1 00:00:20,579 --> 00:00:21,219 Oh, god. 2 00:00:21,299 --> 00:00:22,619 A spreadsheet. 3 00:00:22,939 --> 00:00:27,139 Adrian, you are speaking directly to my dark, obsessive past. 4 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:31,859 When I was self-studying, I had a forty-column Google Sheet. 5 00:00:32,460 --> 00:00:36,760 I had columns for "conditional necessary assumption," "causal weaken," 6 00:00:37,199 --> 00:00:39,319 "flaw with-with conditional elements." 7 00:00:39,799 --> 00:00:41,939 I spent hours color-coding it. 8 00:00:42,219 --> 00:00:44,659 I thought I was being so- so scientific. 9 00:00:45,657 --> 00:00:48,637 Right, and that is exactly the trap. 10 00:00:49,277 --> 00:00:50,976 I call it "data sickness." 11 00:00:51,716 --> 00:00:56,837 Students spend, what, three hours cataloging and- and color-coding a practice test, 12 00:00:57,316 --> 00:01:01,476 and maybe thirty minutes actually analyzing why they got the questions wrong. 13 00:01:02,136 --> 00:01:05,276 It's admin work masquerading as actual studying. 14 00:01:05,937 --> 00:01:09,356 You feel like you're making progress because the dashboard looks beautiful. 15 00:01:09,965 --> 00:01:10,484 Yes! 16 00:01:10,584 --> 00:01:12,404 It's a massive dopamine hit. 17 00:01:12,764 --> 00:01:16,724 You're like, "Look at me, I'm- I'm diagnosing my systemic weaknesses." 18 00:01:17,565 --> 00:01:22,324 But- but wait, the worksheet is literally designed to track performance by question 19 00:01:22,364 --> 00:01:22,864 subtype. 20 00:01:23,424 --> 00:01:25,885 Are you saying LSAC is giving bad advice here? 21 00:01:26,607 --> 00:01:28,587 Not bad advice, just... 22 00:01:29,127 --> 00:01:30,267 easily misused. 23 00:01:31,088 --> 00:01:32,447 Think of it like a deposition. 24 00:01:33,148 --> 00:01:36,887 If you're a litigator, and you're questioning a witness who is dodging your 25 00:01:36,947 --> 00:01:41,168 question, you don't stop the deposition to- to consult a chart and say, 26 00:01:41,727 --> 00:01:45,587 "Ah, yes, that's a classic ad hominem subtype 4B." 27 00:01:46,728 --> 00:01:47,048 No! 28 00:01:48,107 --> 00:01:49,987 You don't care about the academic label. 29 00:01:50,587 --> 00:01:51,727 You just spot the gap. 30 00:01:52,427 --> 00:01:55,548 You see that their evidence doesn't actually support their claim, 31 00:01:55,968 --> 00:01:57,687 and you press them on it. 32 00:01:57,767 --> 00:01:58,967 The LSAT is the same. 33 00:01:59,647 --> 00:02:04,647 The test rewards finding the logical skeleton, not decorating a dashboard with 34 00:02:04,787 --> 00:02:06,007 micro-classifications. 35 00:02:06,674 --> 00:02:10,654 Okay, so- so instead of agonizing over whether a question is a 36 00:02:10,674 --> 00:02:14,554 "strengthen-with-sufficient-premise" or whatever, I just need to ask, 37 00:02:15,095 --> 00:02:18,215 "Why does this argument fail to prove its conclusion?" 38 00:02:18,944 --> 00:02:19,644 Exactly. 39 00:02:20,184 --> 00:02:25,184 If you can't find the premise and the conclusion, and the specific gap between them, 40 00:02:25,784 --> 00:02:29,465 all the spreadsheet columns in the world won't save you on test day. 41 00:02:31,409 --> 00:02:35,349 Alright, so if we're throwing away the forty-column spreadsheet, 42 00:02:36,049 --> 00:02:38,149 how do we actually fix the mistakes? 43 00:02:38,670 --> 00:02:42,090 Because when I was reviewing on LawHub, I'd miss a question, 44 00:02:42,529 --> 00:02:45,329 look at the correct answer, and go, "Oh, obviously. 45 00:02:45,789 --> 00:02:47,229 Yeah, B makes total sense. 