Prepare for LSAT success with the LSAT Exam Cram. Accurate, to-the-point content, strategies for successfully completing the three exam sections, and four complete practice exams make this study aid one of the most comprehensive on the market. With over 500 practice questions, the LSAT Exam Cram also offers you an author-led video on CD-ROM that will help you arrive at the logical answer for each type of question. A "Cram Sheet" tear-card is also included for you to use in your last minute studying right up until exam time. Build your confidence and prepare for exam success with the LSAT Exam Cram.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
LSAT Exam CramAbout the Author
Michael Bellomo holds a Juris Doctor in Law from the University of California, San Francisco; an M.B.A. from the University of California at Irvine; and a Black Belt certification in Six Sigma project management. In the course of his career, Michael has worked with The Knowledge Labs, a think tank in Irvine, California, and with ARES Corporation, a project and risk management firm that works with the Department of Defense and NASA. He was the narrator for a multimedia presentation sent to Congress on the development of NASA's Orbital Space Plane. Currently, he serves with ARES Corporation as their Contracts and Proposals Counsel.
Michael has written 13 books in the areas of science, technology, and business. His works have been published in Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, French, Dutch, German, Russian, and Japanese. His latest book, Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague? is about stopping bioterrorism attacks against the U.S. and will be published in June 2005. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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LSAT Exam Cram
Introduction
Why You Need to Become an Expert at the LSAT
If you are seriously thinking about applying for admission to one of the vast majority of law schools in the country, you need to become extremely familiar with the LSAT, or Law School Admissions Test. Essentially, if you plan to go into the legal field, there is no getting around the fact that you'll have to take the LSAT. The test is required for admission to all 202 law schools that are members of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC).
Although inclusion within the ranks of the LSAC is not necessarily a guarantee of quality, the vast majority of the legal programs in the U.S. are part of the LSAC. All law schools approved by the American Bar Association are LSAC members.
Therefore, if you plan to specifically attend a school that is not part of the LSAC, then congratulations--you may not have to face the LSAT. However, without taking the LSAT, you are giving up the chance to apply to the vast majority of schools that could offer an excellent legal education.
Who Are These LSAC People, Anyway?
The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) is a nonprofit corporation located in the eastern Pennsylvanian town of Newtown, about a half-hour's drive north of Philadelphia. Although best known for composing devilishly tricky questions on the LSAT exam, the LSAC also provides a number of helpful services such as
Organizing law school forums, where prospective applicants can meet with and question admissions counselors and students from the schools they are interested in.
Producing software, videos, and assorted publications to assist in admissions and law school education in general.
Administering the MILE (Minorities Interested in Legal Education) program. The MILE project provides minority students with information about preparation for law school, with the end goal of increasing the numbers of lawyers from underrepresented minority groups in the United States.
Running the Candidate Referral Service (CRS). The CRS is one of the two services that plays directly to the LSAC's main strength—the collection and distribution of law applicant data. If you register with CRS, you have the opportunity to authorize the release of information about yourself to eligible law schools and organizations who may be looking for candidates with a specific ethnic background or range of test scores.
Administering the Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS). This is the second of the two LSAC services that specializes in the collection and timely distribution of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) information and test scores.
Caution - On average, about 135,000 prospective law students take the LSAT annually. According to the Law School Admission Council's website, the LSAC administered about 147,600 LSATs in 2004, which is a substantial jump in numbers. Part of the jump is due to the state of the economy (which we'll discuss briefly in Chapter 1). But the uncomfortable fact remains: The overall trend in the number of people applying to law school has been increasing at a faster rate than the number of seats available.
This in turn means that with more applicants, the level of competition is steeper and the need to perform well on the LSAT is correspondingly great, particularly if one wants to get into a brand-name program. If this is your concern, then take a deep breath: You've come to the right book.
How to Use Your Exam Cram 2 Book
The main purpose of the Exam Cram 2 series is to provide you with tools and information that will help you practice for and attain the best possible score on the LSAT. It's not designed to help you decide which law school is best for you, or even to help you decide if law school is the proper career choice, though the skills taught are applicable. That said, your use of the book may differ slightly depending on your situation.
Entering or in the Middle of College and Seriously Considering Law School
Start by reading this book, which gives you insights and practice for the LSAT, as well as information about the law school admissions process in general. You would also do well to find a pre-law advisor at your school. Most undergraduate institutions offer these services, particularly if you are enrolled in a major that is a "feeder subject" into the legal arena, such as the liberal arts, humanities, and of course, "pre-law."
