Weaken questions build directly on the skills you use in Flaw and Evaluate questions. In a Flaw question, you identify the gap between the author’s evidence and their conclusion. In an Evaluate question, you ask what would help you judge how much that gap matters. A Weaken answer supplies information that makes the gap more damaging, reducing support for the conclusion.

Most Weaken mistakes happen when students skip the Flaw and Evaluate steps. Without a gap and an evaluation question, there is nothing to measure the answer choices against except how negative each one sounds for the conclusion, and the LSAT reliably supplies answers that sound negative while leaving the actual reasoning untouched.

So the fix is to decide what reasoning you’ll use to find the right answer before you read a single choice. That means pinning down three things: the conclusion, the evidence, and the gap between them.

Thankfully, a lot of Weaken questions follow recognizable patterns. Below, I’ve modeled seven of the ones you’ll run into most often. Each follows the same format: an example argument, the gap, the Evaluate question, the weakener, and why it works. The goal isn’t to memorize seven templates (though that doesn’t hurt). It’s to recognize familiar weakeners faster and to understand the connection between Flaw and Weaken well enough to adapt when an argument or answer takes a less familiar form.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. A Competing Explanation

The author is trying to explain a phenomenon they have noticed, such as a difference between two groups, a change over time, or a pattern in a study. They propose a cause and point to evidence they believe supports that explanation. The problem is that the evidence leaves room for the same phenomenon to have occurred for another reason. To weaken the argument, we introduce information that makes an alternative explanation plausible in this particular situation. If something else could account for what happened, the author’s evidence gives us less reason to attribute the phenomenon to the cause they picked.

Example: A café replaces its small printed menu with a large, colorful board featuring photographs of its pastries. During the following month, pastry sales increase by 30%. The owner concludes that the new board is the main reason for the increase: seeing the photographs encouraged customers to add a pastry to their orders.

Gap in the argument: All the owner really knows is the order of events: first the new board, then more pastry sales. That’s not enough to say the board caused the increase. Something else could have brought more people in or changed what they were ordering, and the owner hasn’t ruled that out.

Evaluate question: Besides the board, did anything else change that month that could explain why the café sold more pastries?

Weakener: That same month, a large office building across the street reopened after a lengthy renovation, bringing back hundreds of employees who regularly bought breakfast at the café.

Why it weakens: The returning office workers give us an alternative explanation for the additional sales. The café might be selling more pastries because a large group of former regulars is back, making the owner’s original explanation less certain.

2. Results from Different Situations

The author compares results across two situations and treats the difference as evidence that one person, product, method, or institution is worse in some broader respect. The problem is that the two situations may not be comparable. A weakener identifies a relevant difference between the circumstances that could explain why the results differ, making the author’s evaluation less justified.

These can look similar to ordinary cause-and-effect weakeners. The key difference is the conclusion. Instead of simply claiming that one factor caused an outcome, the author uses the outcome to make an evaluative judgment about something involved.

Example: A workshop supervisor compares the number of furniture repairs completed by three full-time restorers. Nora finishes twelve jobs during the month, while each of her coworkers finishes about twenty. Because everyone works roughly the same number of hours, the supervisor concludes that Nora is less capable than the other restorers.

Gap in the argument: The supervisor compares ability by job count without showing the jobs took comparable work. Equal hours don’t make the counts comparable if the assignments were very different.

Evaluate question: Was Nora doing the same kind of work as everyone else, or were her jobs harder and bigger?

Weakener: As the most experienced worker, Nora is often assigned difficult projects involving broken frames and missing parts. Her coworkers mostly handle simple surface painting.

Why it weakens: This gives Nora’s lower number an explanation that has nothing to do with how good she is. She does harder work, so the counts can’t fairly measure ability.

3. A Broad Claim from a Narrow Indicator

The author wants to evaluate something that cannot be measured directly, such as how much a person values an item. Instead, they use a more observable characteristic as a stand-in and assume that differences in that measure reflect differences in the underlying value. The weakness is that the proxy may capture only one part of what the author actually wants to measure. A weakener shows that the measured characteristic differs in some notable way from the underlying value, making the proxy less trustworthy.

Example: An organizer reviews attendance at the planning meetings for a neighborhood food festival. Rae attended only two of the eight meetings, fewer than any other volunteer. The organizer concludes that Rae is less committed to making the festival succeed than the other volunteers are.

Gap in the argument: Showing up to meetings is one way to be involved, but it’s not the only way. The organizer is using it as if it captures everything relevant to commitment.

Evaluate question: Does Rae contribute time or effort in ways that meeting attendance does not capture?

Weakener: Rae misses most meetings because she’s collecting donated supplies during the only hours donors are available, and she spends every Saturday organizing those supplies for the festival.

Why it weakens: The very work keeping Rae from meetings is strong evidence of her commitment.

4. Disanalogous Populations Being Compared

The author takes a result found in one population and extends it to a different population without adequately justifying the transition. To weaken the argument, we show either that the original evidence tells us little about the new group or that there is some relevant difference between the two populations that makes the generalization less reliable.

Example: A meal-kit company tests a new set of illustrated recipe cards with students at a culinary school. Almost every participant prepares the dishes successfully without asking for help. The company concludes that the cards will allow customers with no cooking experience to prepare the same dishes without additional instruction.

Gap in the argument: The trial shows the cards work for people who already know how to cook. The company applies that result to beginners without showing that the difference in skill won’t matter.

Evaluate question: Did the culinary students use cooking knowledge that beginners wouldn’t have?

Weakener: The cards leave several key prep steps unexplained. The cooking students already knew how to do them, but the beginner customers have never learned them.

Why it weakens: It tells us the culinary students succeeded partly because of knowledge the cards didn’t provide. Beginners might get derailed because of those missing steps, so the trial is now weaker evidence about whether beginners can succeed with the cards alone.

