Logic Games are gone. Here is how that changes your study plan.

The LSAT you’re going to take has no Logic Games section, and if your books came from an older sibling, a used-bookstore shelf or a prep company’s pre-2024 edition, about a third of what’s in them describes a test that no longer exists. Starting with the August 2024 administration, the test replaced the Analytical Reasoning section with a second scored logical reasoning section, so LR is now about two thirds of your scored questions, double the weight it carried in the 2021 to 2024 format. This guide tells you what to skip, what’s still good, and how the study plan changes when one skill carries twice the weight.

Here are the format facts, from LSAC. The scored test is two logical reasoning sections and one reading comprehension section, plus one unscored section that is either LR or RC and is not identified. Each section is 35 minutes. Scores still run 120 to 180. LSAC announced the change on October 18, 2023, and the first games-free test was August 2024. The writing sample, taken separately and unscored, also moved to an argumentative format in 2024; confirm the current instructions on LSAC’s site before you sit.

What that does to the arithmetic

From 2021 through June 2024, the roughly 75 scored questions split three ways: about 23 games, about 27 reading comprehension, and one LR section of about 25. Logical reasoning was one third of the test. Now the scored total is still around 75 to 77 questions, but roughly 50 of them are logical reasoning, and there is no games section where a diagram-minded student could bank fifteen points in a month. (PrepTests from before 2020 had four scored sections, two of them LR, so they already look more like the current test than the 2021 to 2024 forms do.)

Two consequences follow. First, there are twice as many LR questions to improve on, and the same per-question fix now pays twice. A student who moves from 18 to 21 right per LR section has gained six questions, which on a typical scale is in the neighborhood of three to four scaled points. Second, reading comprehension is now about a third of the test and the only section that isn’t LR, so a weak RC section has nowhere to hide.

The study plan should look like the test. Roughly half your drilling time on LR structures, a quarter on RC, and the rest on full proctored tests and their review.

What to ignore in old materials

Go through your books with a marker. These sections are no longer useful:

• Any chapter on Analytical Reasoning, Logic Games, sequencing, grouping, hybrid games, diagramming game boards, or “the games section.” All of it.
• Pacing plans that assume three scored sections of different types, including any advice about which section to do first based on games.
• “Games are the most learnable section, so start there” as a strategy. The most learnable section is now the one you have twice of.
• Score conversion charts in older PrepTests. Pre-2020 scales were built for about 100 questions and 2021 to 2024 scales for a different section mix; neither matches a stitched-together current-format test. Use the scale that comes with a current-format PrepTest, or LawHub’s scoring.
• Practice schedules that build to “one full test per week” where the full test includes games. The structure is right; the content is wrong. Rebuild them with the substitution method below.
• The old writing sample instructions, which asked you to choose between two options. The current format is argumentative and starts with a set of sources to read.

Keep the logical reasoning chapters and the reading comprehension chapters. The question structures LSAC uses in those sections have not changed, and a well-written 2019 explanation of necessary versus sufficient assumptions is as correct today as it was then. The twelve argument structures are the same twelve.

One hidden casualty is conditional logic. In most older books, the conditional-reasoning instruction lives inside the games chapters, because games were where students practiced arrows and contrapositives. If you skip the games chapters, you may skip the only place the book teaches “only if,” “unless” and the contrapositive. Pull those pages out and keep them. They matter more now, not less.

How to use old PrepTests

Old PrepTests are still real LSAT questions written by LSAC, and there are dozens of them. They remain the best practice material you can buy. The only problem is their shape, and the fix is simple.

To simulate the current format with a pre-2024 PrepTest, take its two non-games scored sections (one LR, one RC), then borrow one LR section from a different old PrepTest to make the second scored LR, and borrow a fourth section, LR or RC, from a third test as your unscored experimental. Four sections, 35 minutes each, one break after the second. Score the three “scored” sections by hand against a current-format scale.

LSAC’s LawHub platform also provides official PrepTests reconfigured to the current format, and newer PrepTests released since 2024 are already in the two-LR shape [verify current LawHub catalog]. If you have access, use those for your proctored weekly tests and save the older stitched-together tests for drilling by section.

A few older PrepTests include LR questions that reference concepts more common in games, like strict ordering; these are rare and still valid practice. Don’t skip a question because it feels like a game.

One more thing about old tests: the older the PrepTest, the more its logical reasoning sections differ in feel from current ones. Questions from the 1990s and early 2000s are shorter, more formal in their conditional language and lighter on the long, dense stimuli that current tests use at questions 18 through 25. They are fine for learning structures in weeks 2 to 7. For your weekly proctored tests from week 8 on, use the most recent material you have, because timing and stamina are what those tests are measuring and the recent forms are the ones that measure them honestly.

How the plan changes, week by week

A current-format plan puts logical reasoning at the center from the first week. In the old plan, weeks one to three were often games, because games produced the fastest early gains and built morale. That early win is gone, and the honest replacement is the structure-tagging work in LR: learning the twelve question jobs, writing a prephrase before the choices, and classifying every miss in blind review.

A reasonable shape for a 16-week plan is:

The full 16-week schedule expands each row. The thing to notice is the ratio: LR gets roughly double the drilling time of RC throughout, matching its weight on the test.

The unscored section problem

Because the unscored section is now LR or RC and unidentified, you can face three logical reasoning sections in a row, or two reading comprehension sections, and you will not know which one is experimental. Old-format advice about “the experimental is usually the odd one out” no longer works, because there is no odd one out in a two-type test.

Two habits handle it. First, in proctored practice, always take four sections, with the fourth section varying between LR and RC from week to week, so that three LR sections in a row is a familiar experience rather than a surprise. Second, build the rule that you never evaluate a section while taking the next one. A section that felt hard may be the unscored one, or it may be scored and you did fine on it. Either way, thinking about it during section three costs you section three.

Section order and stamina

With the games section gone, the test is now roughly two hours and twenty minutes of reading-heavy sections with a ten-minute break after section two, and no section that works a different mental muscle. Stamina matters more. Students who used to recover during games now have no recovery section.

That argues for proctored full tests from week three, not week ten, so that the fourth 35-minute block of dense reading is ordinary by test day. It also argues against ending practice sessions early. If you planned four sections, take four. The fourth-section score is the one that predicts your test-day result.

Rick’s note: I liked games. Most tutors did; they were the section where a student could go from 12 right to 22 right in a month and feel like a genius. I don’t miss them in the plan, though. The test is now a cleaner measure of the two skills law school actually uses, and the plan is simpler for it.

What to do this week

1. Go through every book you own with a marker and strike the games chapters, the three-section pacing plans and the old score-conversion charts. Pull the conditional-logic pages out of the games chapters and keep them.
2. Check LSAC’s site for the current section configuration, the current writing sample instructions and the LawHub PrepTest catalog, and write down what you find with the date.
3. Build one current-format practice test from old PrepTests using the substitution method, log which sections you used, and take it proctored this week as your diagnostic.
4. Rewrite your weekly plan so LR drilling gets about twice the time of RC drilling.
5. If your diagnostic is in the 160s and you want 170+, send us the score and the miss list for a debrief. If it’s lower, run the plan above for four weeks first and come back when it stalls.