The LSAT Simplified: A Hey Future Lawyer Podcast

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The LSAT is changing again. Does your study plan need to change with it?

Ben Parker breaks down the August 2027 format changes: three longer sections, a fixed section order, and experimental questions embedded throughout the test. He explains why he thinks the new format may feel easier—and why worrying about which questions count can distract you from the work that actually improves your performance.

Ben also tackles concerns about longer Reading Comprehension sections, argues that stronger underlying skills matter more than...

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Are you learning to understand LSAT arguments—or just getting better at naming question types?

Ben Parker and returning guest Madeline work through an original Logical Reasoning question about a declining frog population. Fungus might explain it. Pollution might explain it. But why couldn’t both contribute? Their walkthrough shows how understanding the argument helps you predict the flaw, dismiss irrelevant answers, and distinguish a choice that almost fits from one that actually answers the question. Ben and Madeline explain why they think question-type obsession and formal-logic shor...

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Is starting law school next fall worth applying before your LSAT score is ready?

Ben Parker walks through three fictional applicants: someone just starting prep, someone waiting on a first official score, and someone chasing a few more points. He explains when he would consider applying for fall 2027 and when he would recommend waiting another cycle. The decision goes beyond getting an acceptance: Ben weighs scholarship opportunities, school options, and career goals against the desire to get started now. He also challenges popular Reddit advice through a...

Ben just finished one of the largest projects in Hey Future Lawyer history: recording an explanation for every released LSAT question from PrepTest 101 through PrepTest 159, plus LSAC's released drill sets.

That's roughly 6,000 LSAT questions and an estimated 400 hours of focused recording.

After doing that much LSAT, a few things become very clear.

In this episode, Ben breaks down the 10 biggest lessons he learned from explaining thousands of Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions, including why the LSAT is fundamentally one skill tested in different ways, why collecting more techniques often makes students worse...

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Most LSAT students think they are studying harder than they actually are.

Ben breaks down new Hey Future Lawyer study data showing that only about 6% of students were meeting a set of baseline study standards, including consistent practice, timed sections, review, and occasional full practice tests. The students who were meeting those standards were also producing massive score improvement.

Ben explains why drilling alone is not enough, why LSAT prep built around question types and gimmicks misses the core skill being tested, and why the...

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Should you submit your law school applications now—or wait for a potentially higher LSAT score? Ben Parker and returning guest Madeline unpack what “apply early” actually means, including why waiting twelve days for a pending score is a different decision from pushing your application into January.

Madeline, an LSAT tutor and current 2L, joins Ben for a walkthrough of a homemade Must Be True question. They explain how to read critically, distinguish what could be true from what must be true, and avoid importing assumptions into the fa...

A 3.6 GPA. A 156 LSAT. An Am Law 100 paralegal job, strong recommendations, and a compelling personal story.

Can the rest of the application make up for the numbers?

Ben’s answer: fix the LSAT.

This week, Ben explains why applicants get into trouble when they convince themselves they are the exception, why giving yourself more time can completely change your law school options, and why multiple LSAT attempts give you more chances to hit the top of your scoring range.

He also breaks down why prediction is one of the most important LS...

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Compare law school outcomes

Are your LSAT study habits matching the score you want?

Ben Parker argues that consistent practice and careful review matter more than last-minute cramming or memorizing question-type tricks. Using a Logical Reasoning conclusion question, he explains why understanding what an argument actually says should come before applying a framework. He also discusses the difference between feeling busy and doing the work, why practice tests measure progress more than they create it, and why readiness should drive your test date.

...

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Is law school worth the cost—and which legal career would make that investment make sense?

Ben Parker opens this special episode of The LSAT Simplified with two factual corrections, then features two conversations with Autumn Lockett from Winning Law School Admissions.

Ben and Autumn first map the major paths available to law graduates: BigLaw, public interest, government, judicial clerkships, midsize and small firms, and JD-advantage roles. Th...

Prepare for the LSAT with Hey Future Lawyer: https://heyfuturelawyer.com/start

Compare law school outcomes: https://heyfuturelawyer.com/outcomes

Does applying early to law school really improve your admissions and scholarship outcomes?

Ben Parker breaks down the mechanics of rolling admissions and explains why timing is best understood as decay. Schools begin the cycle with all of their available seats and scholarship money, then gradually commit those resources while learning more about the applicant pool. That gives early applicants a structural advantage, but it does not make timing more important than submitting...

We launched a new podcast: Winning Law School Admissions.

