We’re about a month away from the December 2011 LSAT, which means all you good little logic-loving foot soldiers have taken your second LSAT practice exam. Most of you have likely seen some improvement in your score since your first LSAT practice exam.

But what to make of it?

Did you improve as much as you’d hoped? If not, let’s not act like the roof is falling in, mmmkay? You’ve still got a whole lot to learn and plenty of time in which to learn it. Your focus should be on those types of questions you’ve already encountered during your LSAT practice. Did you miss a bunch of Sufficient questions? Don’t sweat it too much. You haven’t studied them yet. Same goes for Necessary questions. Take your score report and look at how you did on the questions types you’ve studied so far. If you did poorly on one of those types, then you know where to refocus your LSAT practice efforts.

Did you improve a whole bunch? That’s spectacular. But let’s not get too high on ourselves just yet. It’s fine to give yourself a hearty pat on the back for a job well done, but you do so at the risk of getting complacent in your LSAT practice. You don’t want to be the person who goes bragging about how they only missed three questions on their Reading Comp section only to go on and fail miserably on game day. Rather, use your improvement as encouragement. It’s proof that studying hard pays off and that employing the prescribed techniques from your LSAT practice is truly effective. Continue studying hard and you may just improve more than you originally thought you could. Dare to dream, kids.*

The moral of this particular story blog post is that you can find something useful to take away from your second LSAT practice exam no matter what your score was. Regardless of whether or not you’re happy with the score you received, the takeaway is always the same: Study hard. Do all your homework. Do it using the technique as it was taught.

LSAT practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect LSAT practice makes perfect.

*I can’t believe I just wrote that. If you can’t see the sarcasm dripping from that sentence, adjust the brightness of your computer screen.