5. An Overlooked Tradeoff

The author recommends an option because it provides some benefit, but overlooks what choosing it may require someone to give up. We weaken the recommendation by identifying a better alternative that would be displaced, or by showing a cost, loss, or missed opportunity created by accepting the author’s proposal.

Example: An online shop finds a supplier offering mailing boxes that cost forty cents less per order than its current boxes. The owner recommends switching, reasoning that using the cheaper boxes will reduce the shop’s costs and increase its profits without changing the products or their selling prices.

Gap in the argument: The owner treats the box’s price as its full cost. A cheaper box could create new expenses once an order ships.

Evaluate question: Would the cheaper boxes create other costs larger than the savings?

Weakener: In a trial, the cheaper boxes led to enough extra damaged orders that replacements and return postage averaged seventy-five cents more per order.

Why it weakens: The shop saves forty cents on the box but spends seventy-five cents more on damage, so each order costs thirty-five cents more overall. The owner’s premise about purchase price is accurate, but it does not establish the conclusion about total cost.

6. A Broken Link in the Chain

The author predicts a sequence in which one event leads to another, which then produces the final result. We weaken the argument by showing that one of those links may fail, so the predicted chain does not necessarily reach the conclusion.

Example: A museum surveys visitors about a proposed free shuttle from the railway station. Hundreds say they would use it. The director predicts that the shuttle would substantially reduce crowding in the museum’s parking lot because visitors would take the shuttle instead of driving.

Gap in the argument: The director jumps from “people would ride the shuttle” to “fewer people would park.” That follows only if the riders would otherwise have driven.

Evaluate question: Would the shuttle riders otherwise drive to the museum?

Weakener: Nearly all the interested respondents currently take the train and walk from the station to the museum.

Why it weakens: The shuttle could fill up while replacing almost no car trips, because its riders weren’t parking at the museum to begin with. Popularity alone doesn’t show the shuttle will reduce parked cars. The riders could just be swapping a walk for a ride.

7. An Unsettled Prerequisite

The author offers a way to resolve a question, but the proposed approach works only if some other issue can already be settled reliably. A weakener shows that this required judgment remains disputed or difficult to make, undermining the usefulness of the proposed method.

Example: A historical society owns several unsigned posters that may have been created by a particular local illustrator. A curator proposes comparing their lettering and drawing style with works already attributed to that illustrator. If the styles closely match, the curator argues, the question of who created them could finally be settled.

Gap in the argument: The comparison works only if the reference collection really is the illustrator’s work. Otherwise, we’re using invalid evidence to settle the issue.

Evaluate question: Do we have good reason to believe that the illustrator actually created the posters in the reference collection?

Weakener: None of the reference posters has verified authorship, and experts disagree about whether several were created by other illustrators.

Why it weakens: Now a match doesn’t mean much. If some of the reference posters were really made by another artist, an unsigned poster could look just like them because that other artist made it too. The proposed evidence therefore cannot confirm the new attribution until the earlier attributions are verified.

A Process for Unfamiliar Arguments

These patterns cover a huge share of Weaken questions, but you’ll still run into unusual arguments that refuse to fit any of them. My advice: don’t go rogue. The less familiar the question, the more important I think it is to fall back on first principles.

You can afford to slow down a little on the few LR questions that really test you, as long as you’re working efficiently on the rest. That’s usually more successful than trying to wing it in the answer choices on a max-difficulty Weaken question. So when an argument doesn’t fit, keep your wits about you and run this template.

State the argument in simple form:

“The author believes ___ because ___.”

Find the gap:

Identify where the author’s evidence fails to prove their conclusion completely. If unsure, use one of these two approaches:

1. Ask what’s missing: What would you ideally need to know to be completely sure of the conclusion? Now, what are you missing from that? For example, if the argument makes a correlation/causation error, you might say, “I need a guarantee that A causes B, but I only have evidence that A and B tend to occur together.”
2. Try to break the conclusion: Imagine the premises are true. Under what condition would the conclusion still be false? For example, you’ve proven that A correlates with B, but you can imagine that’s because a separate condition, C, causes both. If so, you can’t claim A causes B from the correlation alone.

Pre-phrase the weakener:

Now that you have the gap, come up with the weakener that matches it. The easiest way is to ask what the author assumes to be true, then say that it’s false.

• They assume A and B are connected? Well, here’s evidence they’re not.
• They need a certain type of evidence to be a reliable indicator? Here are some examples of it being unreliable.
• They’re assuming an outcome you’d normally consider very likely? Unfortunately for them, this is that one abnormal day, and they’re not getting that outcome.

It’s your job to be as critical and uncharitable as possible without disputing the premises, which you have to accept as true. The better the author’s argument seems by default, the more you should require them to prove each microscopic claim one by one.

Fix Missed Pre-phrases during Review

Sometimes you won’t be able to come up with a pre-phrase. Eventually, you’ll just have to hit the answer choices and finish the question. That’s fine in the moment. But effectively reviewing these harder questions is one of the best ways to improve your overall Weaken performance.

These questions are frequent enough that it’s worth pausing on each one you couldn’t pre-phrase and pinpointing where your analysis broke down. Also, between Weaken, Strengthen, and Assumption questions, you’ll spend a lot of your LSAT prep time working on manipulating the gaps in an argument. It’d be a waste not to make the most of your opportunities to target your specific issues with a quality review. Here’s how I’d recommend making those improvements:

• If you couldn’t find a pre-phrase but you found the gap, got the question right, and felt confident, I’d consider that fine. Some people can get to Weaken answers consistently by identifying the gap alone. Don’t complicate a process that works well.
• Anything else. I’d consider these issues that need fixing, whether you weren’t completely confident, couldn’t find the gap, or (especially) missed the question. Prioritize breaking down these specific weaknesses and adding them to your known argument templates, because you’ll most likely see them (or close variations of them) again.

Over time, more of your misses should move from the second group into the first as you more confidently find the gap in the argument, pre-phrase a weakener to exploit it, and match your pre-phrased exploit to the right answer choice.

