Barron's LSAT: Law School Admission Test

 (6 customer reviews)

I have explored (bought or borrowed) almost every prep series out there on the market. I got to Barron's last and I must admit it was very disappointing. I have reviewed both the 12th and 13th editions and they are very similar so if you really love this series just buy one not both.

Now since I don't like this series I will say this, do not try to learn their techniques they truly are rubbish. The explanations are very short and do not give you much insight. Also I really just laughed out loud when I read through the logic games and their suggested set-ups. OMG, if you do these set-ups first off they will eat at your time (way too elaborate) AND they will confuse the heck out of you! It took more energy to try to follow the suggested format then to just use commonsense and guess (assuming the question is just that difficult).

The one positive I will note is that the questions in the diagnostic part and the sample tests are "closer" to real LSAT questions when...Read more

So I took a prep course (some might call them MASTERS of TESTing) a year ago when I first took the LSAT. Not blaming them for my score, but their pacing can leave some behind and not everything they cover is essential, despite their mountains of statics proving otherwise. Didn't like my score and so I decided to take the test a year later but to study on my own. Tried a few other books but their pacing was too slow or over-emphasized topics that were really supplementary at best. I found Barron's, thumbed through the diagnostic test and analytical reasoning sections and knew right away that I'd finally found something worth studying with.

They set the book to take approximately 5 weeks. I spread it out longer for myself (about 7-8 with a day or two breaks in between) but the explanations and layout make it easy for you to review the highlights of a lesson after you've completed it. They inter-mix explanation with problems samples and are thorough in breaking down the...Read more

This book is of incredibly low quality. Do not buy it.

My biggest complaints:

For starters, the strategies outlined for the various question types are lacking in substance and, especially for the logic games, are absurdly time-consuming. You could spend the entire 35 minutes re-creating just one of the charts or diagrams that they claim you should use for the logic games. You would be better off just guessing than following their methods.

The practice tests at the end of the book are laughable. The questions are full of spelling and grammatical errors and many questions have NO correct answer, in many cases as a direct result of these errors. Many of the questions are confusing and are of obviously lower quality than those on the two actual LSAT tests that are also included in the book. The explainations offered are also laughable - one sentence "explaining" which is the correct answer and no information about why the other answers are...Read more