One of the myths about the LSAT is that it’s impossible to improve your score on reading comprehension. That’s just not true. I’ve seen many students dramatically improve their reading comp performance, just as with every other section of the test. You just need some hard work and the right techniques.

That said, every myth is based on some form of truth. A significant part of what the LSAT tests in reading comp is your ability to, you know, read. And that’s something that’s built up over the long term. When you’re in the middle of an intense LSAT prep class, it’s hard to find time to read on the side.

So if you want to improve your reading skills, now is the time. If you’re thinking about taking the June LSAT, your prep class doesn’t start for another month or so. If you’re waiting until the October LSAT, you have almost four months before things get started. What if you took half the time you spend posting on message boards and looking at TMZ, and started reading instead? You’d be amazed at how much you could improve.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to give you a little push in the right direction. Each week, I’ll choose a book that I think is especially well suited for developing your LSAT reading skills. Partly, I’ll be choosing on the basis of subject matter. The test writers love to go back to the same subjects again and again. It can’t hurt to be at least a little more familiar with some of their favorites. I’m also choosing books about subjects that I think are intrinsically interesting and worth knowing about even if you never take the LSAT at all. But more importantly, I’ll be choosing on the basis of how the works are structured.

Here’s a little secret about LSAT reading comp that’s also true of just about every part of the LSAT: the topic matters a lot less than the structure. Reading comp passages may look bewilderingly diverse on the surface, but they use the same structures over and over again. The books I write about in the next few weeks will not be exactly the same as LSAT passages (I’m not so cruel as to subject you to a 500-page equivalent to an LSAT passage), but they will be written with some of the same structures.

But even with books especially selected to help you with your LSAT skills, you won’t improve if you don’t approach them the right way. The LSAT doesn’t reward you for skimming passages and getting the gist of what you read. It’s not enough to know that two zoologists mentioned in an LSAT reading comp passage have surprisingly strong feelings about fruit bats, and that they seem to dislike one another. You need to track exactly where and how they disagree. How does the second scientist counter the first, and what are the weaknesses in each position? The authors of the books I’ll be talking about aren’t kind enough (and perhaps “kind” isn’t the right word here) to write a series of tricky multiple-choice questions at the end of every chapter. You have to make sure you’re reading carefully and fully understanding what the author is talking about.

If you’re someone who’s never been interested in reading unless the book includes at least one vampire or crazy conspiracy (or possibly both! Note to self: develop idea for vampire spy thriller, working title: The Nesferatu Ultimatum), now is the time to put in the work that will pay off when your LSAT class begins. Even if you think of yourself as a strong reader, bear in mind that the LSAT will test you in ways you’re not used to dealing with in other standardized tests and college classes. You may be able to gain something from this series, too.

See you next week.

B) A man named Stanley Fish has some things to say about the current state of legal education. Listen to Stanley Fish. New York Times.

C) Here are a few legal events to check out this week, including one with Porsche (that doesn’t concern speeding tickets). Wall Street Journal.

D) A new crash test dummy is revealed for larger children weighing up to 80 pounds. The state-of-the-art dummy is the first of its kind to come standard with cheese-powdered fingertips. CNN.

E) It’s Fat Tuesday. Get fat. Serious Eats.

There’s a name for someone like you: Gunner. But you don’t care, because those people are just jealous, right?

Kidding aside, starting your law school application process this early is a great decision. While you won’t have a looming deadline to get you to finish that Personal Statement (which is something that motivates me like no other), you will have plenty of time to finish everything you need.

What are those things? What can you start now?

1. Sign up for an LSAC account
Go now. Do it.

2. Letters of Recommendation
By far, the slowest part of the entire law school application process (besides waiting for decisions) is getting letters of recommendation.

Professors are notoriously slow at writing them. Bosses are notoriously slow at writing them. You are going to need to ask for them a significant amount of time before you want them in.

So why not now?

Asking early gives the professors a lot of time to write the letters (though you’ll still need to stay on them to ensure that they don’t “forget”). It makes you seem proactive, which is something they can mention in the LoR. It also takes a lot of stress out of your life when your file is complete before applications open, and your friends are all scrambling to find someone who isn’t already bogged down writing letters for a dozen other students.

3. DON’T send in transcripts
Your grades are locked in when you send in your transcript. You want as many semesters in there as possible. Unless you’re bombing this semester.