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If you like these kinds of breakdowns, you can find more on my blog:

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A while back, I went through every Flaw question I could find and categorized them. It was a fun exercise (especially since many of these close flaws are very arguable), but it largely confirmed that the major flaws I had already told students to focus on were, in fact, the ones that showed up the most.

This time, I wanted to see if that changed for Parallel Flaw.

I had a hunch that Parallel Flaw used much more conditional reasoning than the average Flaw question, but I wanted to actually test that.

Here’s what the distribution looks like. I also added a quick definition for each flaw:

Flaw	Flaw Frequency	Parallel Flaw Frequency	Total
Exclusivity Fallacy: Assuming the options given are the only options, when there could be another possibility.	83	17	100
Necessary vs. Sufficient (general): Treating something that is required as though it guarantees the result, or treating one way of getting a result as though it were required.	70	19	89
Unique/Rare Assumption: Making a specific assumption that connects two ideas in a way that does not cleanly fit one of the recurring flaw patterns.	71	0	71
Quantifier Shift: Changing who or how many people/things a statement applies to, such as moving from “some” to “all,” reversing a “most” relationship, or assuming two groups contain the same members.	29	37	66
Numbers vs. Rates: Comparing raw numbers, percentages, or rates without accounting for the underlying totals or populations.	30	14	44
Ad Hominem: Attacking the person, their motives, or their behavior instead of dealing with whether their argument is actually right.	32	6	38
Hasty Generalization: Drawing a broad conclusion from a sample that is too small, too narrow, or otherwise not representative enough.	31	6	37
Failure to Address the Claim: Responding to something related to the issue without actually answering the point being argued.	33	2	35
Mistaken Reversal: Given A → B, concluding B → A.	21	14	35
Correlation for Causation: Seeing that two things occur together and assuming that one must be causing the other.	27	5	32
Whole-to-Part: Assuming that because something is true of a group or whole, it must also be true of each individual member or part.	17	10	27
Argument from Ignorance: Treating a lack of evidence for something as proof that it is false, or a lack of evidence against it as proof that it is true.	18	5	23
Misinterpreting Evidence: Treating the evidence as though it establishes something that it does not actually establish.	17	5	22
One-Sided Net Effect: Looking at only some of the costs or benefits and using that to make an overall judgment.	19	3	22
Equivocation: Using the same key word or idea in two different senses while treating the meaning as though it stayed the same.	19	0	19
Knowledge vs. Reality: Confusing what someone believes, knows, observes, or can prove with what is actually true.	12	7	19
Part-to-Whole: Assuming that because the individual parts have a property, the whole must have that property too.	11	8	19
Unrepresentative Methodology: Using a sample, survey, experiment, or method that does not properly represent what the argument is trying to draw a conclusion about.	19	0	19
Reversed Causality: Getting the direction of the causal relationship backward.	14	3	17
Flawed Analogy: Treating two things as comparable without establishing that they are similar in the way that actually matters.	15	1	16
Incomplete Cause: Identifying one factor that may contribute to an outcome and treating it as though it fully explains the outcome.	12	3	15
Mistaken Negation: Given A → B, concluding ~A → ~B.	5	9	14
Rejecting Conclusion / Bad Argument: Showing that an argument for a conclusion is bad and then assuming that means the conclusion itself must be false.	14	0	14
Temporal Flaw: Assuming that something true at one point in time will also be true at another without showing that the relevant conditions stayed the same.	12	2	14
Circular Reasoning: Using the conclusion itself, or basically the same claim in different words, as support for the conclusion.	11	1	12
Flaw of Degree: Ignoring differences in degree, such as treating “helps” as “completely solves,” “slows” as “stops,” or “enough” as “the most.”	11	0	11
Flawed Experiment: Using an experiment or study that does not actually isolate or measure what would need to be shown for the conclusion.	11	0	11
Ignoring a Common Cause: Assuming A causes B when a third factor could be causing both A and B.	10	0	10
Appeal to Inappropriate Authority: Relying on someone’s expertise or status when their expertise does not actually apply to the issue.	5	4	9
Confusing Average with Distribution: Treating an average as though it tells you how the individual values are actually spread out.	4	5	9
Confusing Intent with Effect: Treating what someone intended as proof of what actually happened, or what happened as proof of what they intended.	9	0	9
Exaggerating Conclusion: Drawing a conclusion that is stronger, broader, or more certain than the evidence supports.	6	1	7
Overlooking Contributing Factors: Focusing on one factor while ignoring other things that could also materially affect the result.	3	4	7
Perfect Solution Fallacy: Rejecting something that would help because it would not completely solve the problem.	6	1	7

Minor Flaws

• Ignoring the Counterfactual (5): Evaluating what happened after an action without considering what would have happened if the action had not occurred.
• Internal Contradiction (5): Relying on claims that cannot all be true together in the way the argument needs them to be.
• Confusing Relative and Absolute Values (4): Treating a change in ranking, percentage, or relative position as though it tells you what happened in absolute terms.
• Hasty Generalization - Overextrapolation (4): Taking a trend that holds over the observed range and assuming it will keep going beyond that range.
• Straw Man (4): Changing or weakening someone’s actual argument and then attacking that easier version instead.
• Error of Aggregation (3): Combining group-level information in a way that ignores differences, overlap, or composition within the groups.
• Genetic Fallacy (3): Judging whether something is right or wrong based on where it came from rather than the evidence for it now.
• Math Flaw / Unstated Assumption (3): Relying on a numerical relationship that only works if some unstated mathematical assumption is true.
• Resolving Contradiction Arbitrarily (3): Seeing two claims that conflict and simply deciding which one is wrong without giving a reason to choose between them.
• Appeal to Popular Opinion (2): Treating the fact that many people believe something as evidence that it is true.
• Biased Evidence (2): Relying on evidence that is systematically more likely to support one side of the issue.
• Confusing Discovery with Occurrence (2): Treating when something was discovered or recorded as though that were when it first happened or began to exist.
• Appeal to Consequences (1): Treating the good or bad consequences of believing something as evidence that the belief itself is true or false.
• Appeal to Tradition (1): Treating the fact that something has been done for a long time as evidence that it is right or should continue.
• Confusing Consistency with Accuracy (1): Assuming that getting the same answer repeatedly means the answer must be correct.
• Inferring Necessity from Correlation (1): Seeing two things repeatedly occur together and assuming one of them must be present for the other to occur.
• Misapplication of a Principle (1): Taking a general rule and applying it to a situation that does not actually meet the rule’s conditions.