Ben is joined by Autumn Lockett of GradMissions, a former admissions officer, for a complete walkthrough of the law school admissions process from two very different perspectives.

We cover how to get into law school, but also how to make sure you actually win the process: choosing the right schools, building a strong application, maximizing scholarships, negotiating offers, understanding career outcomes, and making a smart decision about where to matriculate.

The first episodes are out now, with a full series coming throughout the admissions...

Law school LSAT medians are rising again. UVA held steady, but Florida, Florida State, and UNC show just how competitive admissions have become. Ben explains why applicants should no longer treat 175 as an automatic stopping point.

Plus, why UNC Law’s ranking outruns its employment outcomes, why Wake Forest may offer better value, LSAC’s dual enrollment reversal, and a brutally honest answer for a 164 scorer chasing a top five law school.

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A new financial analysis says nearly 7 in 10 ABA law schools face serious pressure, and the new graduate loan caps could make the problem much worse. Ben breaks down what this means for tuition, scholarships, struggling schools, and applicants deciding whether a law degree is worth the price.

Then, Ben explains why review drives LSAT improvement, why Cooley is almost never worth attending, and why your law school list should begin with the legal career you want.

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Build...

A 175 is now the 99th percentile LSAT score. In 2014 it was the 99.5th. A 170 fell from the 97.5th percentile to the 95.5th, and a 160 dropped from the 80th to the 71st. Twice as many people are hitting the scores that used to separate you. Ben breaks down the new LSAC percentile tables and what score you now need to sit at median.

Also in this episode: the August LSAT goes fully in person for the first time in six years, LSAC stops counting dual enrollment coursework in your GPA, a full LSAT weaken question worked live, and...

One law school in San Diego charges $99,000 a year and sends 3.4% of its class to Big Law. 40% of students there pay full price. Here is the math on what happens to them, why the GradPLUS changes are about to end schools like it, and why UT Austin is the opposite bet.

→ CalWestern: $65K tuition plus $34K living costs, 3.4% Big Law, graduates owing roughly $350K on a $70K salary → GradPLUS loans are gone and the real fallout has not landed yet. December enrollment numbers will show which schools cannot fill a class. → UT Austin: 172 median LSAT, 40% Big Law, 15% federa...

Georgetown Law charges $87K a year, and 39% of the class pays every penny of it. Ben runs the full breakdown: a 171 median LSAT, a 3.93 GPA, $400K in total debt with interest, and why Georgetown might be the worst T14 in the country on debt to salary. Plus the case for taking a big scholarship at GW or George Mason instead.

Also in this episode: why the LSAT is a reading test and not a logic test, whether LSAC Forums are worth attending, a live personal statement review, and a mailbag question from a 146 diagnostic scorer with three...

Blind review is making you worse at the LSAT. So is drilling by question type. This mailbag episode goes straight at the habits keeping you stuck below 170, why reading comp swinging from minus 1 to minus 6 is completely normal, and why finishing every section is a warning sign instead of a win.

Then the flip side: an international student whose first language is not English scored 176 on the June LSAT after five practice tests and two thousand drilled questions. Real work, real score. Ben breaks down what separates that 176 from the person stuck at 164, where the highest law...

Most law school personal statements don't move the needle, and this episode proves it. Ben pulls three personal statements that went viral on TikTok, the ones captioned "the essay that got me in," and reads them line by line. The verdict on all three is the same: people get admitted despite these essays, not because of them.

You'll hear why opening with "What is the Constitution?" kills your hook, why writing about applying to law school makes you the most generic applicant in the pile, and why one writer buried the single impressive thing about her. Plus...

Scores drop tomorrow. For almost everyone, the right move is the one you don't want to hear: keep going.

Ben breaks down the only score that ends the retake debate (176), why a 170 is just a B+, and why most law students are dead wrong about the salaries and the debt.

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Ben answers listener questions about LSAT preparation, law school admissions, artificial intelligence, and personal statements. He begins by explaining why most students take too many full-length LSAT practice tests and should spend more time completing individual sections, reviewing mistakes, and improving their understanding.

For Logical Reasoning, Ben argues that students should attempt fewer questions and aim for better than 90 percent accuracy on the questions they complete. He explains why practice is for learning, not protecting your score, and why skipping every difficult question can prevent meaningful improvement.

The episode also covers Reading Comprehension strategy, including...

The LSAT isn't complicated — most people just don't want to do the one thing that works. In this episode, Ben Parker breaks down why the LSAT is fundamentally a reading test, one skill a mile deep, and why low scores are almost always self-inflicted rather than the fault of an "unfair" or "subjective" exam.