However, you’re contractually (and ethically) obligated to keep your file with LSAC up to date. That means sending in new transcripts as they’re released. If you send a transcript in now, you’ll just have to do it again in a few months. Why put yourself through that?

-Edit- One important note, from the comments – if you’ve transferred out of one school, it’s fine to send in those transcripts. They’re complete (you won’t be adding more classes), so getting their submission out of the way now is a great idea.

4. Register for the June LSAT. Study for the June LSAT.
Go now and register for the June LSAT. Don’t do like I did and have to take the exam seven states over.

Then, study.

5. Personal Statement
The personal statement is the single-most important factor in your law school application package outside of your GPA and LSAT.

It should be perfect.

Perfection doesn’t happen overnight. It takes many, many edits and a few sets of eyes to get it there.

Start on it now. Not only will that allow you a leisurely pace through it, but it’ll allow you the luxury of editing over time. It’s hard to edit an essay with fresh eyes when you’ve read it several dozen times over. Write it, edit it, let it sit for a month. Come back to it with fresh eyes and make some changes. It’ll allow for a smoother essay, and a stronger one.

6. Law School Fairs/Tours
Hit up as many law school fairs as you can. Talk with admissions officers. Let them know how much you’d love to apply to their law schools. Collect fee waivers. Profit.

Equivocation: Bill Clinton, our 42nd President, famously said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Now that we know many of the details of his affair with one Monica Lewinsky, it would be easy to call this statement a fantastic lie. We could also say that President Clinton was simply doing what an LSAT flaw question answer choice might call equivocating with respect to a key term. If we accept a very limited definition of sexual relations, then it’s possible that maybe, just maybe, his statement wasn’t an outright lie. Maybe. Clinton took the LSAT, so maybe he got some ideas.

Temporal: Abraham Lincoln, our 16th Prez, never went to law school. Nor did he ever pass a bar exam. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he never took the LSAT either. Yet he was admitted to the bar of Illinois in 1837, practiced law, and, of course, went on to become President. So, this whole LSAT thing? Law school? The bar? Forget about it. It is clear that none of them are necessary to a distinguished legal career. If you haven’t thrown away your LSAT books yet, you probably recognized that I just committed a glaring temporal fallacy. What worked for Lincoln in 1837 is highly unlikely to work for you in 2012. Keep working on those logic games.

Absence of Evidence: In a widely repeated anecdote, six-year-old George Washington, later to become the 1st President, was said to have chopped down his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet. When his father questioned him about it, the story goes, young George, unable to lie, admitted his deed. The story has been purported to illustrate Washington’s great strength of character even at such an early age. The problem is that all mentions of this story trace back to a biography by one Mason Locke Weems, who is known to have made a bunch of stuff up. So, unfortunately, we must conclude that the story is false and that George Washington was a lying little kid. If you’re on the ball with your LSAT studies you probably noticed an absence of evidence fallacy in that last sentence. The support for the story is questionable, but that doesn’t mean that the story is definitely false. More importantly, even if the story is untrue, and it probably is, that doesn’t mean that young George Washington was dishonest. The LSAT might call this fallacy taking a failure to prove a claim is true as evidence the claim is false.

In the spirit of the enduring popularity of Canadian geography in LSAT logic games, I would be remiss if I didn’t wish everyone in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan a happy Family day. And happy LSAT studies to all.

B) Here’s some law school job placement data. Happy Friday. Reuters.

C) LSAT scores are great, but which schools rule the land when it comes to graduates dominating the bar exam? Warning: There are some schools on this list you’ve never heard of. TaxProf Blog.

D) Police found crack in some guy’s crack. They should really crack down on that kind of stuff. Are you cracking up yet? Crack. Huffington Post.

E) These underwater photos of dogs jumping into a pool have gone viral, and deservedly so. Washington Post.

It’s still winter, and that means plenty of people have already been admitted to law school. (Jerks). For those of us not touched by angels, this also means that declinations abound. (Please pass the tub of chicken). Then there’s that special third group of people in their own little circle of hell. The waitlisters.

This post, all of you waitlisted and in law school limbo, is for you.

What to do when you’re waitlisted for law school:

1. Read the instructions you’re given.
Some schools explicitly invite waitlisted applicants to send additional materials. If this is the case, you’ll want to submit a letter of continued interest, along with any updates you have.

