LSAT escapade

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, May 24th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: law school.

I’ve heard it this way and I’ve got a confirmation from a kid who went through it: Year one: scare you to death. Year two: work you to death. Year three: bore you to death.

REICHARD: Ah, so it’s not changed much.

EICHER: So it seems fitting that right before year one—and all that sheer terror—is the even more terrible LSAT, the law school admissions test.

REICHARD: Oh, yeah, lots of prep, lots of anxiety, but I guess it’s different for everybody. LSAT’s creators call it an integral part of law school admission to test the skills you need for success in that first year of law school.

EICHER: Success in handling the terror.

Not something you do just for fun. Except for three guys who did. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has our story.

BEN: We did decide that we would do a reveal all together at the same time.

JOSH: Since we decided on doing the test the same time.

BEN: Yeah, in this room...

JOSH: Like we're gonna take the LSAT together. And at the time, I felt very smart.

BEN: We had fewer gray hairs.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: It’s a Thursday evening in upstate New York. These three guys have been friends since they were little kids: Ben Hull, Josh McGrath, and Jamie Sinclair. They all took the LSAT together a few weeks ago. This is the score reveal party held in Ben’s living room.

JOSH: Woo!

BEN: Don't turn it over. Alright, so we all have our scores.

JOSH: I’m so nervous!

JAMIE: I’m pretty nervous.

The thing about all three of these guys? None of them are lawyers and they don’t have any plans to go to law school. Not serious plans, anyway. They’re all in their 30s with their own careers. When they started this LSAT escapade, Ben Hull was overseeing the cancer wing at the regional hospital. Josh McGrath was running a nonprofit for parents facing unexpected pregnancies. And Jamie Sinclair was pastoring a church. So, why are they taking the LSAT?

BEN: Some people get those little like, you know, logic game apps on their phone just to kill time. We, for the same benefit, we are taking the LSAT.

The LSAT is graded on a scale of 120 to 180. If you want to get into Harvard, you better hope for at least a 170. A score in the 160s puts you in the 80th percentile, and is usually enough to get you into a solid mid-tier law school.

JOSH: I would like to say that Reese Witherspoon's experience with Legally Blonde is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.

The guys set up group practice tests and worked out individual study plans. Josh says he started with the best of intentions.

JOSH: In fact, the very first like, three-ish weeks I was studying, I don't know, seven hours a week. Wow. Yeah. And then life got busy. And I was like, I'll get to it. And then life got busy and I was like I’ll get to it…

The LSAT isn’t knowledge-based. It doesn’t ask you to quote case law, or define aggregatio menium. Instead, it’s all about reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and conditional logic. The LSAT tests how well you think. Or rather how quickly you think.

JAMIE: The pacing with the LSAT is unlike any other exam I have ever taken. You're working on a problem set that you are confident you could get 98% correct, if given several hours, but you have 35 minutes.

A chunk of the test is logic games. You have a set of variables and a set of rules and you have to arrange them in the right order. It's like a riddle.

BEN: L, F, G, K, M, J - the only thing that’s not placed is H.

JAMIE: And H has to be two or more from M.

BEN: H must be third.

JAMIE: It can be second.

BEN: Has to be third.

JAMIE: It could be second.

BEN: No.

JAMIE: Why not? How's it have to be third?

The test is also sneaky. The questions could be phrased in a straightforward way. But instead…

JOSH: It wants you to fail and they're like, Okay, how can we bury the question and the answer in all these other vocabulary variables, parallel reasoning things so that you're like, wait, what is that even asking?

JAMIE: And really is it's like mind bending, and it's frustrating.

Preparing for the LSAT is less about studying and more about practicing how to think. How to spot patterns, assess arguments, and pinpoint the crux of an issue - all useful skills, even if you’re not a lawyer. So the guys would get together every couple of weeks to take practice tests.

JAMIE: What was y’all's analytical?

BEN: Eight.

JOSH AND JAMIE: Oh! Bro!

JAMIE: Fortunately you did better than me on the reading comprehension.

After months of study and practice, test day finally rolls around. The three guys take it remotely because of COVID policies. They each log into an online portal and turn on their computer cameras so a proctor can monitor them and make sure they aren’t cheating.

Then, the moment of truth.

BEN: We decided to reveal our scores Academy Award style. Count us down.

JAMIE: I’ve never done something like this.

JOSH: Neither have I. I’m not prepared emotionally.

JAMIE: Do we say something?

BEN: Yahtzee. [laughter]

They count down: three, two, one.

JOSH: Wow. Oooh. That is interesting. I'm right where I predicted. 152.

BEN: Dude, way to go Josh.

Ben clocks in at 165, and Jamie nabs a 168.

BEN: You would be 25th percentile at top 10 law schools, easy.

They have cupcakes to celebrate.

They’re all a little relieved to be done with it.

JAMIE: It is a mentally exhausting process to even study for like half an hour, at least for me.

JOSH: I'm definitely not as smart as I thought I was.

JAMIE: It's a humbling test.

In the months since they took the LSAT, Josh and Ben have put away the books. Josh is doing pro-life consulting. Ben got into local politics and now is running for the county legislature.

Jamie is still a pastor…

JAMIE: I don't envision myself ever practicing law. It's a bit tedious and boring, actually.

…but that doesn’t mean he’s done studying.

JAMIE: But thinking about principles that undergird healthy society and thinking precisely and thinking well, these have always been interesting to me.

The LSAT re-sparked his desire to understand the legal world. He’s now in his third trimester at the Syracuse University College of Law.

JAMIE: So have you thought about taking the LSAT? Have we inspired you?

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown in Potsdam, New York.

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