A couple things stood out once I added the Parallel Flaw questions.

First, the flaw distribution is very different. The strict structural flaws take up a much larger share of Parallel Flaw.

Numerical fallacies like Quantifier Shift and Numbers vs. Rates make up about 8% of regular Flaw questions versus 27% of Parallel Flaws.

Conditional flaws like Necessary vs. Sufficient and Most --> Most Error make up about 13% of regular Flaw versus 22% of Parallel Flaws.

Put those groups together, and you see that math and conditionals account for about 21% of regular Flaw questions versus 48% of Parallel Flaw questions.

I expected Parallel Flaw to be more structural, but I did not expect the difference to be that large, especially with quantifiers.

Second, the arguments themselves are often more structurally involved. Even when the flaw isn't in the conditionality, you often get longer conditional setups where it really helps to break the argument into individual premises and ask how each one contributes to the conclusion.

There were also quite a few where the argument had multiple issues rather than one clean mistake, which I find to be less common in regular Flaw questions.

That just reinforces my general advice for Flaw questions: memorize the common flaws, but don't rely on memorization alone. Work on your skills for general argument analysis, and make sure you keep up your skills for conditionals and math on the LSAT.

I’ve written more about both here:

• Conditional Logic and Quantifiers
• LSAT Math Concepts Checklist

BTW finally done with some website stuff, so I’m focusing on posting more consistently. If you like these kinds of breakdowns, you can find more on my blog:

https://germainetutoring.com/blog

And if there’s a topic you’d like me to break down next, feel free to let me know below.

I will admit that I used to be a split-approach hater. On comparative Reading Comprehension, the standard single-pass approach is simple: read Passage A, read Passage B, and then answer the questions.

With the split approach, you read Passage A, answer whatever questions you can from Passage A alone, and narrow down choices on questions that require both passages. Then you read Passage B and finish the rest.

I still think the single-pass method is more effective for most students. However, over the years, I’ve found that many LSAT approaches I first dismissed really just have tradeoffs that may or may not fit a particular student. So let’s look at the strengths of each approach and who might benefit from switching.

The Three Jobs of Comparative Reading

Choosing the better approach mostly comes down to identifying which part of comparative reading gives you trouble.

Comparative questions generally ask you to do one of three things: identify the details of a passage, understand each passage as a whole, or synthesize the relationship between the two passages. I refer to these as detail, passage, and synthesis.

Each approach can make at least one of these jobs easier.

1. Detail

At the detail level, you are keeping track of the individual things each passage says: claims, supporting facts, examples, qualifications, distinctions, and so on.

This is where I think the split approach has its clearest advantage.

If you read Passage A and immediately answer the questions that depend only on Passage A, you get to work with that passage while it is still the only thing in your head. That can help if you tend to choose answers without a clear citation in the text.

It can also help if you mix the passages together. Comparative passages often discuss similar topics, use similar terminology, or present viewpoints that differ only slightly. Once both passages are in your head, it can become easy to remember the right idea but attach it to the wrong author.

The split approach gives you a chance to lock down Passage A before adding Passage B.

So, at the detail level, I would give the edge to the split approach.

Grades: Single Pass: B- | Split Approach: A

2. Passage

The next job is understanding how those details work together. What is the main idea of Passage A? What is its purpose? What position is the author taking? Then ask the same questions about Passage B.

Here, I think the two approaches are much closer.

The split approach helps because you are giving each passage your full attention. But the single-pass approach has an advantage of its own: sometimes you understand a passage more clearly once you see what it has been paired with.

For instance, suppose I finish both passages and mentally sort them into “pro-theory” and “opposed-to-theory.” That comparison has already clarified each author’s position. The same can happen with purpose. Maybe Passage A introduces a theory while Passage B evaluates it. Seeing the relationship helps clarify what each passage is doing.

So I do not see a clear winner here. Both approaches can work well at the passage level.

Grades: Single Pass: A- | Split Approach: A-

3. Synthesis

Synthesis is where I think the single-pass approach has the biggest advantage. You are asking how the two passages fit together, and reading them one after another tends to make that easier.

Even without consciously trying to synthesize them, most readers naturally start looking for the connection. You know the passages were deliberately paired, so while reading Passage B, you are already comparing it to Passage A. The goal is to make that instinct more explicit.

Once you have read both passages, you should be able to answer one question:

Why are these two passages appearing together?

My usual way of answering that is with a simple synthesis statement:

Passage A and Passage B are similar in that they both do X, but they differ in that they do Y.

To get there, I usually think about three things:

Topic: What are both passages talking about? Where does their subject matter overlap?

Polarity: Where do the authors stand? Do they agree, disagree, or have more qualified positions?

Approach: What is each passage doing with the topic? Are both making arguments? Is one explaining while the other evaluates? Is one descriptive while the other takes a position?

You do not need a complicated answer. You just want a clear picture of the relationship. Maybe Passage A defends a theory while Passage B criticizes it. Maybe both authors agree that a problem exists but disagree about its cause. Maybe Passage A describes a historical development while Passage B argues that scholars have misunderstood it.

Once you have that relationship clear, many comparative questions become easier because you already have a framework for thinking about the passages together.

This is where the split approach can create a problem. You read Passage A, stop to answer questions, and then return to Passage B. That interruption can make the passages feel more separate. You can understand both individually without ever fully reconnecting them.

