Anecdotes abound <shrug>. My only advantage going into it was 1) I was a good reader 2) I was well familiar with logical fallacies from a childhood of trolling/debating people online. But it's a standardized test that covers a very small set of skills. So just like any other standardized thing it's trainable.

It seems to me that if you’re not a good reader, law school is probably not for you. I would guess that while doing well on the LSAT doesn’t necessarily mean you’d do well in law school, if grinding practice tests doesn’t get you a good score on the LSAT, then you probably won’t do well in law school.

(Which is not to say that you couldn’t get into some law school somewhere and pass—University of American Samoa anyone?—just that having got your J.D., you might find it a challenge to pass the bar, and if you do you might find it a challenge to get a job that’s not handling bankruptcies for a storefront practice that advertises in the Pennysaver.)

The test pretty much only tests:

1. Raw reading skill

2. Precision

3. Working memory. (Less of this now that LG are gone)

You've got #1 and #2 covered it sounds like, and presuming you're a programming you're likely also top 10% in working memory, bare minimum.

There's lots of specific stuff you can teach that helps bridge deficits in those three skills, but they're serious bottlenecks if you don't come into LSAT studying already having them.

A lot of people read poorly, aren't precise, and get easily distracted/have low working memory. Including college graduates.

I think the LSAT has lots of overlap, skills-wise, with programming. My undergrad math classes were way more helpful than my political science classes for LSAT prep. But I think the relevant skills are actually (1) pattern recognition; and (when logic games were still a thing) (2) being able to follow rules methodically one-by-one.

A good memory can help on the reading section for sure. But a lot of students get tripped up trying to memorize all the details of long passages, when they should actually zoom out a little more so they can get the gist of the passage, and then use that bigger picture understanding to contextualize the details.

Oh to be clear I meant working memory. As in, if you have a rough idea of the passage in your head, and then you read a question, can you keep that rough idea of the passage in your head while doing the question or does it fall out of your working memory because you haven't got space for both.

Most people have space for 5-7 items at once. So if you're on a the lower end, you need to put more work in specific strategies to optimize. If you have a higher end working memory you can just read and solve and not think of it.

Agreed fellow Gram! When it comes to the LSAT, grinding can work for smart folks who already have the basic reasoning/reading skills they need. But for most students it just leads to frustration and entrenches bad habits. I wrote a bit more about that here, since it's pretty common to see this bad advice on r/lsat: https://lightweightlsat.com/how-to-study/pitfalls/

Great list! Hadn't realized you were also Graeme/Graham