Mike Spivey: Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, and today the LSAT. I’m Mike Spivey. I’m the CEO of the Spivey Consulting Group. I’m joined by Graeme Blake, an LSAT expert who runs and is the founder of LSAT Hacks, and Ellen Cassidy, another LSAT expert, the author of The Loophole and the founder of Elemental Prep.
I love this, because normally I’m the one geeking out on admissions, and today they’re geeking out on the changes to the August LSAT, particularly what it’s going to be in person, and what are the multiple new interface changes? I think it’s great to hear both their expertise if you’re taking August or beyond. We do touch on a little bit of the federal class-action lawsuit against LSAC at the end, if you’re interested. Without further delay, me, Ellen, and Graeme.
Mike: Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes. Ellen and Graeme, great to see you both!
Ellen Cassidy: Good to see you.
Graeme Blake: Good to see you both as well.
Mike: Can you guess why I’m singing that song?
Ellen: Because there are changes?
Graeme: Change is coming?
Mike: Change is coming. Back when I first started, it was scaled 1 to 48.
Graeme: Oh, I heard of this, the times of yore.
Mike: I’m old. My mentor clerked for Justice O’Connor, so he was pretty high-achieving. He scored a 48; that’s the only reason why I know it. LSAC presented him with his score when he became president of the board of LSAC.
Before we get to the changes, I have to go present to a whole law school. They’re curious what students are thinking. So for anyone listening, when we post this, if you want to put in the comments what you’re thinking, we’ll relay it to law schools.
But I’m curious, Graeme and Ellen, what you’re thinking about the two major changes, righ, in August: the interface, and the going in person for the vast majority, and we can talk about the outliers.
[2:09] Graeme: I’ll start with, the in-person is—for anyone doesn’t know about the changes—they’re getting rid of remote testing except for people with specific accommodations or who are, I believe, more than three hours from a test center, which means the vast majority of LSATs will now be taken in person.
And my first thought on that is that, while this used to be how it was done, for the past I guess six years now, everyone’s been kind of able to self-select which mode they like. And the big unknown is, how is it going to be for the students who have preferred to be remote and now have to be in person? Because we haven’t seen that for six years, where everyone had to deal with people around them.
Ellen: That’ll definitely be a big shift, and I mean, also for the schedule, too, because even if they wanted in person, the in-person slots have tended to fill up. But in conversations with LSAC in the past few weeks, they’ve let me know that they will definitely have capacity for every single person who wants to sign up for the test. So there’ll be more than enough in-person capacity, which is a major logistical challenge averted. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I admire it.
But I think, honestly, the big headline about the changes is the UI changes on the test-taking interface—which is now at least partially finally live on LawHub if you select August 2026 or later, and will be live on the actual August exam when we go in person—and a few of the adjustments to our test-taking process that have to happen because of these UI changes, which I’m sure we’ll get into in detail.
Mike: We’ll get to them. And I actually think setting the backdrop of why the in-person is important. They went in person to cut down on cheating.
Ellen: They did a lot of the UI/UX changes also to cut down on cheating. That’s the other thing, because, like, everybody’s upset about the changes.
Mike: The cheating is interesting to me, because it’s a lose, lose, lose. It was a lose to cheat to other people. It’s a lose for the law school to have them in their school when they’re not prepared relative to the cohort. And it’s a lose for that person, particularly if they get caught, big loss. Hello, criminal charges. Or they’re not prepared, they aren’t equivalent to their score because their score was taken by someone else or from old tests, and they don’t pass the bar, and they’ve wasted all that money. And what I’m really doing right now is I’m doubling down on, just don’t cheat. If you’re listening to this podcast, there are still going to be people that cheat, and we’ll talk about a little bit of that. It might get minimized, but there’ll still be people who try to cheat.
It’s a losing situation. I used to teach business ethics, and we studied companies that cheated in the market, and while their short-term gains might have been great, long-term, they always ended up either out of business or caught.
Ellen: Yeah.
Graeme: Yeah.
Ellen: If you don’t earn what you get, honestly, it’s not really worth anything anyway. It’s just sad. And like you’re saying, it’s such a risk.
Graeme: Yeah. You have to live with that your whole life. And also, speaking of risks, you can go through cheating, have someone get the score, but then we see so many score holds now. We don’t have visibility on action taken after the fact, but I know of at least some cases where cheating was discovered, and then that person’s just out, like out of the game completely.
Mike: For life, right?
Graeme: Yeah.
Mike: So I don’t want to get into too many ways to cheat. In fact, I know of multiple things that—we’re not going to tell the market how to cheat.
Ellen: Here’s how you cheat on the LSAT, by Spivey.
Mike: That could be a popular podcast. I hope it wouldn’t. For $59.99, here’s how to cheat on the LSAT.
Graeme: Your largest podcast ever.
Mike: Right.
Ellen: I know, exactly, most downloaded ever.
[5:22] Mike: But let’s game this out to the benefit of anyone who’s listening, like LSAC who puts on the LSAT. Someone brought up on Reddit, “Hey, people can still show up in many markets where there’s cheating going on, and they look similar to my photo ID, and they just take it for me.” Or someone could say, “Hey, here’s my address. I’m 600 miles”—and hat tip to you, Graeme—“in northern Canada. How do I get to a test center?”
How are they going to prevent these kinds of things?
Graeme: I think the system is full of holes, frankly, and I think they will slow the amount of cheating done by individuals. I don’t think they’re going to slow the amount of leaking of test forms done via remote test. I think it’s going to be very, very easy for someone to get a remote test if they’re intent on stealing the test.
Ellen: Yeah. I think the things of like, “I can look like a different person on my ID” and all that, these are like tale as old as time ways to cheat on, like, literally anything. Like, you could have somebody, you know, go and do a lot of different things for you with this sort of loophole. And so, like, I’m not particularly concerned about that, because that was a way to cheat back when Graeme and I took the test. You know, like, that was a way to cheat for a long time, and we have not seen the kind of surge that we see now when those openings were around.