Some schools may expressly ask you NOT to send additional information. If this is the case, you should respect their wishes and not send anything. However, if you’re really interested in the school, you can always call and ask if they’re open to having you submit anything else. If the answer is yes, you can then send a letter of continued interest.

Some waitlist letters fall into a grey area where it’s not particularly clear whether or not additional materials are welcome. In such an instance, submitting a letter is probably a smart thing to do. However, calling the school to make sure they’ll look favorably upon it is still a good idea.

2. What should be in a letter of continued interest?
Your letter should affirm your interest in the specific law school without reiterating what you’ve already said in the application. If your personal statement included a paragraph explaining why NYU is the perfect law school for you, don’t just reiterate your reasons again. However, if you submitted a general essay, now is the time to explain how your interest in international law would be well served by NYU’s Institute for International Law and academic focus program in that area.

You should also send additional, good material. For instance, if you’ve received another quarter or semester of grades, mention that you’ve sent your new grades to LSDAS and mention the GPA you received for that quarter/semester. If you’ve received a promotion at work, mention that in your letter and perhaps include an additional letter of recommendation from the supervisor, provided he or she didn’t already write one for you. Additional volunteer work or extra curricular activities are good items to discuss as well.

3. Make sure to update your application.

It’s your responsibility to update schools with any new information (good or bad) since you initially submitted your application. New grades, academic suspension, a criminal charge, a new promotion or demotion, etc. must all be reported to the law school. Keep in mind that a new LSAT score will automatically be sent to the school via LSAC.

The important thing to remember about waitlists is that they’re not a “no”. As long as you’re on the waitlist, there’s hope. And reading the directions carefully, together with a well-crafted letter of continued interest, can go a long way toward distinguishing yourself on that list.

It is.

Classes start in March, and while a month of LSAT study time to get a head start may sound like a good idea, practicing before learning the proper approach can just reinforce bad habits and leave you worse off than not studying at all. Wait ‘till March; you’ll still have 3 months of class to study and prepare, and that’s more than enough time to learn the LSAT, and certainly more time than you should want to spend with the LSAT anyway.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that you can do in the meantime (like getting used to one of the LSAT’s secret weapons – the double negative). Here are two activities that have a good carryover to performance on the exam and can be practiced already to help lay a solid foundation for your LSAT study:

Read. You may think you know how to read, but the LSAT will make you doubt it, as you reread a convoluted paragraph about polyps’ feeding behavior for the third time just to wrap your head around the ideas. Close reading of complex material is one of the most important skills on the LSAT. The test is written to confuse you, with complex sentence structure, abstract ideas, and the difference between the right and wrong answer often hinging on just one word, whether it said “only the” or “the only.” So start reading as much as you can, of the densest writing you can find. The Economist articles work great for this, plus you get to look smart reading The Economist. Academic articles from any field also work well, in fact the more foreign the subject matter to you the better. Make sure you go slow and try and summarize what you read.

Sudoku. Logic games are the bane of many a LSAT student’s study – unlike anything you’ve encountered before; they will be unfamiliar and intimidating. But Sudoku can help. This suggestion may be controversial, but I believe there is a high carryover of skill from Sudoku to Logic Games. They often follow a very similar deductive process, at least with the harder Sudoku, so it should help lay the foundation for the thought process of logic games. Most newspapers have them and you can find them easily online, so start playing around with some.

Lastly, don’t forget to sign-up for a Blueprint LSAT class, and while you’re at it, you should sign-up for the LSAT too – avoid being placed on a waitlist and sign-up early. And then March will be here before you know it, bringing the beginning of your journey through the logic of the LSAT. Good times ahead.

B) A Michigan man tried to blow up an airplane on Christmas three years ago (and almost pulled it off). He was sentenced to life in prison today. CNN.

C) More and more people are leaving their fortunes to their pets — which, as awful as that sounds, is still better than giving it to gold-diggers. New York Estate Planning News.

D) Everyone has flaws, but everyone has the capability to lead. Sometimes those two things are more related than we realize. CBS News.

E) Sweet. Watching Downtown Abbey counts as reading a book. The Onion.