If you use the split approach, build that synthesis step back in deliberately. After Passage B, pause and ask:

Why were these passages put together? What connects them, and what important differences should I recognize?

If you can answer that, you have recovered much of what the single-pass approach gives you naturally.

Grades: Single Pass: A+ | Split Approach: B-

So Which Approach Should You Actually Use?

Choose based on where your mistakes are coming from.

If you keep track of details well but struggle to connect the passages, I would probably use the single-pass approach. Reading the passages back to back gives you more practice with synthesis.

If you prefer the split approach but synthesis is a problem, you do not necessarily need to abandon it. Just make the synthesis step explicit after Passage B.

If your bigger problem is keeping the details of the passages straight while their overall relationship comes naturally, the split approach may be worth trying.

And if you are not sure, try both. Do a few comparative sets each way and pay attention to the mistakes. Are you confusing which author said what? Missing citations? Understanding each passage individually but failing to see why they were paired?

The method that helps you fix that problem is probably the better method for you.

TL;DR:

Mixing up details? → Try split.
Missing the relationship between passages? → Use single pass.
Doing both well? → Stick with whichever is faster and more consistent.

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In my opinion, reviewing your LSAT mistakes is perhaps the most important part of your exam preparation. Many of the most important and frustrating parts of exam prep (namely, progress that is slowing, plateauing, or even apparently reversing) can be diagnosed and solved by developing a greater understanding of exactly where your mistakes are coming from.

However, once you have your list of mistakes in hand, the harder question is: Which of those rules should actually guide your next week of practice?

A thorough practice test review can leave you with ten, fifteen, or even twenty issue areas to address. You can't possibly work on all of them at once. So what do you do?

This is where LSAT triage comes into play.

Triage: Deciding What Comes First

The Cambridge Dictionary defines triage as “the process of examining problems in order to decide which ones are the most serious and must be dealt with first.”

This is the next task after completing a thorough LSAT review. Once you have identified a set of valid issues, you need a principle for deciding which ones come first.

I like to evaluate each issue according to two factors: importance and ease.

Importance is how much a certain issue affects your score. Two things go into this:

1. How often does the LSAT test this specific skill?
2. How much do other skills depend on you being able to apply this one first?

A frequently tested, foundational skill is more important than a skill that appears rarely and functions entirely on its own.

Ease is the amount of difficulty involved in understanding, practicing, and reliably applying a new skill.

Some problems need only a clear rule and a small amount of passive application. Others involve foundational misunderstandings that require a longer period of learning and focused practice to get solid.

It can be somewhat difficult to assess these two factors without a complete understanding of how frequently each issue occurs and which skills are connected to it. The following questions can serve as useful indicators:

• When you review the rule you built for this particular issue, does it seem as though that rule alone will be enough to solve the entire problem?
• When reviewing your past performance, how often has this particular issue contributed to one of your misses?

These questions can help you approximate the ease and importance of addressing that particular issue.

Sorting Your LSAT Issues

With the two axes defined, take the items from your wrong-answer journal and sort each one according to its level of importance and how easy or difficult it will be to address.

	Harder to address	Easier to address
More important	Begin Working on These Skills: These skills matter, but getting consistent will take time and repeated practice. Begin early enough that you have time to develop that consistency.	Fix These First: These skills are important enough to prioritize and straightforward enough to focus on improving NOW.
Less important	Keep These on the Back Burner: Make note of them, but do not let them take time away from more valuable topics.	Fit These In When You Can: These may not affect your score as often, but they're relatively easy to clean up. Work on them when you have extra time.

More Important and Easier: Focus Here First

This is the highest-return area. These skills appear repeatedly and are manageable enough to improve without a long development period.

Examples include:

• Identifying the parts of an argument
• Recognizing argument indicators
• Identifying question types
• Developing a go-to procedure for each question type
• Applying basic conditional diagramming

Because these skills appear repeatedly and support other parts of the exam, they should receive immediate attention if they are absent from your process or if you do not yet feel confident in your ability to apply them.

More Important and Harder: Build Deliberately

These are foundational skills with broad benefits, but they require time to understand and apply consistently. Begin early enough to let these skills develop before test day.

Necessary Assumption is a useful example. Improving here may require learning how to:

• Identify where the support falls short of proving the conclusion
• Distinguish what the argument requires from what merely strengthens it
• Use negation to determine whether an answer choice is required for the argument to work

The work is slower, but Necessary Assumption is a very frequent question type, and the benefits can extend across the LSAT to other questions involving argument structure, flaws, implication, and formal logic. Begin early and allow these skills to develop over time, if you can.

Less Important and Easier: Clean Up in the Gaps

These may be less common question types, but they can still give you a fair amount of bang for your buck.

A little dedicated work to develop a reliable method for Disagree/Agree questions, for example, can go farther than you'd expect. The same idea applies to other less common types where one clear rule can tidy things up fast.

Give these issues smaller practice blocks. They're nice add-ons, while your main practice time stays focused on the big priorities.

Less Important and Harder: Park for Later

These issues can be worth understanding, but they usually ask for more time than they give back right away.

A rare max-difficulty Paradox question or a tricky RC analogy might teach you something. The question is: Does it need to be a priority this week?

Usually, it makes sense to note the lesson, keep it handy, and circle back once the broader skills feel consistent.

Once the highest-return skills feel consistent, you have two good options: start building one bigger foundational skill or pick up a few smaller wins. The harder, narrower issues should still stay parked until later.

How to Use the Matrix This Week

Give your next practice a clear purpose by choosing the improvements you want to practice before you begin.

1. Review your latest wrong-answer journal. Identify the primary issues from your most recent work.
2. Select three priorities. Choose three issues that show up often, could produce meaningful results, and can be translated into specific actions. Three keeps things focused and doable.
3. Carry those rules into your next practice. Keep using what you know, and deliberately look for moments to apply the three rules you chose.