But I do think that the ways that people cheat will be mitigated, for sure. Because also, with a fewer number of people able to get a remote test, and the rationale and whatever tracked much more of, like, who those people are, all this stuff, a smaller sample leads to more scrutiny. And the new test format, for all of the yelling about the new test format, it does have a lot of great security features that can hopefully help us a lot in both preventing and detecting the cheating.
Mike: Yeah, and let’s get into the format soon. I think one more thing to, Graeme’s point about, there’s a lot of experimental tests out there that were stolen. I think that’s what you’re referring to, right?
Graeme: Yeah.
Mike: And then those appear on future tests, and there’s something like 80 or more, and I think Travis, the person, the whistleblower who we had on our podcast, has identified that’s still going on. I think if you’re going to try to memorize 80 tests you just bought, why don’t you just study for the LSAT? Like, if you’re going to put that much time into memorizing 80 tests, maybe put that much time into LSAT Hacks or The Loophole, and you’ll still get in the upper 170s. You’re not risking being shut out for life or criminal charges.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, if you have access to a leaked test form, the question is, how do you utilize it? Like, okay, you’ve seen a leaked test form, great. The question is, like, all right, did I memorize 80 answer keys? Do I have someone feeding me answers in the moment? Like, we don’t know necessarily exactly what people are doing, but you can definitely play defense on the various ways people could attempt to utilize a leaked test form. Because the N will be smaller, you know, of the number of people who are able to steal the test, and they’ll have to go through an accommodations process or a hardship process. There will be much more data that’s gathered on those individuals during that process that then, if and when there is some sort of anomaly, there’s just way fewer potential people to look at.
Mike: Yeah.
Graeme: Yeah. I agree with that.
Mike: I think that’s a good note to end on. There’s going to be less people. We don’t know how many right now, and we don’t know how many in the future, but it’ll be X minus Y, and it’ll be a smaller number, and that’s good.
[8:26] Sticking with the in-person, you both are the experts; do you think that state-dependent learning comes into play for taking it remotely and this bell curve kind of right shifting with higher inflated scores? What I’m always curious about is, why did this bell curve of the LSAT scores shift right? Why is there an inflation of LSAT scores?
Ellen: In 2020, when we went to remote testing?
Mike: Well, and it’s continuing to.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mile: I don’t see GPA and LSAT inflation as a good one-two punch. Great for my firm, because now holistically things are mattering more and more, but not necessarily great if everyone on the planet has a 175 and a 4.0. Will going in person help combat LSAT inflation?
Graeme: I just want to clarify, when you say state-dependent learning, do you mean if you study at your desk in your bedroom or in your home office, and then you take it in your bedroom or your home office, you’re used to that, you get a boost from being in that state in which you studied? Is that what you mean?
Mike: Yeah. I was a psychology minor in college, and when I remember the professor saying, “If you have a beer when you’re studying, you should have a beer when you take the test,” in our 19-year-old brains…
Ellen: “I should test drunk.”
Mike: Right, right. We were all like, “Sweet, we get to drink while we’re taking tests.” So that, Graeme, the state-dependent nature, but also even I’ll add another element. It’s probably for most people just much more comforting to be in their own place. And with my experience with the GMAT, with the marching band playing below me and a bunch of people complaining to the proctor about the marching band.
Ellen: Yeah. I think, honestly, it’ll vary, and it just affects the way that you prep. I wrote a small, like, free ebook called How to Be a Good Test Taker a long time ago. And in How to Be a Good Test Taker, I talk a lot about varying your practice environment. Practicing on small cafe tables, practicing in loud environments, all of that different kind of stuff of, like, having variation in where you PT, where you study, all of that different kind of stuff. Because back in our day, we all had to go to the test center. Like, there was no such thing as a remote test, and so we had to be ready for that.
And all of the advice that I always gave about how to prep really incorporated that variation in environment to make sure that people were prepared for, when you go to the test center, unexpected things can happen. You’re in an environment where you don’t control every variable, not that you necessarily do in your own home either, but you can control a few more variables usually in a home than you can in a test center. And so you just have to prep in an unexpected environment so that you know your score holds in an unexpected environment.
Graeme: Yes, I think that’s the most important tip for anyone. Like, if you know yourself, if you know that you might be thrown off by the in-person test center, then the fix that used to be standard for people, back when everyone was taking it in person, is take a few tests in a library, at cafes, somewhere where there’s distractions, and you can adjust pretty quickly. And that’s the most important thing.
Mike: Back in my day, when I was at Vanderbilt undergrad, we had to go in person and wait in line to both register for housing and register for classes. That wasn’t online because online was like Prodigy and AOL, and universities hadn’t adapted yet.
Graeme: Carrying a piece of paper.
Mike: You had to wait for days for some of that stuff.
Okay, so maybe score bubble—the inflation, I should say—maybe, maybe not. To be determined, right?
[11:20] Graeme: Yeah. I wouldn’t think it’s going to make a big difference. I think there’s a few other factors that have been driving it, one of which is underappreciated is you can now take the LSAT up to five times in one year. It used to be three times.
So what we’re seeing is a lot more people retaking it three, four, five times total, and there’s a lot of variance with the LSAT. It’s not intuitive, but your score will fluctuate within about a 10-point band. So a lot of the people I see who get a score in the 170s, you know, it’s their fourth or fifth take, and they just sort of hit the high end of their range. And there’s a lot more flexibility to just go until you get the best one now.
Mike: Yeah. What’s the standard measurement of errors? Is it still almost plus/minus three? The true measure is not the measure of your five takes. I think it’s plus/minus three, right?
Graeme: Yeah. For one standard deviation, and then another half standard deviation either way for like another plus/minus three.
Mike: This is why I think the U.S. News, if they’re going to keep LSAT in the rankings, they should do it as a band, not a static score, because the static score doesn’t take that into account. I think—I’ve been hearing, for the first time ever, rumors of them maybe even potentially taking it out, although I haven’t heard that from them, so this is just gossip. But Ellen, I think you had something.
