Customer Reviews

Examkrackers LSAT Logical Reasoning

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I'm a private LSAT tutor who uses a mix of past LSATs, commercial books, and my own material for my students. I have to say I really like this book and the others from Examkrackers.

I respect the opinion of the previous reviewer (AW), who has written a lot of quality reviews for many LSAT books, but I disagree that with the opinion that this book is overly simplistic. For example, the book advises you to ask yourself for flaw questions, "Is this a flaw in the argument?" While this sounds obvious, this advice is followed by a discussion of why answer choices for flaw questions can be wrong, and it turns out that there are only two kinds of wrong answer choices for flaw questions: choices that don't describe real flaws, and choices that don't accurately describe the argument. Thus, this simple question reminds you to check whether each choice really describes a flaw and really describes the argument. Only the correct choice will do both. So, yes, this approach is simple, but it gets you to the right answer, so why make things more complicated? I like the simplicity. Of course, the book also provides a lot more advice about how to spot common flaws as well.

The point about conditional reasoning is analogous. The LRB has tons of material regarding this topic, and while it is all true, about half of it is beyond the scope of any question that would appear on the LSAT more than once a decade. I started advising my students to skip large portions of this book when they came to me utterly confused. If you can handle All, Most, and Some, including combining these concepts, you're golden for the LSAT. The EK book has a great approach for doing so, and you can forget all about powerscore's double not arrows, negative logic ladder, and the dreaded "complete table of formal logical additive inference relationships."

Bottom line: I now use the EK series with my students, along with the home study regimen available on their site and a bunch of past LSATs. My students like it a lot.

As I prepared for the LSAT, I bought the Princeton Review general prep book that covered all three areas of the test. I found that it was less descriptive than what I needed in order to do well on the practice tests. My biggest area of difficulty was logical reasoning, so I checked out what other books were available. ExamKrackers is great! The author scored in the 99th percentile for the LSAT, MCAT, and, I believe, the GMAT (not completely sure on the last one though). It clearly went through each type of logical reasoning question (with visual aids for you visual learners!) and addressed strategies for effectively and efficiently eliminating wrong answer choices and identifying the stronger answer possibilities.

This book greatly improved my practice score, which increased my confidence as I headed into the test. I got the score that I wanted to get and I got into my top choice for law school. I definitely recommend ExamKrackers over some of the other publications out there.

I was really impressed with this book. Really thorough, but surprisingly efficient. Unlike the power score bible, this doesn't make everything unnecessarily complicated. I know the LSAT is hard, but I like how it showed me how answering every problem is just a matter of using the same small set of skills in slightly different ways. This also has a lot more example problems, timed quizzes, and drills.

In the logical reasoning portion of the LSAT, this book has only one competitor, the Powerscore Logical Reasoning Bible (LRB).

This book is a nice attempt and it's good to see Powerscore getting some competition, but the book is still just a bit too simplistic for my liking. It's not as basic as Kaplan's material, so I would say it's halfway between something like Kaplan and Powerscore.

For example, a lot of the book is telling you things like: to test a flaw, ask yourself, is this really a flaw in the stimulus? If it's not, discard it. Well, this kind of advice is obvious.

And the book's treatment of conditional reasoning isn't nearly as good as the LRB. So if you have problems understanding sufficient/necessary, some/most, etc. get the LRB.

That is not to say that it doesn't contain useful advice. It does. It's just not quite as detailed as I think it could be. That's why I say it isn't a replacement for the LRB. More like a nice supplement.

So, I'd say that if you only get one book, get the LRB. But if you have some extra time and money, this book is a worthwhile read. It's got 165 LR problems so that alone is good for some extra practice.

I was a former Kaplan student frustrated that I wasn't grasping logical reasoning. I wish I knew about this book earlier because after reading it, I felt a sense of relief and true accomplishment. This book breaks down basic concepts, is easy to follow, and has timed practice quizzes with explanations to follow. A definite boost for my overall score!

I would highly recommend this book for several reasons. For one, they cover pretty much ALL of the Logical Reasoning questions that you could expect in the section of the LSAT. They cover the some of the very common questions like inference, sufficient assumption/justify and necessary assumption/evaluate, point at issue/disagreement, paradox, parallel reasoning and parallel flaw. They'll also cover questions that you might NOT see on the LSAT, but they teach you about those so you can prepare for them if they do show up.
Some of questions that quiz you on your understanding of the common flaws are a little hard to understand how to do initially. However, once you look them over and think about how to do them properly, then you'll have no problem. Pretty much all of the practice questions are at the back of the book, and a majority of them are grouped according to specific questions like sufficient assumption, paradox, and parallel flawed reasoning. I would not answer these questions until you have a very good sense of how to answer them effectively.
It took me a while to get used to the questions, but I got better at them by writing the rules down on lined flashcards. I would HIGHLY recommend that people do this because you can simplify how to answer the questions. It also allows you to trim their rules of all the excess information that you DON'T need to answer the questions.
Just because this book was published in 2007 doesn't mean that it's outdated in any way. It still has information that can be applied to the questions that you'll see in most, if not any Logical Reasoning section.
I wish that the writers provided more prep tests, because the more you practice w/ the questions, the better you'll perform with them, and you'll feel more confident. If you feel that you need more Logical Reasoning questions to practice with, I would recommend that people supplement this book with one or more of the LSAC's "LSAT PrepTests". ALL of the questions in these books have been taken from previous LSATs, and sometimes they'll even show you WHY an answer is correct if you get a question wrong.
Over all, I would recommend that people buy this book because it teaches you how to answer most, if not ALL of the Logical Reasoning questions in an easy, effective manner. I believe that the information that they provide is practically invaluable when it comes to answering the Logical Reasoning questions. Buying this book will only do you good.

With the Logical Reasoning sections of the LSAT being 50% of the score;it is absolutely crucial that the prosepctive Law School student "get it" and if you don't "get it" you can forget getting into a decent school much less your dream Law School. My score went from 136 all the way to 154 because of the methods taught in the ExamKrackers series. I referred to friends to these books and their scores increased (from 139 to 158 and 134 to 149 respectively). Both of them had paid out big bucks to attend (to the tune of about $1100) the Kaplan LSAT prep class to no avail and I had taken the Powerscore class.
I had no idea that I did not completely understand Logical Reasoning until I cracked open this book. The methods are practical, direct and to the point. The diagramming is a little challenging but used only as a last resort for sufficient aassumptions, necessary assumptions, and inference questions. The price of the ExamKrackers series is an absolute steal for the value it delivers! You must buy! There is no need to buy or use anyone else's methods!
I am now mulling over acceptance letters to four different schools. I applied to seven. Thanks, Examkrackers!!!

I've purchased tons of study materials for the LSAT in the past. Examkrackers has been the most helpful. I can't believe I'm comprehending the areas of the tests that have always seemed the most difficult in the Logical Reasoning sections...Flaw and Assumption questions.

This book breaks the material down as if you're a 5th grader. I love it. I will tackle the Reading Comp and Analytical Section next !!!!

Thanks Mr. Lynch !!!!