The Loophole in LSAT Logical Reasoning: A Splendidly Comprehensive LSAT Study Guide to Master LSAT Self-Study Paperback – November 15, 2018

This excellent book was my only resource for the LSAT’s Logical Reasoning sections, and I’m grateful and fortunate to have come across it early in my preparation. Its main virtue, among many, is its accessibility, a result of the author’s hard-won effort in every explanation to be direct, clear, and understood. This extends even to the presentation of the material, and that is no small thing, since well laid out books are the ones that actually get read and re-read. It is a mark of generous teaching on the part of the author that the student’s task of distilling and organizing information is already done for them.The Loophole provides an overview of Logical Reasoning from the ground up, complete with exercises along the way. Its approach is to build up your mastery of the questions in manageable increments. First comes understanding what you read, then knowing how to analyze it, and finally preparing for what will be asked of you. Every step toward acquiring these skills, starting from the very basics, is addressed and covered, and what might seem elementary, like working on reading and recall, actually creates necessary foundations and improves performance. (It was surprising to me, for example, to discover how many questions I was missing simply for failing to register or retain the content of the question prompts). With its examples and quizzes and suggested practice drills, the book also encourages participating actively throughout the process, and this of course requires considerable time and effort. But those who commit themselves to studying in this way, even if they start as beginners, are sure to be able to follow the concepts as they become more advanced.In addition to being step-by-step and systematic, The Loophole is thorough. It provides coverage of Logical Reasoning topics in all of their difficulty and complexity. Particularly helpful to me were the chapters on Conditional Reasoning and Parallel Questions, which in my own preparation caused me the most problems. Typical of the rest of the book, the treatment of these areas demonstrated how to break them down into approachable units, and then proposed logical and workable methods for handling them. I especially appreciated the emphasis here, as everywhere, on problem-solving skills rather than on theoretical knowledge for its own sake. Simplicity and practicality, made sufficient to meet even the hardest challenges of the LSAT, are what this book is all about, to the benefit of the reader. If there were a competition to determine the best model of the saying, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” I would nominate The Loophole.

This is the best LSAT book I found BY FAR. Get it!!! I'm so grateful to have found it.I studied for 3-4 months using other materials and found that the more I studied, the worse my score got?? This was confusing and demoralizing, and I was considering canceling my scheduled test. Then, I stumbled upon this book in my last month of studying. It helped me realize I needed to focus less on memorizing question types ("is it a must be true?") and more on reading the passage accurately (and retaining it) on the first try. This shift in attitude helped me break through my plateau. The book has a few excellent reading & retention drills (which I've never seen in any other test prep material) that wildly improved my ability to keep the passage accurately in mind after one read.Ellen also offers a very useful strategy for *predicting* the answer to the LR questions before looking at the answer choices. This strategy worked super well for me. During my practice tests, I counted how often this "prediction" was actually literally the correct answer (or close to it) - it ended up being correct for around 20/25 questions in each section. That's huge and saved me so much time (and stress) looking at answer choices. I ended up taking the April test and got a 175! I felt confident in my LR sections during the test and attribute this largely to Ellen!More about the book:- It helps you improve your reading (and retention)!!!! This was the game changer for me. I'd always thought of myself as a fast and accurate reader, but skimming to save time was causing me to waste time in the answer choices. I'd often end up stuck between two answer choices, because of slight misreads in the passage. Ellen offers two drills to help you read passages accurately and retain them on the first try. I dropped all other studying for two weeks to just do those drills and single-handedly raised my score by 5 points. Her reading drills also helped me finish sections on time! When I took the test, I ended up having extra time on the LR sections (which was a big jump up from previously not finishing sections on time at all).- The book gives you a strategy for decoding the horribly written sentences on the LSAT. I used this to great effect when I hit passages that felt like the passage could have been read two different ways and so I couldn't initially answer the questions.- The book has useful high-level categories for common questions. I found these categories more accurate and less confusing than the categories that 7-Sage or The LSAT Trainer offered.- It helps you recognize common *trap* answer choices. Most other test prep materials I used didn't talk much about answer choices. Having Ellen lay out common incorrect answers helped me feel more confident eliminating.- It helps you find flaws with arguments and guess answers in advance. This saves a lot of time in the answer choices. Other test prep materials also emphasize this, but Ellen's CLIR framework goes one level further in teaching you how to predict answers/find flaws for each of the 4-main types of LR questions. As one simple example: previously, I was trying to find flaws in arguments where I should have been making inferences / diagramming (and I hesitated to make inferences, because I was worried I'd waste time). Learning when to make inferences right off the bat instead of try to figure out what's wrong with the argument saved me time.- I really appreciated Ellen's dedication to understanding the test and test-taker failure modes. I found her tone inspiring and her advice fit me like a glove. It's clear she studies her students to figure out where they need help, then develops generalizable frameworks and strategies. I sometimes felt like other test prep materials were brushing off my lack of understanding - essentially just saying "well the answer is this, okay" or providing explanations that felt like cop outs. When I was stuck, this was frustrating and not helpful. By trying hard to understand the mentality of the student, I felt like Ellen's book was the thing that offered me a concrete and actionable path to a higher score. Thanks, Ellen, for your book, your thoughtfulness about the test, and your all around love of the LSAT!!

I love the Loophole! I find the strategies in the book are extremely useful and memorable, and when doing LR sections or drills, I find that I can predict the answers much more quickly, and I am able to look past all the fluff and get to the core of every stimulus. The owner, Ellen, is also extremely helpful with any additional questions. Compared to the price of online curricula or tutors, this is by far the best investment you could make. I even know of other students at my school who used this book exclusively and scored 170+. The book is super easy and fun to read, and I found it a lot more motivating than my current online LSAT course.

The translation drills so far have been super helpful and I'm only on my ninth one. As an added bonus, the writing in the book is very enjoyable. I'm kind of bummed to put off diving into Chapter 4 to get my drill time down because the book is such a pleasure to read (especially compared to other study guides that will remain nameless).Also, the Loophole team is very active on their subreddit. They'll also quickly and thoroughly answer questions you might have via email. All around great product with great support.

It helped me form a good initial understanding of LR and some chapters worked well for me. It isn’t the best resource for everyone but it did give me a good baseline. It is a LOT to process and not enough practice is provided in the book.