The LSAT Exam

Before you can go to law school, you have to take an exam called the LSAT. Nobody knows whether the "A" in LSAT stands for "Admissions," "Aptitude," or "Arbitrary." The LSAT basically measures how well you can use a Number 2 pencil to fill in the little circles on the computer sheet. Be sure to fill in the circles completely and carefully. Do not make any stray marks on the paper. This will lower your score. The instructions at the top of the exam carefully explain that these are the grading criteria, but hardly anyone ever pays any attention to them. Most people think that the exams are graded according to the correctness of the answers. HA!

The LSAT scoring system used to go up to 800, but recently the LSAT people (whoever they are) changed it so that now the highest possible score is 180. This looks pretty suspicious, if you ask me. I mean, why 180? Why not a nice round number, like 100? The secret truth is that a group of law professors who scored 180 on the old exam lobbied the LSAT people to make 180 the highest score. The LSAT people cheerfully complied, once it was made clear to them that law schools did not have to use the LSAT anymore at all. They could use the same approach used by most graduate schools: random selection.


The old LSAT had--I am not kidding--a math section. But the LSAT people finally realized that no one had asked a lawyer to solve a quadratic equation or find the cosine of an angle for, probably, several centuries, and so they eventually deleted it. This action was taken against their better judgment (using the term loosely). After all, the math section provided a handy way to discriminate among people of equal intelligence.

Frankly, the new LSAT isn't much better. It asks questions like, "Compare Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities with Huckleberry Finn in Huckleberry Finn.'" This makes no sense at all, as lawyers hardly ever have to address this question.

Another question is:

Assume you have a fox, a goose, and a bag of corn. You need to row them all across the river, but the boat will carry only you and one other thing at a time. If you leave the fox and the goose alone, the fox will eat the goose. If you leave the goose and the corn alone, the goose will eat the corn. How do you get them across?

The answer is so simple a child could get it: you beat the goose unconscious with an oar, and then take the fox across before he flees for his life. This question is so stupid I don't even know why they include it.

It never seems to have occurred to the LSAT people that their test might deign to include a few questions that actually relate to a lawyer's work. For example:

1. The judge receives a bribe of $5,000 from the plaintiff's lawyer. He then receives a bribe of $10,000 from the defendant's lawyer. The judge should:

A. Notify the state bar association.

B. Notify the police.

C. Notify the FBI.

D. [The correct answer.] Return $5,000 to the defendant and try the case on its merits.

2. Mark is an honest lawyer who learns that his client is guilty of a heinous crime. Mark should:

TAKING THE LSAT

A. Tell the judge.

B. Tell the police.

C. Withdraw from the representation.

D. Defend his client but not argue that his client is innocent.

Answer: This is a trick question. There is no such thing as an honest lawyer.

The LSAT people say that LSAT preparation courses do not help, since the LSAT tests knowledge and skills that cannot be improved by last-minute cramming. Regardless of what the LSAT people say, however, you will notice that there are several suspiciously solvent LSAT prep course companies who are happy to take your money anyway. Of course, you can always choose to "go bare" and take the LSAT without any prep course at all. People who have done this in the past are called "non-lawyers."

You take the LSAT in a stifling room crammed with 500 sweating people who have apparently never watched a deodorant commercial in their entire life. Through a strange quirk of fate, you have to sit right next to some moron who chomps loudly on corn nuts throughout the whole exam while wearing those artillery-range ear protectors that make it impossible for him to notice anything less than 7.5 on the Richter scale. They also make it impossible for you to tell him what an inconsiderate imbecile he is. Notice your feeling of panic and nausea as you take the LSAT. Get used to it.

After you take the LSAT, they send you your score and a statement explaining which "percentile" you are in. The "percentile" is the inverse percentage chance you have of spending your life doing something honest.