LSAT Prep Drilling: To Drill or Not to Drill in Your LSAT Practice

LSAT Prep Drilling

One question I sometimes get from newer LSAT Prep students is what it means to “drill” LSAT questions, and whether or not it is a good idea.  Let’s discuss what LSAT Prep drilling is and isn’t, and the pro’s and con’s of doing so.

LSAT Drilling Isn’t Simply LSAT Practice: Drilling Logical Reasoning Questions

First, everyone agrees that practicing on lots and lots of real LSAT questions is undeniably critical to improving your LSAT score. The question is how to do that more effectively. Fortunately, there are a lot more published LSATs to use for practice than there were 10 or 20 years ago. But there still are a finite number of these exams, and you want to go about using them for practice in the most intelligent way.

The idea of “LSAT drilling” is to take LSAT questions from a variety of different LSATs and “group” them into categories. For example, in Logical Reasoning, taking lots of “flaw” questions, followed by lots of “strengthens” questions, followed by lots of “most strongly supported” questions, etc.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Drilling in Your LSAT Review

The advantages of LSAT Prep “drilling,” is that it allows you to focus on a particular question type and study it in depth. However, there are two disadvantages to doing that: (1) drilling LSAT questions by category or “group” creates an artificial practice environment in which you will be spoon-fed LSAT questions in a way that allows you to know what type of question you are getting, unlike the experience you will have when taking the official exam, and (2) grouping LSAT questions together from many different LSATs for “drilling” makes it impossible to take those LSATs as full-length practice exams without having seen some of the questions in advance.

LSAT Review Drilling Solutions

Fortunately, there is an easier, straightforward solution to the “to drill or not to drill” LSAT Prep question. The idea is to do a modest amount of LSAT Prep drilling at the earlier stage of your LSAT review.  Use up a modest number of older LSATs and group them into question types. I do precisely that in my ScoreItUp LSAT Prep courses.  However, don’t be excessive about drilling. Be sure to keep a large number of LSAT practice exams, including many of the more recent ones, “untainted.”  In other words, you want to have the ability to practice on lots of prior LSATs in a timed environment without having seen any of the questions in advance. By doing so, you will allow yourself to simulate the test-taking environment on many practice exams. The importance of taking lots of practice exams in simulated, timed conditions before you take the official LSAT cannot be overstated.

Of course, the biggest thing to remember is to do lots and lots of practice, using real LSAT questions, before taking the official exam! If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.