Here’s a few suggestions to help you improve your speed on the LSAT
1. If you’re just going straight through from question 1 to 17 or so and then running out of time you need to force yourself to pick up the pace. This may seem like a blinding glimpse of the obvious but forcing yourself to read and answer faster will help. Focus on moving through the questions faster, keep an eye on the clock (not too frequently) and force yourself to move forward faster. At first you will see a drop in your accuracy but you will at least be attempting more questions. You’re often better to attempt more questions even if it means your success rate drops. Getting 70% of 25 questions right is better than 90% of 15 questions. Once you’ve pushed yourself to answer more questions, hopefully moving up to all of them in a section, you can then go back and improve accuracy.
2. Try doing a couple sections with the goal of attempting each question within the time limit no matter what. Give yourself about 1.5 minutes per question and move on to the next at that point no matter what. If you’re still reading answer (B) then you need to pick up your reading speed, if you’re still considering (D) vs. (A) then just go with your gut and move on. You might be surprised at how well you do despite pushing your speed up. The fact is you can attempt all the questions in the time limit you’re just choosing to take more time on some questions than you have allotted to you. Don’t.
3. Skip your nemesis questions. The types you take the most time with or get wrong most often. Likely questions like parallel reasoning, that tend to involve more reading, will slow you down. Skip them on sight and come back if you have time. It’s better to skip a question that would take you 3 minutes and you’re likely to get wrong anyway than to move on and take a shot at 2 more questions.
4. When you take practice tests or timed sections, do as many questions as you can before the 35 minute time limit. Then mark a line on your answer sheet at that point. Continue with the rest of the questions and record your final time for finishing the full section. Your actual score is the 35 minute mark, but you’re at least getting practice on the remaining questions and you can push yourself to improve that finishing time.
Greg Smith
Greg took the LSAT in 2002 receiving a high score that got him into the law school of his choice. This led him to teach LSAT classes while attending law school at the University of British Columbia and continued teaching while practicing law with top international law firms Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and later Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP, in the area of Securities and Capital Markets. Read more