Consider testing yourself with the exam material found in this book. In fact, if you're a junior or senior, you may not have all that much time left to decide whether this is a field for you. Run through an exam and see whether you're comfortable--not necessarily with the questions, per se. Rather, see whether you're comfortable with exercising the parts of your thought process that you access in order to solve the problem at hand.
A College Graduate and Seriously Considering Law School
You might be interested to know that you have one strong positive and one strong (but correctable) negative off the bat. First off, the good news is that law schools have been and continue to warmly receive returning college graduates. Partly this is because of the schools pledging to continue increasing the diversity of their student body. It is also due to longer-term studies showing that people who go to law school after a few years in the business world (or spending a couple years involved in any activity that provides valuable life experience) tend to have higher retention and bar pass rates.
On the other hand, if you're four years out of college, you're four years further away than the typical college grad from your memories of the SAT. In addition, unless all of the incoming law school applicants went to Party Hearty U., you'll be in competition against people who have been taking multiple-choice scantron tests for the past three to four years. Don't let this put you off--it simply means getting into training, only with the mind instead of the body. Read this book and practice the exams, and pay special attention to the "why" of an answer.
Note - According to the LSAC, in Fall 2003, about 25 percent of all law school applicants were 22 years old or younger; about 37 percent were 23 to 25; and about 19 percent were between ages 26 and 29. Applicants who were 30 to 34 years old made up about 10 percent of the applicant pool, while 9 percent were more than 34 years old.
In College and Preparing to Take the LSAT in a Couple Weeks
What are you reading this for? Get started on the practice exams! And when you're done, for last-minute exam jitters, refer to the two-page Cram Sheet in the front of this book for key bits of information that you can use.
About This Book
Each topical Exam Cram 2 chapter follows a regular structure, along with graphical cues about important or useful information. Here's the structure of a typical chapter:
Opening Hotlists--Each chapter begins with a list of the terms, tools, and techniques you must learn and understand before you can be fully conversant with that chapter's subject matter. Following the hotlists are one or two introductory paragraphs to set the stage for the rest of the chapter.
Topical coverage--The main text of the chapter follows the opening hotlists. Throughout this section, topics or concerns likely to appear on a test are highlighted in a special Exam Alert layout, like this:
Caution - This is what an Exam Alert looks like. Normally, an Exam Alert stresses concepts, terms, software, or activities that are likely to relate to one or more certification test questions. For that reason, any information found offset in an Exam Alert format is worthy of unusual attentiveness on your part.
Pay close attention to mate...
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More About the Author
Michael Bellomo holds an MBA from the University of California at Irvine, a Juris Doctor in Law from UC San Francisco, and a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma Manufacturing Techniques from UC San Diego.
Currently he is a manager at a major biopharmaceutical company, dedicated to the manufacture of plasma-based medicines and therapies.
Michael has written 19 books in various non-fiction fields, including technology, business operations, and 'mass market' science. Michael's books have been published internationally in Italian, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Korean, German, Russian, and Chinese.
Since the Silicon Valley dotcom boom, he has worked as a financial e-commerce manager, a think-tank analyst studying how new technologies (TiVo, eBay, Blackberry) change consumer markets, and as a risk assessment engineer with a DoD consulting firm.
Michael was part of the team that analyzed what went wrong during the Columbia shuttle disaster. He has worked on projects ranging from how to stop bioterrorists to streamlining NASA's ability to send payloads to the International Space Station. Due to his background as a voiceover artist, he was selected by NASA to be the featured narrator for a DVD presentation sent to Congress on the development of the Orbital Space Plane.
He is the co-author of two Amazon bestsellers involving technology and science: eBay Your Business and Microbe: Are We Ready For The Next Plague?, a chilling work on how vulnerable we are to new, exotic diseases and acts of biological terrorism. The book is now a required text for upper division biology courses at California State University, Sacramento and San Francisco City College.
In December 2006, Michael was invited as a guest lecturer and panel participant at Harvard University for his latest popular science book, The Stem Cell Divide. The book is a look into the kaleidoscope of scientific wonder, religious dogma, and the hype machine surrounding the field of stem cell science research.
Michael lives in Los Angeles, California.
Currently he is a manager at a major biopharmaceutical company, dedicated to the manufacture of plasma-based medicines and therapies.