Ellen: Yeah. No, just in terms of the score inflation point and whether it’ll be affected by going in person, I think the score inflation phenomenon is a complex one. The score inflation really started in 2020 when we went remote the first time, but I think that, in terms of the causation, the remote aspect of it is only a partial story of why that inflation occurred.
Most of why that inflation occurred is because we went from a five-section in-person test to a three-section remote test, and doing five sections in a row is a very different ask, from a difficulty level perspective, than doing three sections in a row. When that change happened, at least to my personal beliefs, the curves in 2020 and in a lot of 2021 were too loose, and this is when we had released curves pretty frequently during that time period.
I remember when I saw the curve on May 2020, which is PT 90 in the old numbers, I was like, “What?” You know, like, I couldn’t believe how loose it was, and it was the same when they released June 2020, that it was, like, unbelievably loose. And I think that during that time period, there was just a bit of curving issue that then took a while to recover from.
But then, the other big thing that affects the curving is the loss of Logic Games, because basically, right when we got back to a four-section exam and all that kind of stuff, we lost Logic Games. And without Logic Games to make the curve what it is, there’s a lot of psychometric work that has to happen to get that curve to fit exactly correctly. And personally, I think it’s still being figured out, not that we have that much evidence, because they don’t really release a lot of curves, and I wish they would release a lot more.
Graeme: Yeah. And I think you can get sort of an inflationary spiral, where something touches it off, like those changes Ellen described, and then people, because they see the scores going up, they take more action to try harder to increase their own score. And people see the medians rising, so they start targeting above the median, like one or two points because they figure it may move. I’m seeing people targeting 176 to 180. I never saw that until the last year or two. I’ve never had people targeting so high.
[14:30] Mike: I generally say if you have a 175, you can stop retaking.
Graeme: That would be where I would land, except some of the medians are going to go higher than that potentially, and the GPA medians are up. So if you’re below both the LSAT and the GPA and you’re targeting like a T3, you might end up with below both if you’re 3.8/175 and the median moves to 176.
Mike: I mean, next year, if we hit 176, I will start saying 176 or above.
Graeme: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, no, I’ll typically tell people, at 174/5, that’s when you start to get the—I call it “cowboy mentality.” Like, “I’m taking this because I want to be a cowboy, not because I’m going to get real tangible benefit necessarily out of retaking it.” I think the most surreal part of it, for me, is that now I don’t think it’s that hot of a take to advise somebody retaking a 173.
Mike: 100%. We do it as a firm all the time.
Ellen: And that’s not the way it used to be. I’d still give that advice back in the day, but I would feel like it was a much more, “Oh, you know, this is going to be a controversial thing, but retake this 173.” You know what I mean?
Mike: Yeah, if your target is a T10—and Graeme alluded to this earlier—what you don’t want to be in admissions is below both medians. That really puts you in a category of, if you’re going to get a waitlist or an admit, you’re an outlier for super special reasons—like law schools don’t use this terminology, but what applicants would refer to as, like, “T1 softs,” or you just hit a home run.
So what I would say is, the 173 phenomenon is real. If you’re targeting a T10 school, and particularly if your GPA is below their median, that’s why we’re telling more and more people, “Yeah, you need to retake that 173, because you can’t be below both medians if these are the schools you’re targeting.” Obviously, also, please, dear goodness, apply to a safety.
Graeme: Sounds like a spiral at work.
Mike: 100% accurate.
I would say, don’t fear it. To both of your points, we all did it in person. There’s nothing to fear. The people around you are thinking about themselves; they’re not judging you or wondering what you’re going to get. Report any problems you have with the proctor. There’s crazy stories online you can read about that, but that’s the vast minority.
Graeme: I will say, for anyone listening to this later who starts pining for the good old days of remote tests, that I will not miss the proctor issues. They were unbelievably common with remote tests, very rare with the in-person tests. I had so many students who had to retake because of something that happened remote, very few in person. That’s a big benefit of this switch.
[16:45] Mike: Yeah. I think we’re all good with the switch, with less cheating.
Ellen, what’s going on with the interface? I know you talked to LSAC.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, it’s been a journey. I’ve had three conversations with them so far that have been really substantive, and honestly, like, I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the conversations that I’ve had with them. I know I can be a bit of a ranter, you know? I can definitely make my case strongly, and they’ve been nothing but gracious in how they’ve gone back and forth with me, and actually, I felt like been very understanding of a lot of the issues that I’ve brought up to them.
Because, to give you the backstory, when this interface change first went live on the first day, I saw it, and I personally did not understand a lot of things. Like, I didn’t understand how to cross out an answer until I, like, was playing with it for a while. I shot them an email and was like, “Hey, let’s get a meeting.” And I went and collected a lot of student feedback and made my own list of all the things that I saw, and I was like, “Okay, this needs to change,” da, da, da. And we did a meeting, and I, like, really presented my case, and a lot of the things that I brought up, they were already planning on fixing. Essentially, they shipped when they first put the interface changes up what they knew was an unfinished product.
And I think it’s also an important clarification to make that this interface was not, like, LSAC sat down and was like, “Let’s make the best interface of all time.” They are building this interface on top of a security infrastructure that comes with certain constraints. And so a lot of the things that we all don’t like about the interface—and like, me included; we all don’t like—it’s from this third-party security infrastructure that’s being used. So they are then working to customize a lot of things to make it more palatable as a user experience.
And so, when they shipped it initially, there were a lot of remnant things that they already had planned on fixing, and so we have a few wins already, because when it first shipped, you couldn’t see all the questions on the bottom. You couldn’t see the flags in the question row. There was no reset responses button. A lot of issues. And now we’ve gotten several wins. The flags are already visible on the bottom of the screen now; that’s really nice. You can also see all the questions on the bottom, and we have separation for the RC passages, which was one thing they did a really gracious job of listening about. And the timer, I know the timer wasn’t there for a bit; now the timer is there, all that kind of good stuff; you can still hide the time.