46 00:02:47,309 --> 00:02:47,850 I see it now." 47 00:02:48,489 --> 00:02:49,389 And then I'd move on. 48 00:02:50,069 --> 00:02:55,209 But then, surprise surprise, I'd make the exact same mistake on the next PT. 49 00:02:56,044 --> 00:03:02,324 Right, because that "oh, that makes sense" reaction is a cognitive illusion. 50 00:03:02,864 --> 00:03:04,404 It's passive recognition. 51 00:03:05,104 --> 00:03:07,404 You're just validating the test-makers' work. 52 00:03:08,144 --> 00:03:13,564 You're- you're essentially saying, "Yes, I agree that the correct answer is indeed 53 00:03:13,625 --> 00:03:14,045 correct." 54 00:03:14,844 --> 00:03:18,184 But you didn't do the heavy lifting of finding it yourself. 55 00:03:18,844 --> 00:03:21,144 You didn't build any new neural pathways. 56 00:03:21,857 --> 00:03:25,777 So how do we force those pathways to actually, you know, build? 57 00:03:26,586 --> 00:03:30,026 You use what I call the "No-Look" reconstruction. 58 00:03:30,806 --> 00:03:35,106 When you review a missed question, you cover the answer choices entirely. 59 00:03:35,587 --> 00:03:36,566 Do not look at them. 60 00:03:37,406 --> 00:03:42,587 You go back to the stimulus, and you write down, in plain English-no formal logic 61 00:03:42,667 --> 00:03:47,326 symbols, just normal speech-what the premise is, what the conclusion is, 62 00:03:47,746 --> 00:03:50,546 and then you declare the logical gap yourself. 63 00:03:51,306 --> 00:03:55,606 You write down: "This argument assumes that just because X happened, 64 00:03:56,266 --> 00:03:57,206 Y must cause it." 65 00:03:58,286 --> 00:04:02,746 Only when you have written that down do you let yourself look at the choices to find 66 00:04:02,786 --> 00:04:04,507 the one that matches your prediction. 67 00:04:05,971 --> 00:04:07,931 I actually did a version of this! 68 00:04:08,471 --> 00:04:12,792 Once I realized the spreadsheets weren't working, I started explaining the logical 69 00:04:12,911 --> 00:04:15,451 gaps out loud to my dog, Buster. 70 00:04:16,031 --> 00:04:19,931 If I couldn't explain to a golden retriever why the author was being an idiot, 71 00:04:20,551 --> 00:04:22,411 I didn't actually understand the flaw. 72 00:04:22,792 --> 00:04:28,111 It- it felt ridiculous, but my score shot up like five points in three weeks. 73 00:04:28,774 --> 00:04:31,335 Buster is the ultimate LSAT tutor. 74 00:04:32,054 --> 00:04:34,534 But seriously, that is the work. 75 00:04:35,414 --> 00:04:38,554 Now, I will concede one thing on the Strategy Booster. 76 00:04:39,274 --> 00:04:43,814 If you use their data to spot broad, systemic collapses-like, 77 00:04:44,234 --> 00:04:49,254 "Hey, every time conditional logic shows up, I panic"-that's useful. 78 00:04:49,774 --> 00:04:52,434 You can use LawHub's free drills to target that. 79 00:04:53,215 --> 00:04:54,954 But don't let it paralyze you. 80 00:04:55,674 --> 00:04:58,534 When the clock is ticking down in a Prometric testing room, 81 00:04:58,974 --> 00:05:02,735 you cannot be running a taxonomic classification system in your head. 82 00:05:03,434 --> 00:05:05,514 You just need to find the gap. 83 00:05:06,272 --> 00:05:06,692 Right. 84 00:05:06,933 --> 00:05:08,573 Don't classify the beast. 85 00:05:08,793 --> 00:05:10,273 Just, uh, shoot it. 86 00:05:10,612 --> 00:05:12,652 Or, you know, point out its logical flaws. 87 00:05:13,452 --> 00:05:15,213 Alright, I'm going to go pet Buster. 88 00:05:15,692 --> 00:05:16,472 Good chatting, Adrian. 89 00:05:17,132 --> 00:05:18,212 Talk soon, Nora.