How to get faster on the LSAT without rushing

Which is genuinely tight, and the instinct it produces — read faster — is the wrong response and usually makes the score worse. Reading faster costs accuracy on the questions you would have got, in exchange for reaching questions you probably would not.

Time on the LSAT is lost in specific, identifiable places, and almost none of them are reading speed.

Where the time actually goes

• Re-reading the argument after reading the answers. If you did not have the conclusion in mind before choice A, every choice sends you back to the top. That is the most expensive habit on the test.
• Relitigating eliminated answers. Deciding between B and D, then going back to reconsider A, is time spent on a question you already answered.
• Refusing to abandon. A question you have spent three minutes on has already cost you two other questions, and it is usually still not going to fall.
• Reading the stem last. The stem tells you what job you are doing; reading it after the argument means reading the argument without knowing what for.

Decide faster, do not read faster

The fast test takers are not skimming. They are eliminating on stated reasons rather than on impressions, so each choice takes one pass instead of three. That comes from knowing what each question type is asking for precisely enough that a wrong answer is disqualified by something specific.

Which means speed is mostly a byproduct of accuracy work, not a separate skill to train. Learn what a Flaw question actually rewards and you stop deliberating between two choices that were never both live.

Prephrasing

After reading the argument and the stem, and before reading the choices, say what the answer will have to do. Not the exact wording — the job. "It has to rule out another cause." "It has to be something the author needs to be true."

This is the highest-return timing habit there is, because it changes what reading the answers is for. You are matching against a prediction rather than evaluating five options from scratch, and matching is much faster than evaluating.

Practice the abandon

Set a limit — most people land somewhere near a minute and a half for a Logical Reasoning question — and honor it in every timed practice section until it is automatic. Mark it, guess, move. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a guess costs nothing and the time saved is real.

This has to be trained, not resolved. Everyone intends to move on and almost nobody does under pressure, because abandoning feels like losing a question you might still get. Practicing it converts a decision into a reflex.

Check which problem you have

Before building a plan around speed, confirm speed is the constraint. Redo a section untimed and compare. If the untimed score is much higher, timing is genuinely your bottleneck. If it is barely higher, you do not have a speed problem — you have a content problem that going faster will make worse.