And the reset responses button is actually new from when they first published the changes, and I like to think that I made a really good case. I went on probably, like, a 10-minute speech about why the response masking button was broken, and especially why it would disadvantage people who don’t prep. Because if somebody walks in on the day of the test and they’ve never used LawHub, they have no idea what this button does, they’ll definitely cost themselves time trying to figure out what it does, and it will probably just lead to them not being able to cross off answers. And this will then lead to people who are in marginalized communities, people who are low-income, who don’t have the money to prep, don’t have the time—that would affect their performance, would affect the curves, would affect, you know, the predictiveness of first-year grades.
When I tell you I stood on my soapbox, I really did. And when I spoke to them again, we had the reset responses button—which, correlation or causation, who knows? But the reset responses button is at least a gesture in the right direction to help with the response masking issue.
Mike: I just got a text from an LSAC spokesperson, “Hey, I hear you are doing a podcast with Ellen this afternoon. I like her. She seems super smart and passionate for students.”
Ellen: Aw!
Mike: I literally just got that text. It ends with, “If there’s anything you need before taping, I’m around.” I wish I’d gotten it earlier, because I would’ve asked a few questions about the lawsuit against them. I don’t think they’d be able to answer anyways, and I have a little bit of speculation, but I don’t think they could’ve answered. So I’m glad they bragged about the soapbox that you stood on. I think it’s causation, not correlation.
Ellen: I will never know.
Mike: Graeme, do you have anything to add?
Graeme: I also have praise for Ellen, because I used this when it came out and was, like everyone who did at the time, pretty underwhelmed. And I’ve used it again while listening, and it is so much better than it was.
Ellen: It is a lot better.
Graeme: If we exclude the response masking, I would say it verges into “good” territory.
Ellen: Also, some updates on things that will be shipped soon and a few open items, too. So even the way we’re seeing it right now as of this taping, it isn’t necessarily even final, because highlighting in the answers is coming back. We will be able to highlight in the answer choices, which is amazing!
[21:14] Mike: It’s like, I get nerdy about admissions things; it’s cool to see LSAT people get nerdy excited about LSAT things.
Ellen: Oh my, the biggest nerd there is.
Highlighting in the ACs is coming back! And so the surface of selection is going to be different—at least, I believe the surface of selection will have to be different; I didn’t get, like, a total straight answer on this, but I think so—where you will just be selecting the area that is the letter, not the whole answer choice, to enable us to highlight in the answers.
And so that will be really, really helpful. And that highlighting, it’s not currently live, but it will hopefully be live as of when this podcast is posted. If it is not live by the time the podcast is posted, it will be live shortly thereafter.
But there are a few open asks, because, like, even in the second meeting where they were like, “We’ve done so much, Ellen,” I was like, “And a few more, everyone.”
Mike: Yeah, my text ended in, “Please tell Ellen not to ever reach out to me again.”
Ellen: Exactly. [laughing] It’s like, and there was definitely the description of, “We’ve pulled the string, and she’s not done.”
But the open items, I did ask for them to make some just very small changes for usability for someone who hasn’t prepped, especially the icon on the response masking button. I think the icon is, like, a little bit non-intuitive if you don’t know what it is. It’s meant to be an A with a cross-out on it. I asked them if they could just replace that icon with an “I,” the way it is to cross out on LawHub previous to June. I don’t think that would be that big of an ask, you know, to just change the picture, but like, I don’t know on that.
I also asked them to change the flag icon color to make it more high contrast, just for people with visibility issues. Right now, it goes from black to navy blue, and for someone who has vision issues, that would be quite hard to see that there’s been a shift. And so I was like, oh, you could take the fill out or make it red or something like that to hopefully help with that being a little bit easier to use.
But these are my, you know, stretch goals. Who knows if these will happen? But right now, you actually cannot select an answer that has been previously masked unless you press the mask tool and unmask it first, or press reset response, which will remove all of your masks and all of your selections. And so I asked, could it be possible to select a masked answer if you click the button without having to unmask it? And then on the flip side, would it be possible to mask an answer that you have selected without having to unselect it first?
There’s one more thing also, which is right now, we don’t have the ability to unselect an answer. Right now, you either have to press reset response and get rid of all your marks, or you have to go and select a different answer in order to unselect. To me, that’s not great just from a test-taking perspective. The student would definitely want the option to be able to simply like, “Oh, you know what? I accidentally clicked A. Let me take that off. I didn’t mean to do that.” And so it would be really great, from a usability perspective, if we were able to unselect an answer.
But these are all currently open items, and so your guess is as good as mine.
Mike: The unselecting thing is interesting. That seems like an obvious and easy fix.
[24:11] Graeme: The biggest ones for me—I mean, the highlights are still pending, so we’ll see what those look like, but those should be coming down the pipe pretty soon. The response masking, for anyone listening to this and wondering, it’s, like, a platform limit, as in the platform they’re choosing for security also just doesn’t have much in the way of response masking customization.
What Ellen mentioned sounds good. I would like a passage-only view, so you could just view the whole passage.
Ellen: I think that’s in there.
Graeme: Is it there?
Ellen: I’m not 100% sure, but I think it is, or at least it’s on the way.
Graeme: If you go on question 1, it shows a passage, and then there’s nothing on the menu. So okay, if it is there, I would like it to be clearer.
Ellen: Or it should be added.
Graeme: If it’s not there, yeah, exactly. There’s a lot of working memory demands that go into taking the LSAT, and everything that Ellen highlighted about clicking/unclicking is going to take up part of your working memory if you’re worried about it. And if you scroll, that’s a real change from the old paper format.
One quick tip, by the way, I encourage everyone to look at the accessibility options.
Ellen: Yeah.