He opens with a mailbag question from a Canadian listener weighing UK law schools to skip the LSAT entirely. Short version: it signals you were too lazy or unable to cut it, and it follows you when you try to get hired back ho...

LSAC is rolling out a new LSAT testing interface starting with the August 2026 exam. The content of the test isn't changing — only the UI — but the new platform adds friction, like requiring an extra click to eliminate answer choices. Ben argues this is a vendor/contract limitation dressed up as a "technical constraint," not a real one.

The bigger story is the return to in-person Prometric testing, driven by security and cheating concerns. Alongside it, LSAC changed registration to a first-register, first-in-line system for picking test seats and times. The takeaway: register as early as possible to lock...

In this episode, Ben Parker answers a listener’s law school application questions about undergraduate transcript breaks, medical disclosures, GPA positioning, and character and fitness issues. He explains how applicants should think strategically about what they disclose to law schools, especially when a break from school involved anxiety or another medical issue.

Ben also discusses why applicants should avoid oversharing personal medical details in law school applications and why it is usually better to keep explanations brief, factual, and focused on the issue being resolved. He emphasizes that law school admissions is not about revealing every detail of...

In this episode, Ben is joined by Autumn Lockett to react to a law school admissions office’s ranking of nine application components.

We go through the list in order and talk about what seems right, what seems questionable, and what applicants should take away from it. The conversation covers things like GPA, LSAT scores, personal statements, recommendations, resumes, optional essays, interviews, and how much weight these pieces actually carry in the admissions process.

The big takeaway: not every part of the application matters equally, and applicants should be careful about treating official admissions advice as...

Ben kicks off the episode with Madeline, who has just finished her first year of law school (1L). She breaks down why spring semester felt so much harder than fall — not because of the coursework alone, but because job interviews, appellate briefs, oral arguments, and finals all collided at once. (0:00) Despite the chaos, she kept mostly normal hours, backing up Ben's core point that focused, consistent study beats logging endless unfocused time — whether you're in law school or prepping for the LSAT.

The conversation moves into Madeline's summer associate position at a major regional civil firm in Lexi...

In this episode of the Hey Future Lawyer podcast, Ben Parker breaks down what actually makes a law school personal statement work. Instead of treating the essay like a vague exercise in “being authentic,” Ben explains why the real goal is to convince admissions officers that you will be a strong addition to their law school class.

Ben reviews listener-submitted personal statements and points out the most common mistakes applicants make: focusing too much on family background, writing about hardship without connecting it to action, using vague buzzwords, and confusing a diversity statement with a personal statement.

Ben Parker breaks down the newly released 2025 ABA law school employment data and what it says about the current state of legal hiring. The big picture is surprisingly positive: BigLaw placement has grown over the past decade, private law jobs are up, public interest placement has doubled, and law graduate unemployment is meaningfully lower than it was ten years ago.

Ben also digs into the law schools with the biggest BigLaw gains over the last decade, including USC, UCLA, Howard, Florida, Washington and Lee, Boston College, SMU, BYU, Wake Forest, and Texas A&M. He explains why...

This episode of the Hey Future Lawyer podcast dives into LSAT logical reasoning strategies, using a custom-made practice question to demonstrate how to think through arguments step by step. Ben Parker emphasizes that success on the LSAT is not about memorizing tricks or “indicator words,” but about strong reading comprehension and actively engaging with each sentence. He walks through a paradox-style question, showing how to identify assumptions, evaluate answer choices, and avoid common traps.

A major theme throughout the episode is the importance of thinking critically rather than relying on flawed LSAT advice, especially from online forums like...

In this episode of the Hey Future Lawyer Podcast, Ben Parker breaks down one of the biggest problems in LSAT prep today: bad advice. Using real examples, he walks through why so many popular strategies, from overcomplicated question types to memorization-heavy approaches, actually hold students back instead of helping them improve.

Ben explains what the LSAT is really testing and why most students struggle after weeks of studying. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or like you’re putting in the work but not seeing results, this episode will help you understand exactly what’s going wrong...

The new U.S. News Law School Rankings are officially out, and in this episode, we break down what actually matters and what does not. If you are choosing a law school based on rankings alone, this conversation will completely change how you think about the process.

We walk through some of the biggest surprises in the 2026 rankings, including Stanford landing at #1, Chicago’s placement, and why schools like WashU and Vanderbilt may be ranked higher than their real-world employment outcomes would justify. This episode focuses on cutting through the noise and understanding what these rankings actually re...