For example, your three Reading Comprehension rules might be:

RC Main Idea Questions: The Two-Step Process

For any main idea question where you do not successfully prephrase the correct answer, fall back on a two-step process. First, remove any answer choice that the passage does not support or that contains a factual inaccuracy you can locate. Then, from the remaining choices, pick the most comprehensive one. That gives you a reliable path to the right answer: accuracy first, coverage second.

Reading Comprehension Mapping

Every one to two paragraphs, pause for ten seconds to see if you can explain the paragraph's main idea and its role, en route to building an overall map of how the passage develops its core concepts and main idea.

Passage or Paragraph Purpose

For passage or paragraph purpose questions, predict the action the author takes in the passage (criticize, support, explain, etc.), then choose the option that matches that action. If prediction feels difficult, work on expanding your vocabulary for this question type.

The Sticky-Note Method

Take the topics or rules from your wrong-answer journal and write them on a sheet of paper with the matrix drawn out. Sort each issue into the quadrant where it fits.

Choose the three issues that offer the best combination of importance and ease of improvement, put them on a sticky note, and bring that note into your next practice set or test.

TL;DR

Review shows you everything you could fix. Triage picks the few worth fixing next.

1. Get out your wrong-answer journal.
2. Sort the issues by importance and ease.
3. Pick three from the high-importance and high-ease section.
4. Use those in your next practice set or test.
5. Reap the benefits of a more thoughtful and organized practice approach.

For more LSAT tips, strategy guides, and study resources, visit the GermaineTutoring Blog.

The two questions I get most often from high-scoring students looking to hit that 175+ range consistently is

• (1) "How do you finally get rid of those same mistakes that keep coming back?" AND
• (2) "What do you do when every time you fix one mistake, it just results in another one showing up?"

Thankfully, those questions have a common answer. Here is the study process I used to get from -5 to -0 and the one that several of my students have used to land 99th percentile scores the last 5 years.

WARNING: This is not the fastest or most efficient way to improve if you're crunched for time or not aiming for a -0. This process is intensive, demanding, and can be a grind. But it is also the most complete method I've found for those who are aiming for the absolute top tier of scores and are willing to spend time and energy to fundamentally understand their approach to the test. That's the trade off.

If you’re ready for that, here’s the breakdown:

The Core Cycle:

This is the repeatable loop you'll follow.

Step 1: Take a Full-Length Timed Practice Test

• If at all possible, pick a day (or several hours) and dedicate it to the test. I recommend giving yourself enough time to at least start the blind review process later in the day.
• Save your timed answers but do not look at the correct answers.
• Take a real break afterward to reset your brain (like 30 minutes).

Step 2: The COMPLETE Blind Review

This will take longer than the test itself so prepare to break it up. For every single question (you haven't checked the answers yet), you need to write out or talk through (and transcribe) your entire thought process:

• What is the question stem actually asking?
• What is the core information/argument in the stimulus?
• What is the main point/structure of the passage?
• What am I looking for in an answer?
• Why is the correct answer 100% correct?
• Why is every single incorrect answer 100% incorrect?

If you are less than 99% sure about the approach to or answer of a question, set a minimum 10-minute timer for it and dig in.

• If you're stuck on the Stimulus/Passage: Break it down sentence by sentence. Translate each statement into the simplest possible terms. Your goal should be to understand it so well you could explain it to a third grader. If you can't, that's your #1 priority. Consider diagramming if you’re still stuck (even informal diagramming for a passage/non-conditional stimulus).
• If you're stuck between Answer Choices:
  1. Re-confirm the Stem: Are you sure you're not misreading it? Is there an "EXCEPT" you missed? Are you referring to the right speaker? Most Strongly Supports or Most Strongly Supported? Sufficient or Necessary Assumption?
  2. Idealize: What would a perfect answer look like before you read the choices?
  3. Direct Comparison: For two choices (A vs. C), literally cross out the parts that are the same. Break down the remaining differences. Which difference is more relevant to the question being asked?
• Star your breakthroughs! Any question where you have an "aha!" moment is gold. Mark it for later.

Step 3: Audit Against the Answer Key

Now, check your answers. For any question you missed (initially or in blind review), were less than 100% confident on, or just feel you could have done faster, you need to:

1. Find an external explanation (7Sage, LSAT Hacks, r//LSAT, a tutor, etc.).
2. Pinpoint exactly where your thought process went wrong compared to the optimal one.
3. Explain your specific error. Don't just say "I messed up the contrapositive." Be more specific.
   • Example of a specific error: "The logic was 'If A, then B and C; if C, then D.' The correct contrapositive was 'not D -> not C -> not A'. I misinterpreted this and thought that 'not D' also allowed me to conclude 'not B', which it doesn’t." (PT-106-S-1-Q-20)

Step 4: Rule Creation (The Most Important Step!!)

This is how you prevent yourself from making the same mistake twice. Convert your errors and breakthroughs into actionable rules.

A bad rule is

• Vague: "Apply contrapositives better." (When???/How???)
• Unactionable: "Be careful when reading the stimulus." (What behavior does that communicate??? Who's being careless on purpose???)

A good rule is specific and actionable, and ideally includes an example:

• Rule: "In a conditional chain like 'A -> B+C' and 'C -> D', the contrapositive does not allow you to negate a standalone element like B just because the chain is broken."
• Concrete Example: "If you are a New Yorker (A), you are a city dweller (B) AND on the East Coast (C). If you're on the East Coast (C), you're in North America (D). If we know John lives in Paris, we know he's not in North America (not D), so he's not on the East Coast (not C), and not a New Yorker (not A). But we CANNOT say he isn't a city dweller (B). He is."

Step 5: Triage and Implement Your Rules

You can't keep 40 rules in your head. Pick 3-5 to focus on for your next PT. Prioritize them based on how often the issue comes up or how easy it is to fix.

How to Avoid Burnout (Super Important!)