Graeme: You can actually change the font to small. They’re kind of hidden away there. But they’ve got other things like color, zoom, and it’s worth your while to change the interface so that you can see it how you like it.
Ellen: Yeah. There are actually five different font size options, which is really good. So for anybody who’s been complaining their font is too small or too big, you can definitely customize it.
And there’s dark mode now. You know, if you go into the accessibility, you can change all the colors. There’s even one with, like, lavender and stuff. But the dark mode, I was playing with it earlier today, is actually pretty nice.
Mike: And some of these changes are for security purposes, but we probably don’t want to touch on those, because if we’re saying why they added changes for security purposes, we’re pointing out for the June test-takers what the security issues are. Is that accurate?
Graeme: I think it’s more that they’re able to do more with what they’ve switched to. They can track what people are doing and spot if someone is doing something they shouldn’t.
Mike: Yeah. They already can, but you’re saying they can do it better now. I want to double-click that, because again, I mean, part of the reason for this podcast is not just to explain the changes, but to explain the market in itself, and if you’re a part of that market, you don’t want other people trying to cheat. So that’s why I’m harping on that. Kudos to LSAC for making it even tighter.
Graeme: Yeah, because above all, the LSAT, regardless of interface, like, it has to work and be secure. They didn’t take out the response masking because it’s a security measure; it’s just a side effect of the larger effort, and I really hope they can do something later. They said they may be able to do something later on with custom work. But ultimately, keeping the test working is the big thing that benefits everyone.
Mike: There was a question on Reddit, “Has anyone other than Dave Killoran spoken with LSAC on when they will finalize the updates to LawHub?” I think there were some issues with LawHub. Dave and I spoke today, and he said late June or July.
Ellen: Yeah, end of June is the target date. Target is to not have it be June 30th at 11:59.
Graeme: I have also heard later this month—so if they hit their timeline, it should be out soon, we hope.
[26:56] Mike: When you all were riffing about the interface, my big takeaway was, yet again, this is why I don’t teach the LSAT. If I could hire Graeme and Ellen… but if I don’t get a world-class expert, this is not something I know much about. I haven’t taken the LSAT. Every year, someone demands I take the LSAT and show my score. I’ll use one of you all’s practice courses or book if I ever take it.
But I just want people to be careful. Be careful who you get LSAT advice from. I just did a video on this. Be careful who you’re getting admissions advice from. People who often say something confidently online sound like experts. You both can prove you’re experts. I obviously believe I have a great deal of expertise in admissions, or I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I don’t talk much about the LSAT, and I certainly don’t sell LSAT products, because I couldn’t just do what you just did, right? But I appreciate the expertise and sharing it.
Another question from Reddit was, “Are there any patterns that they’ve noticed”—and I think by they, they mean you two experts—“about differences between the skills tested by the modern LSAT”—modern cracks me up, because in two years from now, it’ll be different—“the modern LR/RC section versus older LR/RC. For example, I’ve heard a lot about LR coming off more ‘gamesy’ than before and being harder in general.”
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, with LR at least, that’s been a trend on recent experimental sections, and has been coming to greater prominence gradually in the actual scored sections, to have not like all the questions or anything, but a handful, maybe between one and three every five sections or something that’s in circulation, maybe you’ll hear about something like this. And you’re having to use more Logic Gamesy skills, more conditional reasoning, that there seems to be more variable-type activity going on.
But I don’t think this is anything that the populace is not prepared for. The skills we learn in prep, in terms of conditionality, in terms of all that different kind of stuff, it allows you to practice these sorts of things. And there are definitely test questions in the history of the LSAT that you can do that are applicable. And so it’s not something to, like, be super alarmed on. If somebody were really alarmed about gamesy LR, you know, just go do a logic game. Like, there are plenty of them you can find, and you can go and familiarize yourself with how that works if you’re, like, really worried or anything.
Graeme: Yeah. The hardest part about the modern LSAT is they haven’t released anything that they have written since 2019. Even the new tests, you’ll see the disclosure form, “April 2025 LSAT,” that was from an older, previously undisclosed February test.
So we don’t have anything public that shows what they’re doing now. But what I’ve heard matches what Ellen said. I don’t think it’s going to be a giant change, because the test has to be standardized. They have to have scores comparable to what people have been doing, and a lot of what they’ve been doing is reusing old tests. They can’t come out with something new that’s, like, completely different. It would just sort of break their own system.
I also want to add, and I moderate the Reddit LSAT forum, but if people look at the Reddit LSAT forum after a test, they will see lots of people saying, “That was, like, the hardest thing ever. It was completely different from my practice test. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” This has been happening in post-test discussions since 2014. Earlier.
Ellen: Yes, that’s what I always say to people! [laughing]
Graeme: And all the prep tests that you practice with were tests that people said, “Oh my gosh, that was nothing like the other tests.” Taking the LSAT is an intense, high-stress moment. You’re focused on doing well on the test, not forming accurate, minute-by-minute memories. Don’t worry too much what people say. A lot of it is just the adrenaline. It’s largely going to be like what already exists.
Ellen: Yeah. I think that there’s an unprecedentedness bias that people have about their own exam experience, and I 100% agree with everything Graeme just said. People have been saying that stuff on Reddit for, like, 10+ years. I remember, back, like, PT, you know, 72, June 2014, people were like, “Oh my god!” You know, everyone was freaking out, and now that’s seen as, like, old material, which is, like, wild.
And what Graeme said about we haven’t seen recent material is also very much true. I think that when people make these claims about, like, new LR is harder, new RC is harder, it’s always getting harder—it’s honestly an alarmism based on a lack of knowledge of how the test really develops and works. Because when you see a section, even today, like Graeme is saying, that is a section that very likely has been in circulation for a very long time. We will see tests even from February 2015 or something in recent times will come back around.
