilbo had to answer to get the ring from Gollum? Well, at Blueprint we like to remind you that on the LSAT logical reasoning is just like those, except for not fun, not really interesting, and you don’t win a magical ring that makes you invisible and evil. But at least it will help you get into law school – as long as you take advice from Blueprint LSAT and prepare.

Read the Prompt First

When you’re taking the LSAT, we at Blueprint recommend reading the prompt of each logical reasoning problem before the stimulus. The prompt is the middle section, which asks you about the stimulus, the part with the fun (not actually fun) material. Many people ask us, “but Blueprint LSAT Prep, shouldn’t I read it from top to bottom?” Blueprint LSAT Prep responds to these people by beating them with a Slim Jim™ and telling them “Read the prompt first!” There is a good reason to do this, aside from avoiding a beating. The prompt is basically the “instructions” for the problem. They might be asking you what has to be true, why the argument is bad, how you could make the argument valid, etc. But there are only so many types of prompts on the LSAT (there appear to be a lot but we at Blueprint LSAT have categorized them all), so figuring out which type of question it is beforehand will make everything much, much easier. For example, if the test is asking you what the conclusion of the argument is (we at Blueprint LSAT call these “main point” questions, which is terribly creative of us), you immediately know you don’t need to be worrying about whether or not the argument is a good one, but rather simply what the conclusion is. Accordingly, we at Blueprint LSAT recommend that you read the prompt first.

When you’re doing logical reasoning on the LSAT, we at Blueprint implore you to do them in the order presented. This is probably what you were going to do anyway, but if you weren’t, DO IT. logical reasoning tends to get harder as you go. Questions 1-5 can generally be answered correctly by smarter breeds of dogs, while questions 15-25 tend to be really hard and tedious. The easy questions are worth just as much as the hard ones on the LSAT, so do yourself a favor and go in order, getting the fast and easy ones out of the way first.