I’m a broke, recently-married college student and I didn’t have the cash out of pocket to cough up for a prep course or tutor. I also work 20hrs a week (during semester) as a janitor at my university and do research for some professors in my department — here are the free materials I used to make it happen.
LawHub practice tests - since I’m broke I got my subscription for free and I probably went through 40-50 practice tests before scoring 180 this April, full tests, full timed tests, timed-sections and intentional review
LSATDemon - I only used their platform for the mobile app, I made sure to get practice questions in on my commute, at work (sometimes I have a free hand while cleaning), at the gym, or between my lectures. Definitely wasn’t my main form of practice but it helped me stay sharp.
LSATHacks/7Sage - Some of their explanations for the PTs were free so I used those whenever I could, if the question or section I was looking for wasn’t free on their platforms I would scour Reddit and if that didn’t work I would just try and work it out myself which I got pretty good at and I think helped me out a lot
“Thinking LSAT” and “LSAT Demon Daily” podcasts - These were never study materials or a sincere form of practice but again instead of listening to music at work or at the gym I would throw these guys on in my headphones - consistently solid advice and a cohesive philosophy of how to approach this test. Listened to a couple hundred hours of them talking about the test among other law school things, I personally like podcasts so it never felt like a chore.
“The LSAT is Easy” book by Nathan Fox and Ben Olson (Demon Founders) - Okay this book is $7 on Amazon and my mom sent it to me as a gift (so you could up my total USD spent to $7), a lot of what is in there is said out loud across dozens of podcast episodes, it’s nice to have it all in one place and definitely useful as far as how you approach the questions — THIS BOOK
DOES NOT TEACH LOGIC OR ARGUMENTATION FORMALLY - and that’s part of what made it so great to me.
Partner practice - My cousin and I were studying at the same time so we would plan at the beginning of a week to take the same times sections over the course of the week and review our mistakes at the end together, we would then explain our thought processes and teach each other through our mistakes - this is probably what got me from the low 170s to 177-180 range consistently. Articulating my thought processes behind each answer selection, right or wrong, provided a lot of insight as to how I needed to think about the test differently.
DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant as a knock to tutors or paid courses/materials. I appreciate the work that has gone into the free materials I used and the content that exists online. I also think if you have the money to spend on LSAT prep it is wise to spend it as you can save yourself time and easily around $300,000 in tuition if you put the work in, it’s definitely something you should invest in if you can — I just hope this post can help those who are a little tighter on cash while they prep.
Feel free to ask questions or dm me! Just putting this out there cause I wish I would’ve seen someone highlight these resources while I was starting out .