So when you’re seeing it is not when it was made. It’s a very different thing. And, like, that unprecedentedness bias that people have makes them think that this, like, new thing they’re doing is so special. But, like, I’ll tell you 10 years ago, when I was teaching, people were saying “Oh, well, the test-takers now are just so much more savvy, and so it’s so much harder for us because we are doing so much more and all this.” I was like, “Why do you think you can just categorically insult the intelligence of every person who took this test 10 years before you did?” It’s, like, actually so silly and arrogant when you think about it.
[31:52] Mike: It does bring up an interesting question I wanted to segue to, which will almost sound like I just didn’t listen to everything you both said, but it’s not.
So, what I hear a bunch of late is, “LSAC needs to just focus on making a good test. They used to make a good test,” and maybe that means a lot of things. Maybe that means going in person and disrupting the cheating. Maybe that means my cohort is getting older and people who talk to me are grouchier.
It could mean anything, but I do hear that more: “LSAC needs to be who they were and focus on making a good test.” I hear from various people, both college presidents, law school deans, applicants, other prep companies. I’m curious what that means to two LSAT experts.
Graeme: I think, as an LSAT professional, I agree with the call that LSAC should focus on the LSAT and do a good job with it. And we may talk about this later with the lawsuit, but they have, you know, a big focus on admissions, the Credential Assembly Service, that side of things. But I think the LSAT is sort of the center of why they exist as an organization. And if you look at the press releases of their last two presidents, I don’t believe either one mentioned the LSAT.
Mike: That’s accurate.
Graeme: Yeah. So, other than the cheating, we haven’t seen any problems yet that we know of in terms of test quality, but they used to release three tests a year. They used to disclose some tests to students. And I sometimes sense there’s, like, maybe a bit of a lack of understanding of how serious the test is for students who take it. Like, if they have to retake because of, like, a technical issue or something, sometimes that’s treated as, like, a small thing, like not the main event, when it’s something people can work towards for, like, a year.
So without released tests, it’s hard to say, like, how they’re doing on new test quality. I hope they’re doing well. But it would be good to see just an attitude of taking seriously the actual testing part of things, and even, you know, maybe restricting the number of tests people can take to make the score more meaningful, to prevent that factor I talked about previously. I think the reason that score inflation got away from them, maybe, is because they weren’t focused on the test as sharply as they were before.
Ellen: Yeah. There’s been a lot of logistical stuff in the LSAT world for the past six years. You know, the move to remote in COVID, the LG issue, the cheating issue. All of these are not things that are directly about the actual test form. And Graeme, you’re so on the money pointing out that these last press releases didn’t even mention the actual LSAT.
It’s odd, because I feel like, in the overall cultural conversation regarding standardized tests, there almost feels like there’s this shame of being associated with a standardized test, as though it’s this inherent evil. And I love the LSAT so much and so unabashedly. I think it is a social good. It’s a wonderful thing, and I’m proud to dedicate my life to helping people learn to read and critically think better. That is what I think is a very noble pursuit.
Mike: If anyone on this planet should not like the LSAT, it’s me. Our firm doesn’t do LSAT; we do admissions. If anyone on the planet should think admissions should be all about interviews and essays, it’s me—and I’m a fan of standardized tests, because measurement matters.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mike: And what I would say is, it’s not whether—I mean, people will or will not like the LSAT. It’s whether LSAC can focus on making the LSAT better.
Ellen: If they own it a little bit more, you know? As like, “Yeah, we’re the people who make the LSAT, and the LSAT is a great test. We’re proud of it, and that’s what we do.” I agree that if we went to fewer tests per year, I feel like that would help a lot in terms of, like, you just wouldn’t have so much material out there. But, like, we could think of these standardized tests as an even playing field, like a ticket out. In my personal story, I grew up in very disadvantaged circumstances. My mom was a drug addict. I did not have my future set out for me. And like, the thing I always had was that I always scored 99 on standardized tests. And from a young age, when you see that, it provides so much hope of, like, you’re not just the smart kid in this class. Like, you can do it. And I feel like I clung to that like a buoy my entire life, and it made me see a standardized test as, like, an opportunity to show out, an opportunity to shine, to, like, prove that you can do it.
I wish that LSAC had that pride of like, “This is a great test that we make. It tests what it’s supposed to test, and it is a fair test.” I feel like all of the scaffolding around it, it’s almost like it’s overshadowing the actual beautiful, wonderful thing that’s underneath.
[35:59] Graeme: Yeah. I’ve taught a number of standardized tests. I haven’t found a better one than the LSAT in terms of the subtlety of measuring how people think, the intricacy and nuance, and it’s very also, like, hard to find any flaw in it. You know, I’ve tried. They really put a lot of care into the answers, and yeah, they should be proud of it. They’ve made a fantastic test.
Mike: So from the business side, I could see why they mention other things in press releases and why they diversify their portfolio. My understanding is they do law school consulting. They do LSAT prep. Am I wrong on that?
Ellen: Well, they sell LawHub Advantage, which also, I very much co-sign. If you are spending money on prep, get LawHub Advantage first, and I mean that before you buy The Loophole. Buy LawHub Advantage. It’s a great thing.
Mike: It’s kinda like we say, “Pay for your LSAT prep first, then come find us.” So you’re a fan of them. You don’t see it as a conflict that they do LSAT prep while they also make the product.
Ellen: It depends on what you call LSAT prep.
Graeme: Yeah.
Ellen: You probably think something similar, Graeme, right?
Graeme: Yeah, they have lessons in LawHubs, some explanations, but there’s not that much LSAT prep. It’s mostly just, you get the test material, and they used to sell books. Now they sell it online. It’s the same line of business.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t really think of it as prep. I think of it as a necessary condition. You have to have access to the real exams, and I’ve been doing a lot of onboarding for the founding cohort of Loophole Online recently, of my subscription prep platform. And the most shocking thing I’ve learned—I’ve talked to 100 to 200 people, onboarding them, in the past six weeks, so I’ve done a lot of calls—and the thing that I found the most shocking is how many people do not have LawHub Advantage. And a lot of people are trying to prep without LawHub Advantage, which, for those who don’t know, LawHub Advantage is just having access to the actual practice tests in LawHub in the same format where you’ll use that format to take the actual exam. And so, if you’re going to spend any money on prep, being able to actually take the real practice tests, have access to the real test material in a format that you’re actually going to use on test day, that’s a really great use of money if you have any money to invest in prep. But they also have fee waiver programs, and you get a free year of LawHub Advantage if you can submit fee waiver documentation and get a fee waiver granted.