In this episode, Ben breaks down the launch of Hey Future Lawyer’s new Law School Recommender Tool and explains how applicants should actually choose where to apply and where to attend. Instead of chasing arbitrary law school rankings, he argues for an outcomes-first approach built around BigLaw placement, federal clerkships, debt, scholarship leverage, and career goals.

Ben also explains why the usual safety / target / reach framework can push people toward bad decisions, why many applicants are picking schools backwards, and why applying early and applying broadly matters more than ever in the current law school admissions cy...

In this episode of the Hey Future Lawyer podcast, Ben Parker and Madeline draw on over a decade of combined LSAT teaching experience to break down the most common mistakes students make while preparing for the exam. They discuss how many popular LSAT strategies are based on “received knowledge” rather than real teaching experience and explain how instructors’ perspectives evolve after working with thousands of students.

The conversation focuses on the idea that the LSAT is far simpler than many prep companies make it seem. Ben and Madeline argue that students often overcomplicate the test with rigid framew...

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In this episode of the Hey Future Lawyer podcast, Ben Parker breaks down Hey Future Lawyer’s new LSAT score guarantee and explains the logic behind it. He walks through the actual conditions, including study volume, consistency, accuracy, class attendance, and official score thresholds, while making the broader point that most LSAT students are not failing because of strategy, but because they are not doing enough quality work consistently.

Ben also dives into one of the biggest mistakes law school applicants make: trusting U.S. News rankings too mu...

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In this episode, Ben Parker and Madeline Jesson break down what law school is actually like after 1L starts. Madeline shares what it was like to earn very strong first-semester grades, why that first semester matters so much, and how quickly law school can shape summer job opportunities, scholarships, and long-term career trajectory.

They also unpack why law school is often harder than people expect, especially because grades are curved, finals are high-stakes, and there is very little room to recover once the semester begins. The conversation explains how...

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This episode is a blunt, practical breakdown of LSAT and law school admissions timelines, with a big emphasis on the idea that “starting now” is usually not early at all if you want optimal outcomes. Ben argues that the real goal is not just “going to law school,” but using the LSAT to control where you get in and what you pay, so you avoid six-figure debt for mediocre outcomes.

A core theme is that LSAT prep is skill-building, not cramming. He pushes back on the common “I’ll study for 1–...

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This episode of the Hey Future Lawyer Podcast kicks off with Ben Parker explaining a major LSAT shift: starting August 2026, the LSAT moves back to in-person testing. He gives quick context on how remote testing became normal during COVID, and why that convenience is now ending.

Ben digs into the real driver behind the change: test security. He breaks down how remote testing created new cheating avenues, including remote “ringer” test-takers and the recording of live test content, which becomes a huge problem when LSAC needs to reuse questions.

He a...

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In this episode, Ben and Madeline jump into a question almost every LSAT student fixates on: when you should actually retake the LSAT. They react to a popular LSAT company’s retake advice, agree with most of it, and roast how obvious and poorly written it is, while still pulling out the core takeaway: if you have points left on the table and those points change your admissions or scholarship outcomes, retaking is usually the right move.

A big theme is “stop gambling.” Ben and Madeline talk about the sl...

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Matador Solutions

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Cohen Injury Law Group

Nick Cohen joins the Hey Future Lawyer Podcast to break down an unconventional path to becoming an attorney while building a fast-growing legal marketing business. Nick is a partner at Cohen Injury Law Group in Los Angeles and the COO of Matador Solutions, a marketing partner and think tank serving more than 175 law firms nationwide.

We dig into why Nick chose a night pr...

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Ben Parker kicks off this episode of the Hey Future Lawyer Podcast on January LSAT score release day with a blunt message: treating a low LSAT score like “no big deal” is one of the most expensive mistakes a pre-law student can make. He frames it as “financial Darwinism” or “natural selection,” arguing that the consequences are predictable, avoidable, and largely driven by choices about prep, timing, and accountability.

He walks listeners through why low scores tend to funnel applicants into lower-outcome schools that can be financially predatory, especially when combined with late-cy...

Ben sits down with Madeline, an LSAT instructor turned 1L, to talk about what actually works when you’re trying to raise your LSAT score and set yourself up to win in law school. They start by dismantling common “lawyer-adjacent” advice and replace it with a simple, repeatable plan: practice that mirrors the real test, disciplined review, and consistency that builds stamina.

A big theme of the episode is momentum. Madeline explains why taking time off after a real LSAT can quietly cost you points, and why “maintenance studying” can be the difference between staying sharp and backslidin...