Michael has written 19 books in various non-fiction fields, including technology, business operations, and 'mass market' science. Michael's books have been published internationally in Italian, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Korean, German, Russian, and Chinese.
Since the Silicon Valley dotcom boom, he has worked as a financial e-commerce manager, a think-tank analyst studying how new technologies (TiVo, eBay, Blackberry) change consumer markets, and as a risk assessment engineer with a DoD consulting firm.
Michael was part of the team that analyzed what went wrong during the Columbia shuttle disaster. He has worked on projects ranging from how to stop bioterrorists to streamlining NASA's ability to send payloads to the International Space Station. Due to his background as a voiceover artist, he was selected by NASA to be the featured narrator for a DVD presentation sent to Congress on the development of the Orbital Space Plane.
He is the co-author of two Amazon bestsellers involving technology and science: eBay Your Business and Microbe: Are We Ready For The Next Plague?, a chilling work on how vulnerable we are to new, exotic diseases and acts of biological terrorism. The book is now a required text for upper division biology courses at California State University, Sacramento and San Francisco City College.
In December 2006, Michael was invited as a guest lecturer and panel participant at Harvard University for his latest popular science book, The Stem Cell Divide. The book is a look into the kaleidoscope of scientific wonder, religious dogma, and the hype machine surrounding the field of stem cell science research.
Michael lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great capstone to your LSAT review,
This review is from: LSAT Exam Cram (Paperback)
If anything, I found many questions in this book to be *harder* than what I saw on the LSAT (I took it earlier this year). I think that this is best used after you've purchased some old LSATs and gotten into the rhythm of practicing the questions. Other than that, good guide and worth the price.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Don't use only this book,
This review is from: LSAT Exam Cram (Paperback)
This book works great as an in-depth review of what all the other review books tell you to do. Each chapter gives a brief (as in 10 page) summary of some of the skills you may need and some of the questions you may encounter. However, the list of skills and techniques is by no means comprehensive (and I personally found the recommended techniques for logic games very inefficient and confusing compared to every other technique for logic games that I've tried), so if you are looking for a "How to" approach to the LSAT, this book is not your best bet (I recommend Nova's Master the LSAT book instead). On the other hand, it does gives you some succinct tips, and works great if you are trying to cram in some studying in the month before the test.The book comes with a CD that "features sample test questions and an audio presentation of chapter concepts." The audio presentation of chapter concepts is nothing more than the author reading exactly what he wrote in the chapter (with maybe a few words different, I followed along in the book as the audio played just to see!). The sample test questions are not worth it at all. The program is called ExamForce CramMaster and I first thought that it would give me a wide variety of questions to practice on so that I would improve. The program tells you that it will give you new questions based on how you answered an old one and that it will help you improve in areas where you need it most. It might work a little bit like that, but mostly it gives you the same questions over and over again so that you can ace the section because you've memorized the answers and don't even need to read the question or answer choices anymore! As for the practice exams in the book itself, there is no score conversion table so you only know which questions you got wrong, not how you would have scored on a real LSAT. The explanations of answers are good, although the answer key tends to be wrong. The list of answers will give one answer for a question, while the explanation gives another, and usually the correct, answer. I found the logical reasoning practice questions very useful, and the logic games questions were okay, but the reading comprehension passages were nothing like what you would get on a real LSAT. The passages were actually interesting and fun to read, sometimes excerpts from novels or short stories, and did not give any indication of what the reading passages are actually like. A better set of practice exams would be the old LSAT exams published by LSAC, even though you don't get detailed explanations. While the questions were perhaps wittily written, I think most people would agree that taking tests most like the LSAT are the best way to prepare for test day. I thought this book was quite helpful as a review of general techniques, and as practice for the logical reasoning sections, but there is no way that I would recommend this as the only book you buy to study for the LSAT.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
*Excellent* Prep Guide,
By Brian Westbury "Brian Westbury" (New York City, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: LSAT Exam Cram (Paperback)
I was familiar with the 'Exam Cram' series so decided to take a chance with this book. They've really kept the quality up with this one. This book doesn't mess around - it gets to the heart of the test with questions that are actually more difficult (at times) than the LSAT itself. Some of the questions are actually very wittily written - got a big chuckle out of me a couple times.A nice bonus I haven't seen elsewhere is that the author has a CD-ROM which has a recording of him going over the test techniques. He's got a pleasant speaking voice and obviously likes conveying the material - wish I had him for my pre-law class. Since I commute in to school it was very cool to be able to 'study' while on the go.
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