[38:04] Mike: Yeah. Okay, so you’re for that. I think we’re all on the same page, myself included.
And then we can end on the lawsuit, since Graeme mentioned the lawsuit, because I think we may see some changes from that. So I’ve been doing this 26 or 27 years, I mean, back right around when they shifted from 1 to 48, to 120 to 180. And in those 27 years, I think LSAC has, by and large, when they focus on the LSAT and don’t do some other things in the market that I’ll talk about to the extent I can talk about them—I’ll more speculate than talk about them—I think they do a good job with the LSAT. If you want an update on the class action and where I think it’s heading and how it might change?
Ellen: Yeah.
Mike: There’s a federal class-action lawsuit against LSAC. I believe it initially alleged three things: price gouging, anti-competitive business practices, and collusion. You could think of it like this, monopolization, price gouging, and collusion. There was, like, a 20-page whatever you submit. Everyone who’s listening to this will, in five years, know exactly what I’m talking about.
The plaintiff submitted their initial complaint. It was 20 pages. The judge did not grant it, but he said, “You have 12 days to amend it.” They amended it. It went from something like 20 pages to 40 pages. And you can find this on Westlaw, LexisNexis, something called CourtListener, or PACER. You can read the red line, the new, amended one, which the judge, my understanding is, then said, “Yeah, okay, this is going to move on.”
This is where things get a little bit interesting. I want to double-click on the fact, although I can read this, I’m speculating. If I were to know anything, particularly if it were anything that were ever directed at my firm, I would not speculate, because it wouldn’t come from me. As everyone who is listening to this knows, it would come from lawyers, not me.
So this is pure speculation. But my speculation, having read, is there’s a footnote in there from the judge that says, “Don’t motion to dismiss again. You did, and discovery starts tomorrow.” But LSAC motion to dismiss again, despite this, to me, was a pretty clear footnote not to. So the judge said, “Okay, the hearing for the motion for dismissal is going to be the same day as the hearing for the scheduling.” Now, I’m no Gibson Dunn, the firm that our firm uses, who I think are the most exceptional lawyers on the planet, bar none. But my mind says, if the judge is having the motion to dismiss as the same day as the scheduling, this person is not going to grant the dismissal. You would have the motion to dismiss previously.
Now, I’m curious your opinion, because now I’m about to go way into the realm of speculation. This is nothing against LSAC or their law firm. Do you think that’s desperation? Do you think they’re so afraid of discovery despite that footnote? Because, to me, it reads like a strategic blunder.
[40:41] Graeme: I went on CourtListener and PACER, and I read the footnote. What he said was, “Don’t repeat yourself in the motion to dismiss.” So he didn’t say not to dismiss, but let me if I can pull up the exact docket. He said, “If defendant insists on pursuing a success motion to dismiss, be aware that any such motion will be expected to bring something significantly new to the table. Reiterating the same arguments against the amended allegations is unlikely to be persuasive.”
The one open question I’m looking at is, the plaintiff appears to have a error of fact where they said LSAC has an agreement that, like, you must be part of CAS to be in the ABA, and LSAC replied and said that they just completely misread some documents related to foreign law schools and that there is no such agreement, which is kinda, like, central to the whole thing, so I don’t know if that is going to move the needle with the judge, but the judge does sound like he wants to at least move it forward to actually going to trial. We’ll see.
Mike: That’s helpful, Graeme, because maybe that means the talented lawyers who are helping LSAC at WilmerHale don’t see this as a desperation ploy; they see this more as, “Hey, if we amend this, we have a shot.”
Graeme: Yeah. I’m up here in Canada, and the schools here don’t use CAS. It is not a requirement to use CAS, and none of them do. So it was a pretty big error of fact, though it doesn’t speak to the ABA.
Mike: Okay, so on the 26th or the 29th, maybe there is a chance, I think it’s remote, that the judge says, “Okay, you showed up for these two hearings, but there’s just one, motion granted”; probably not. So let’s talk about what happens if the motion for dismissal is not granted.
The pressure changes. In fact, the pressure changes tomorrow. The pressure was initially on the plaintiff to make a compelling argument. They did. Now, the pressure, starting tomorrow—and quite frankly, a lot of expenses—are going to be shifted towards LSAC. I’m actually a little worried about the expenses, and I’ll get into that. The pressure’s going to be on the LSAC.
If I had to speculate, the discovery will never see daylight, because this will be settled. Now, what my hope is, is if it’s settled because of any of those three things I named, the hope would be that there is change for the better for the market. LSAC just had to release their 2025 tax filings. They’re sitting on $290 million or whatever, $280 million. It’s almost a hedge fund.
Ellen: That’s wild.
Mike: Yeah, and they’re a nonprofit. They have a lot of money right now, and over the next two to three years, they’re going to make even more money until the cliff hits. What you would hope is that while they’re sitting on a lot of money, if there’s changes—I’m really curious of your opinions—the changes are for the better of the market and not this hefty, “We never want discovery to see daylight, so we’re going to pay this huge sum of money, and then everyone has to never talk about it again.”
Whatever the judge deems just, but I hope that involves—if they’re a monopoly, and I would argue from my neophatic position they are a monopoly—maybe that’s addressed so there can be more changes in the market than something like, “Oh, you pay this huge sum, and everything goes away, and there’s no more accountability until the next class action.” What I don’t hope happens is there’s class action after class action. I don’t see that benefiting anyone.