Doing this full, intensive review for every single PT can be brutal and do more harm than good if it kills the quality of your analysis over time. I usually recommend a three-test cycle:

• Test 1: Do the full, every-question deep-dive blind review described above.
• Tests 2 & 3: Do a partial blind review. Only do the deep dive on questions you're less than 90% sure on. Those will get you the most bang for your buck in terms of identifying errors to fix.
• When to recalibrate: If you find you're consistently missing questions on your "partial" review days that you thought you were 90% confident about, you may need to raise your internal standard for what that confidence level feels like to ensure you're not missing too many questions you should've Blind Reviewed.

And remember: in this score range, it's is a marathon, not a sprint. Books and courses only get so specific and when you run out of content, you might see your score growth slow down. That's okay. The goal is to now build reliable, repeatable rules on top of that foundational skillset.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments. Good luck with the grind!

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For more LSAT tips and study resources, visit my blog: https://germainetutoring.com/blog

On the LSAT, a principle is a broad rule that connects a specific set of facts to a broader judgment. That judgment might be about what someone should do, what is allowed, what is required, what is reasonable, or what follows from a given situation.

Further, principle is reusable (this means it can apply to multiple/different situations as long as its conditions are met).

The easiest way to read a principle is as a rule with two parts:

• Trigger: the facts that activate the rule
• Outcome: what follows once the rule is activated

For example:

EPA Principle:
If a company pollutes, it must pay a fine.

That rule has two parts:

• Trigger: A company pollutes.
• Outcome: The company must pay a fine.

If Company A polluted, the trigger has been met. The fine follows.

If Company B did not pollute, this rule does not apply. That does NOT prove Company B cannot be fined for some other reason. It only means this particular principle does not require a fine. 

That distinction matters. Principle questions often reward students who read the rule precisely and apply it exactly, without falling prey to close but incorrect interpretations.

Principle-Strengthen

This is the most common principle question type.

The stimulus gives you an argument, usually with a gap between the evidence and the conclusion. The correct answer gives you the broader rule that helps bridge that gap.

These arguments often move from a fact to a judgment:

• “This happened, so the plan should be rejected.”
• “This person did that, so they are responsible.”
• “This policy has this effect, so it should not be allowed.”

The missing piece is the rule that explains why the fact is enough to support the judgment.

Common Question Stems

• “Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning above?”
• “Which one of the following principles most justifies the argument?”
• “The reasoning above most closely conforms to which one of the following principles?”
• “Which one of the following principles underlies the argument?”

Example

Argument:
The city should not build the new highway because it will damage local wetlands.

Gap:
Why is damaging wetlands enough reason to stop the project?

Correct Principle:
Any project that causes significant environmental damage should be rejected.

The answer works because it turns the premise into a rule that supports the conclusion.

Principle-Apply

In Principle-Apply questions, the stimulus gives you the rule first. Your job is to find the answer choice that correctly applies that rule to a new case.

The correct answer must do both parts of the rule correctly:

1. It must include the facts that activate the principle.
2. It must reach the outcome the principle requires.

If the trigger is missing, the answer does not apply the rule.
If the outcome does not match, the answer misuses the rule.

Common Question Stems

• “Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle above?”
• “Which one of the following is an application of the principle?”
• “The judgment in which one of the following cases most closely conforms to the principle stated above?”

Example

Principle:
Employees are eligible for a bonus if they have worked for at least two years and met their quota.

Correct Answer:
Maria has worked for three years and met her quota, so she is eligible for the bonus.

This answer works because Maria satisfies both required conditions, and the conclusion matches the rule’s outcome.

Principle-Generalize

Principle-Generalize questions start with a specific situation, story, or example. Your job is to extract the broader rule illustrated by that situation.

You are asking: what general pattern does this example show?

The correct answer should be broad enough to cover the stimulus, but not so broad that it says more than the example supports.

Common Question Stems

• “Which one of the following principles is best illustrated by the situation above?”
• “The situation described above best exemplifies which one of the following propositions?”
• “Which one of the following most closely conforms to the proposition illustrated above?”

Example

Scenario:
Male Martians with bright spots attract mates, which helps reproduction, but those same bright spots also attract predators, which hurts survival.

Correct Principle:
A trait that is beneficial in one context can be harmful in another.

The answer works because it captures the trade-off shown by the example without introducing any new concepts.

Principle-Parallel

Principle-Parallel questions ask you to identify the rule underneath one argument and then find another argument that follows the same rule.

The topic can change completely. What matters is the underlying reasoning.

A good way to handle these is to strip the stimulus down to a more abstract principle first (like a Principle-Generalize). Then, once you know the rule, look for the answer that applies it correctly (like a Principle-Apply).

Common Question Stems

• “Which one of the following illustrates the principle illustrated by the argument above?”
• “Which one of the following is most similar to the principle underlying the argument?”
• “The reasoning above most closely conforms to which one of the following principles?”

Example

Stimulus:
Treating a fever with ice packs is a bad solution because it lowers the patient’s temperature but does not cure the infection.

Underlying Principle:
A solution is inadequate if it addresses only the symptom while leaving the underlying cause untouched.

Correct Answer:
Painting over a water stain on the ceiling is a bad solution because it hides the mark but does not fix the leaking roof.

The topics are different, but the structure is the same: both criticize a superficial/surface-level fix for failing to address the real cause.

Principle-Must Be False / Principle-Violation

These questions ask you to find a conflict.

Sometimes the stimulus gives you a principle, and the correct answer describes a situation that violates it. Other times, the stimulus gives you an action or argument, and the correct answer states a principle that the action or argument conflicts with.

Either way, you are looking for a direct mismatch between the rule and the case.

Common Question Stems

• “Which one of the following principles is violated by the situation above?”
• “Which one of the following conflicts with the principle above?”

Example

Stimulus Action:
The government prohibited a company from testing its products solely because the government considered the test unnecessary.

Conflicting Principle:
Governments should not prohibit product testing solely on the grounds that the test is unnecessary.

The principle conflicts with the action because the government did exactly what the principle says it should not do.

