Top 10 Things To Know About The Future Digital LSAT

Beginning with the July 2019 LSAT, the LSAC will begin the long-awaited transition from the current paper-and-pencil LSAT to an electronic/digital form of the LSAT.  Here are the Top 10 things to be aware of regarding the conversion:

1.  The most significant thing about the upcoming digital LSAT, by far, is what is not changing:  i.e., the substance and content of the exam.  The LSAT’s content will remain exactly the same as before, including the same number of sections, same section types, same question types, same amount of time per section, etc. For more details, you may want to read this article.
2. Learning the content of the exam – i.e., the “legal reasoning skills” tested on the LSAT – remains the most important and challenging part of LSAT Prep.  Fortunately, that is not changing at all.  Symbolic logic, causation, logic games “trees,” and all the substantive parts of LSAT Prep is exactly the same.
3. Do not lose sight of the forest from the trees. The key challenge remains exactly what it was before: learning how to answer LSAT questions accurately and efficiently. The format change is the easy part, although you do want to become familiar with it.  My ScoreItUp courses help students adapt to the format change, provide detailed instruction on the digital LSAT, and provide homework practice with digital LSATs.
4. The transition to the digital LSAT will begin with the July 2019 LSAT.
5. The July LSAT will have 50% of the students taking the current paper-and-pencil exam, and 50% taking the new digital version – and no, you won’t know until you get there which group you fall into!  The good news?  The July 2019 LSAT is the one time you can cancel your LSAT score after seeing your result.
6. Beginning with the September 2019 LSAT, the exam will be offered only in a digital format going forward.
7. The scoring of the exam, and the speed in which you will get your score on the exam, also will not change (at least for now!).
8. You will be able to highlight and underline the stimulus with the digital format, but you will not otherwise be able to write on your test booklet.  Instead, you will be given scratch paper. Having scratch paper may be a nice benefit for test-takers, especially on the Analytical Reasoning section.
9. One other procedural difference is that the LSAT’s ungraded Writing Sample – historically the sixth and final section the LSAT – will now be offered separately from the rest of the LSAT.  The good news is that you do not need to do the Writing Sample after your brain has been fried from doing five prior sections of the exam!  See here for more details on the change to the LSAT’s Writing Sample.
10. Candidly, the biggest impact the change to the digital LSAT is likely to have is on test-takers with extremely minimal computer skills.  If you have even modest experience with computers, the transition is something to be aware of and become familiar with, but not something to worry about.