Happy 2025, everyone! Hard to believe the January LSAT is right around the corner. Before we dive into the LSAT, I want to send my thoughts to my fellow residents of Los Angeles impacted by the ongoing wildfires.
If your January LSAT study schedule was disrupted by fires, power outages, or concerns for affected loved ones, these challenges can add significant stress as you prep. If you’re not feeling prepared or focused, try reaching out to LSAC to see if you can push your test. They are generally good about working with test-takers in these types of emergencies.
Now onto what to expect on LSAT test day.
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What Will Be on the 2025 January LSAT?
Logical Reasoning
On test day, you’ll get two scored Logical Reasoning sections, which range from 24 to 26 questions each. You may also get a third unscored experimental Logical Reasoning section. However, you won’t know which sections are scored or unscored as you’re taking it. The unscored section can show up anywhere on your test. So, you’ll want to treat them all as scored.
Throughout each LR section, the difficulty increases, with jumps in difficulty around question 11 and question 17. The first 10 questions will be mostly lower-difficulty questions. Questions 11–17 will be medium. The rest will be higher difficulty, with the occasional slight drop in difficulty for the last couple of questions. If you are stuck on questions 17 or 18, consider working backward from the last few questions. This way, you can hit those easier questions before tackling the tougher ones.
More LSAT Help
🧠 An Introduction to the LSAT Logical Reasoning Section
📝 If You’re Studying for the LSAT, Memorize This List of Vocabulary Terms
So, what types of questions will you encounter? The LSAT has been pretty consistent in the types of questions it throws at students. For those longer parallel and parallel flaw questions with entire arguments in each answer, you’ll get one of each in a given section. If you know those tend to take you longer or throw you off your game, consider skipping those two initially.
The highest-frequency questions on the LSAT tend to be flaw, weaken, necessary, and soft must-be-true. Prepare for a few of these in each LR section. Flaw, parallel flaw, strengthen, weaken, sufficient, necessary, and crux will all give you flawed arguments to work with, which comprise over half of the questions you’ll see. Therefore, be prepared to identify what’s wrong with the arguments before trying to answer the question. The right answers will always relate to the flaws of the argument in some capacity.
Reading Comprehension
You’ll get one scored (and potentially one unscored experimental) Reading Comprehension section on test day. Difficulty tends to be more subjective in these passages. If you have a tougher time on science passages, consider tackling a subject that’s more familiar or comfortable for you first.
The easiest passage will tend to be either first or second. The toughest will tend to be third or fourth, but the difficulty also varies by test. There have been LSATs that started with high-difficulty passages and ended with lower-difficulty passages. The LSAT likes to play mind games. So, try to avoid assuming difficulty based on patterns you’ve seen on past tests.
Instead, focus on how you’re feeling about the difficulty in that moment when deciding what order to do the passages in. I like to scan all four passages at the start of the section for the general topic. I focus on the last sentence of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the follow-up paragraphs to get a general sense of what the passages are about and what the general structure seems to be, to get a ballpark sense of how I’d rank difficulty. Then I look at the general framework of the passages before deciding how to tackle the section. This only takes about a minute and gives me a head start and some peace of mind in knowing what’s in the section.
More LSAT Help
📖 How To Approach Reading Comp on the LSAT
🎨 Getting Through Brutally Difficult Reading Comp Passages About the Arts
⚖️ Getting Through Brutally Difficult Reading Comp Passages About the Law
🧬 Getting Through Brutally Difficult Reading Comp Passages About Science
The number of viewpoints in a passage will often dictate what the questions for that passage will focus on. More viewpoints mean more questions comparing those viewpoints. Fewer viewpoints mean more questions about the details.
You’ll likely encounter at least one passage that only has one thesis statement. If you tend to do better on detail-oriented questions, and it seems like a passage isn’t really setting up a debate, you may want to attack that one first.
You’ll definitely get one comparative passage where you’ll be asked about the relationship between the two passages, so focus on those overlaps. The other two passages will likely have two or more viewpoints. Once you’ve identified a passage as having some kind of debate it’s centering on, prioritize capturing the nuance of those viewpoints and focusing on how they compare and contrast, the rationale for those viewpoints, and where the author stands on the debate.
Final Thoughts
Momentum and confidence tend to be important factors in efficiently tackling sections on the LSAT. You don’t want to rush through questions. The LSAT also tends to reward up-front analysis before diving into the answer choices. However, you don’t want to lose time on any one question. A good rule of thumb is if you’re re-reading the answers multiple times without thinking about them differently, or if you find yourself stuck for 20 seconds, take an educated guess and move on.
Remember, you don’t have to do the January LSAT in the order the questions are in. If there’s a particularly tricky question or if you find yourself not immediately vibing with a given question, you can always skip it and come back. Make sure to take a guess on any question you don’t get to. For nearly everyone who takes the LSAT, there’ll be something that will throw them off or won’t go according to plan. Knowing how you’ll respond to those situations helps reduce anxiety on test day.
P.S. Decided to reschedule your January LSAT? Or simply getting familiar with the test before your test date later this year? We can help maximize your prep time!
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