LSAT Summer Reading List
It’s summer, and you can’t spend all of your time studying for the LSAT, right?
Wrong! You should spend every waking second getting ready for the test! Even when you are not studying, you should be studying!
Okay, we’re not (totally) serious, but here are two ways to study while you don’t study:
1. Play video games
Have you checked out the Atlas Arcade?
2. Read
When you sit for the exam, you know you are going to get one passage in each of the following four areas: the law, natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Do any of these topics put a little fear into you? If so, consider the following summer reading options:
The Law
Most passages about law that appear on the LSAT are—surprise, surprise—from university presses and law reviews. If you want to be a lawyer but lawyerly language scares you, you may want to start browsing some of these publications (most law reviews have articles available online).
A caveat is that many of these articles will be far more detailed and convoluted than the truncated versions you are likely to see on the exam. So, unless passages about the law are your major hang-up, feel free to ignore this suggestion if sitting down with an online copy of the Harvard Law Review isn’t your idea of a study break.
Natural Sciences
Why do they have science passages on the LSAT! If you are a non-science person, this may have gone through your head once or twice. One thing to keep in mind is the organizational nature of many science passages – they are designed to compare one idea versus another, or to support a hypothesis through careful reasoning. These are exactly the types of passages the LSAT writers want to test you with.
Scientific language can get very confusing to the ordinary, non-science person. The good news is that science passages on the LSAT tend to be of the type that are written specifically for non-science people. Because of this, if you struggle with science passages on the test, you might benefit greatly from reading some “casual” science magazines in your spare time. Scientific American, Discovery, and The Smithsonian Magazine are all great examples, and they have all supplied former LSAT passages!
Social Sciences & The Humanities
Here there is a plethora of options to choose from, and chances are you already read or subscribe to newspapers and magazines about the social sciences and humanities, such as the New York Times, Newsweek, or Time (Us Magazine doesn’t count). In particular, look out for articles that attempt to justify a main point through the use of reasoning, or articles that juxtapose contrasting ideas. One particular publication we specifically recommend is The Week, which is a magazine that complies contrasting opinions about current events from various publications – it’ll give you great practice at seeing the two sides of a debate and assigning opinions.
Good luck!