Extra Note:

Even experienced students can miss principle questions that subtly vary the trigger or outcome wording.

• If the rule says someone is eligible, do not treat that as the same as saying they must receive the benefit.
• If the rule says something may be done, do not treat that as the same as saying it must be done.
• If the rule says something is bad, do not automatically treat that as the same as saying it is illegal.

Small wording changes matter.

Overall Takeaway

Principle questions become much more manageable when you start reading them as specific rules.

For every principle, identify:

1. Trigger: What activates the rule?
2. Outcome: What follows once the rule is activated?

Then make sure your answer responds to both parts.

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For more LSAT tips and study resources, visit my blog: https://germainetutoring.com/blog/

If you're working to improve on the LSAT but can't seem to reliably spot and/or eliminate old mistakes, there's something wrong with your analytical process.

Across hundreds of students, I've found that 99% of improvement problems sort into three buckets: their practice and review cycle is either too infrequent, too imprecise, or insufficiently actionable.

The first is a relatively simple fix. Do more problems and review any that aren't an absolute cakewalk. Even a question you get right can be a cause for concern if it negatively affects your timing or if you convince yourself that you truly understand a problem you don't, merely because you got it correct. This is how students end up having to unlearn an entire process before they can improve. To avoid those unforced errors, I’d recommend building proper review into your routine ASAP.

Next, you have to make sure your review process is very specific in identifying causes for concern. LSAT review that is too general is almost worse than not reviewing at all. At least with the latter, you know there are errors in your process that have not yet been discovered. 

With poorly formatted, overly general review, you might convince yourself that you understand your errors:

>"Oh, I just misread the stimulus." 
"I messed up the conditional logic." 
"Yeah, I just sped through the stimulus."

I do this alot and there's very little even I can do with those errors. The solution to “misreading” is just “reading better,” but unless you’ve been saving your best reading skills for test day, that’s not very helpful.

You know what is helpful?

>“I failed to recognize that the first sentence was introducing the position of the author's opponents and that when the author stated ‘this is doubtful,’ they weren’t critiquing their own position but undermining their opponents.”

From that, you can actually derive actionable rules like:

>“Passages that start by naming a group, ascribing a view to them, and then stating a rejection are generally following the Opposition-Author-Evidence pattern. The author's claim will be sandwiched between the opposed view and the justification.”

Those are the kinds of rules that can actually enable you to make better decisions instead of merely highlighting the general category of issue you're facing. You can often pull 3-5 of these rules out of every question you miss, but I’m only asking you to do one. So you might as well make that one a good one.

But how do you actually go about identifying these sorts of errors and finding rules to fix them?

How to Review Questions Effectively

Here is my 6-step D.E.C.I.D.E Method for analyzing LSAT questions:

Step 1: Deconstruct the Question

Break down the question stem to identify the core task and what it demands. It’s hard to know how to proceed if you don’t know what your task is. If you have one iota of hesitation in determining the task, make finding a definition and general method for that question stem your number one priority.

Step 2: Examine the Stimulus/Passage

Pull the specific sentences, facts, or ideas from the stimulus that directly relate to the task. Your goal is to ensure you understand the relevant information to make an informed choice: whether that's general concepts for an Inference question or the exact meaning of a particular phrase for a "Meaning in Context" question.

Step 3: Construct a Prediction

Based on the evidence, formulate what a correct answer might say or the general class to which it might belong. This step depends highly on the question type. You should always predict the answer on Main Conclusion questions, but on Parallel Reasoning questions you might only decide on a logical structure to look for. 

Regardless, you should know what and how much to pre-phrase for each question type. If you don’t, make that a priority to learn.

Step 4: Identify the Correct Choice

Using your predicted answer, the identified task, and the options available, locate and justify the correct answer. The more concrete, the better. You want a rationale that is as close to unimpeachable as possible.

• Example: (B) directly matches our my-phrase. It provides the mechanism that explains the seeming paradox between the increase in income and the lack of change in profit. The company’s costs have increased temporarily as a result of hiring outside help to support the new clients, offsetting the higher income.

Step 5: Discard the Incorrect Choices

Provide an explanation for why each incorrect answer fails to meet your Step 3 and Step 1 requirements. State clearly which criteria it fails and, if needed, why the correct answer is better.

• Example: (D) explains how the company plans to increase profit in the future, but it doesn't explain the current paradox in profitability and income as it should.

Step 6: Edit Your Process

Still with me? Okay, great!

Now the fun part: figuring out how to fix the problem with your original approach such that your first swing at a question looks more like the home run you just completed.

The most important parts of this step are rule reliability and actionability. A rule that doesn’t actually tell you what to do in a confusing situation is basically useless. The further it is from the abstract and the closer it is to a command a middle-schooler could complete, the better.

• Bad: Comprehensiveness is important for Reading Comprehension questions.
• Good: On a Reading Comprehension Main Idea question: First, eliminate any answer that includes information not found in the passage. Then, among the remaining factually accurate choices, choose the one that covers the broadest scope. Try to visualize which choice touches more of the key sections and arguments in the text, and then pick it.

See what I mean?

• Bad: On the questions that ask about meaning, don’t get confused by the wrong answers.
  • If it was possible to just not “get confused,” you wouldn’t be reading this, right? You also have no good way to verify whether you’re being confused by the incorrect answers during the test.
• Good: For "Meaning in Context" questions, defeat compelling but incorrect answer choices by pre-phrasing the word's specific function based on the nearby information in the passage. Decide on a meaning before getting swayed by answer choices.
  • Coming up with the answer ahead of time is a skill that you can practice clearly and unambiguously. Did I come up with one? YES/NO. Was it correct? YES/NO. If you got any NOs, review and improve using the steps above.

Hopefully, this helps you revamp your prep to be a little more useful in the future. The LSAT is fundamentally about finding problems and stamping them out. So doing that in a more organized way will help you a great deal more than freestyling!

For more LSAT topics, check out my blog