For quite some time, it’s been nearly impossible to get accommodated LSAT testing. Even students with a long history of accommodations (through other schooling and standardized testing) have been denied it by the LSAC. It was almost necessary to take them to court to have any chance of getting accommodations, claiming the policy violates the ADA.

So does the LSAC’s policy violate the ADA? While researching this article, I found plenty of people claiming it does, but without any reference to the legislation itself. Most arguments just asserted it as an accepted fact. Same with those arguing it doesn’t violate the ADA. So let’s take a look at the relevant language.

The ADA in relevant part states that:

Sec. 12189. Examinations and courses

Any person that offers examinations or courses related to applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for secondary or postsecondary education, professional, or trade purposes shall offer such examinations or courses in a place and manner accessible to persons with disabilities or offer alternative accessible arrangements for such individuals.

The LSAC concedes that its actions (and the LSAT) are governed by this section and they therefore have to provide accommodations for anyone considered disabled.

The next question, then, is what is considered ‘disabled’ under the act? It is ‘a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such an individual.’

Answer the question? Not really. What does it mean to be substantially limited? And what is a major life activity?

Let’s look at the latter question first, as it’s less important. The ADA defines a major life activity by example, saying they ‘include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working’ (emphasis added). Personally, I believe it’s clear that the LSAT includes major life activities.

So we know that the LSAC falls under the Examinations/Courses section of the ADA and that the LSAT definitely involves major life activities. So how can they argue against most testing accommodations?

It comes down to the last definition – that of substantially limited. The CFR states that ‘substantially limited’ means that an individual is:

(i) Unable to perform a major life activity that the average person
in the general population can perform; or

(ii) Significantly restricted as to the condition, manner or duration under which an individual can perform a particular major life activity as compared to the condition, manner, or duration under which the average person in the general population can perform that same major life activity.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court held in Toyota Motor MFG. v. Williams (534 U.S. 184 (2002)) that:

We therefore hold that to be substantially limited in performing manual tasks, an individual must have an impairment that prevents or severely restricts the individual from doing activities that are of central importance to most people’s daily lives. The impairment’s impact must also be permanent or long term.

Finally, the ADA places the burden on the person bringing the claim to submit proof that they are substantially limited in their major life activities (Albertson’s, Inc. v. Kirkinburg, 527 U.S. 555 (1999)).

The best (and, really, only) line of attack that the LSAC can use against those asking for accommodations is that, while they may be limited by that disability, they aren’t substantially limited. To prove substantial limitation in court, a plaintiff generally has to show a long history of impairment that they were unable to cope with through means other than accommodation; that they viewed themselves as being substantially limited in the relevant activities (thinking, concentrating); and that the substantial limitation must be reflected in nearly all aspects of their academic history.

Recently, the ABA called on the LSAC to adjust their policy and provide these LSAT test takers with accommodations (extra time, quiet rooms, scrap paper, etc.). However, I wouldn’t expect much of a change to their policy based on this ‘request’ from the ABA. Here are LSAC Director of Communications Wendy Margolis’s thoughts:

“LSAC believes that the ABA’s Commission and House of Delegates based their report and resolution on outdated, incomplete information that does not accurately reflect current practices and does not take into account the actual experiences of disabled test takers.”

Rather, challenges coming from the DoJ that result in settlements agreeing to accommodations for specific students (as seen here) provide a much more likely outlet for an eventual change in the LSAC’s policy, if there is to be one.

So did I completely avoid the issue as to whether the LSAC is violating the ADA? You bet I did – I’m not stepping into that quagmire. Hopefully, though, everyone out there (no matter which side of the issue they fall on) is a little better informed on the legislation and case law surrounding the issue and can approach the topic knowing what the law actually is.

Sources
Americans with Disabilities Act
Code of Federal Regulations
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams (534 U.S. 184 (2002))
Albertson’s, Inc. v. Kirkinburg (527 U.S. 555 (1999))
Jonathan Love v. Law School Admission Council, Inc.

B) Today in quiet news: The US Government rewarded its largest federal monetary settlement in a suit over residential immigration raids. Hartford Courant.

C) Cleveland rocks, according to this guy giving advice to young lawyers. Above the Law.

D) There are plenty of lies you can come up with to get out of jury duty, but it takes a special kind to get on jury duty. Wall Street Journal.

E) How was your Valentine’s Day? As long as you weren’t this couple, it was good. Trust me. WPIX.