Law School Admission Test

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a half-day standardized test administered four times each year at designated testing centers throughout the world. Administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) for prospective law school candidates, the LSAT is designed to assess reading comprehension, logical, and verbal reasoning proficiencies. The test is an integral part of the law school admission process in the United States, Canada (common law programs only), the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a growing number of other countries. An applicant cannot take the LSAT more than three times within a two-year period.

The test has existed in some form since 1948, when it was created to give law schools a standardized way to assess applicants aside from GPA . The current form of the exam has been used since 1991. The exam has six total sections: four scored multiple choice sections, an unscored experimental section, and an unscored writing section. Raw scores are converted to a scaled score with a high of 180, a low of 120, and a median score around 150. When an applicant applies to a law school, all scores from the past five years are reported. As of June 2012, it costs $160 (USD) to take the LSAT in the United States, and $162 (CAD) in Canada.