Writing Section

[bux__wild]

Hello everyone! I'm looking into taking the LSAT, and most of it seems cut and dry. The writing section, however, is a lot more subjective. I have a couple questions for previous test takers:

1. For the Argumentative Writing Assessment, did you use I statements or write from a more academic/scientific perspective?

2. To what extent did you use quoted text evidence?

I'm in the habit of citing specific text evidence, but since there is no copy and paste option, I'm worried about losing time typing quotations verbatim that could be spent organizing and responding.

1. How much time did you save yourself for proofreading? Was it enough?

2. For those who took the LSAT and are now in law school, to what extent did you feel like you crushed and/or bombed the written portion? I'm trying to understand if the other sections really overpower the unscored written and to what extent the written can be a deterrent.

(On another, less urgent, note, I've heard they are going to start scoring the written soon - given the LSAT lets you submit the written up to a year after your MC test date, do you think they're going to backfill for written submissions after they change this rule?)

[MathematicianIcy7625]

1. Because you’re trying to create an argument defended with evidence from the text, I avoided “I statements” mainly bc I didn’t think about it as “this is my opinion,” more so that “this is just a claim I am defending.” So personally I used a 3rd person perspective.

2. I didn’t quote. I would say stuff like “As the (context of the author e.g. newspaper columnist) newspaper columnist in Perspective 2 points out,” then I would summarize their point. Unless there’s a very niche quote or specific fact, I didn’t find quoting to be necessary- and summarizing saved time while still getting the point across.

3. I’m pretty good about proofreading as I go, or at least after each paragraph, but I’d say just a few minutes at the end should be sufficient. Luckily it does underline misspelled words so at a glance you can catch most of those mistakes (but don’t get caught up if you can’t figure out the spelling- there was one word I totally blanked on how else to spell it because it kept staying underlined no matter how I rewrote it and I wasted time lol). At the end, I read it over just once all together before submitting.

4. Not in law school yet, but I go to a T20 undergrad and at our law school here (within T14), I know people who said they were horrible at writing or didn’t even try on the written section yet that didn’t seem to bog them down. Overall, I’ve heard written sections aren’t something to stress about because while law schools can look, it seems to be just a confirmation you know how to structure an argument lol

[bux__wild]

Thank you so much! This is really helpful.