[43:37] Graeme: Yeah. I also wanted to say that I’m not used to being on a legal zone podcast—I forgot the obligatory, I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea if my analysis was predictive of anything whatsoever and is not legal advice.
But you know the admissions market more than the both of us. In a different field of grad admissions or undergrad admissions, is there a different model that you’ve seen that you’d want the market to move towards? Because no one likes paying CAS fees. There’s a lot of grumbling, but it doesn’t sound like they’re, like, dramatically more expensive than, say, applying to, like, med school or dental school or business school.
Mike: Well, I mean, there’s two components to that. There’s the CAS fees, and then there’s the fact that, what percentage of people take the LSAT versus other tests, which is very high. So there’s the monopolization, which is different, right? ACT and SAT are two different companies.
Graeme: Right.
Mike: So in that sense, you can start off right at the undergrad level and say there’s a huge difference, because you don’t have one nonprofit that produces the test that almost everyone uses.
To the CAS thing, Graeme, I think you’re right. I never thought price gouging—again, I’m speculating. I’m not a plaintiff lawyer or a lawyer. I’m speculating. I never thought the price gouging or the collusion made sense to me, and I think I said this in the media; the thing that made sense to me is the monopolization, which I don’t know if it’s unique to law school admissions or not, but from my perspective, I see the test as a monopoly in the admissions process.
Ellen: It’s interesting, because I feel like there’s almost a stronger argument for a monopoly claim on the admissions side than there is on the test side. People can take the GRE and apply to law school. That does exist, whereas in the US, at least, you don’t have an option but to pay CAS fees if you want to apply to law school.
So then, I wonder what kind of unique advantages they gain by having the test-taking element of, like, the LSAT itself in one nonprofit along with CAS and all that stuff. Like, what advantage does that give them versus, if you just had a straight monopoly, if CAS were a separate nonprofit, and it charges its CAS fees, and that’s the only way to apply to law school in the US, and all this kind of good stuff. That, to me, is the interesting question.
[45:33] Mike: Well, I mean, obviously, the whole thing about monopolies is, if you can set the market price and no one can compete against you, then the advantage is you set the price. The key there is no one else can compete against you. What I believe the plaintiffs have to prove is LSAC restricted or were engaged in restricting other people to enter that market or the test prep market, and this will come out in discovery if it’s true. I’ll withhold my opinion.
I can say that, at an LSAC conference to all the law schools, an executive at LSAC stood up and said—this is years ago, when the GRE was trying to enter the market—“Don’t be disloyal. Look at how many things we give you.” Not word for word. I can say that a former executive at LSAC called themselves the “dean of deans”. So if that’s the mentality of LSAC, what comes out in discovery that the three of us haven’t seen?
Graeme: Yeah. I think there’s definitely some issues with the cost of taking the LSAT, and the big one for me is they have no incentive to be convenient to register. The registration date’s about six weeks out. I could be wrong; I think this is longer than it used to be. So a lot of people, like, get in the cycle and, like, they register, take it when they’re not ready or just withdraw, they keep paying these fees over and over. I think that definitely raises costs for applicants.
The thing is, though, does the lawsuit actually touch on the LSAT side? I thought it was CAS exclusively.
Mike: I think it’s CAS. The collusion, which that takes two parties, I don’t see it, but I’m not trying the case, so who knows? And the price gouging, the collusion, and the monopoly aspect. The monopoly aspect might relate to the LSAT. It might not.
Again, it has to restrict. But I think, based on being deeply embedded in this, I think there may be a scenario—to answer your question, Graeme—where you may see the plaintiffs saying, and again, I’m speculating, “Here we have evidence of LSAC trying to restrict other tests from entering the market.” That would then be not just the CAS reports, but also the test, if you’re trying to restrict the free market ability to enter the market.
Ellen: I feel like there’s evidence that LSAC, at least in the context of CAS, has not done that, and that you can select GRE only within an LSAC-administered application. If they wanted to keep tests out of the market, they could have used CAS at least a little more obviously. Obviously, I don’t know everything, and I’m nowhere near a lawyer, but they allow you to enter a GRE score in a CAS application to law school.
Mike: They may have fought that battle to the American Bar Association and lost it.
Now, how does that impact test takers? Again, if it structurally changes anything inappropriate that’s going on and makes for a more fair admissions process, whether it’s lower CAS fees or whatever, then good. If it enables lawsuit after lawsuit against LSAC, I see that as very bad. And to be clear, I’m just guessing; this also could be dismissed, or LSAC could prevail.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s interesting, and I’m interested in your perspective, Mike, of what is keeping individual law schools from simply offering an admissions portal on their own website? Because, like, the Harvard Junior Deferral Program does. Harvard JDP is its own thing.
Mike: I think that one is some schools see LSAC as very helpful. I mean, LSAC has tons of committees with law school admissions deans and deans of law schools. Right or wrong, I think many of those people understandably see that as very helpful. So there’s this inertia of the process. The other thing is, I have heard more schools say, “We might be going towards this.”
Ellen: Oh.
Mike: Yeah.
Ellen: That’s good.
[48:56] Mike: It’s a good note to end on. We don’t know, to the case. The whole point of this is, LSAC’s mission is to help applicants and schools, and I hope, if they need to be directed in that direction, then they are. And if they don’t need to be directed because they’re already helping applicants and law schools, they’re already doing that, and this goes away, great. If they’re not doing that, I hope it’s not about a huge cash sum of money; I hope it’s just to slightly redirect them, and I hope this doesn’t just open the floodgates to ridiculous lawsuit after ridiculous lawsuit. I imagine we’re all in agreement on that.
Graeme: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, absolutely.
Mike: I got to run because, again, in the comments, schools are interested in what applicants are thinking about admissions and the LSAT. Feel free to give comments. It was great to see you both. Thanks for joining.
Graeme: Great seeing you, too.
Ellen: Great to see you. Thanks, Mike.
Graeme: Thanks for having us.
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