Can you self-study for the LSAT?

Yes, and a lot of people do. The question worth asking is not whether self-study works but what a course actually gives you, so you can supply those things yourself instead of discovering their absence three months in.

A course sells three things

Structure — someone decided what you do today. Feedback — someone explains why you got it wrong. And measurement — something tells you honestly where you stand rather than where you feel you stand.

The teaching itself is the part most easily replaced; explanations of every question type are widely available, including on this site. It is the other three that quietly decide whether a self-study plan holds together.

Where self-study usually fails

• Drifting to what is comfortable. Left alone, people practice the types they are already good at, because it feels better. Your weakest type is the one you will avoid.
• Skipping review. It is slow and unrewarding, and with nobody watching it is the first thing cut.
• No honest measure. Untimed practice with the answers nearby produces a picture of yourself that test day corrects.
• Starting over. A month of enthusiasm, a lapse, then restarting from the beginning rather than resuming — repeatedly.
• No spaced return. Fixing something once and never seeing it again is not the same as learning it.

What to put in their place

Write the week down in advance, in terms of activities rather than hours, so a tired evening has an answer that is not "scroll explanations". Keep a record of every miss and what it taught you — that record IS your feedback loop, and it is also the only reliable way to see which type you have been avoiding.

Take timed sections regularly and under real conditions from early on, not as a finale. And put old misses on a schedule so they come back after you have had time to forget them, which is the point at which reviewing them is worth anything.

Use the free official material

LSAC gives away official LSAT prep through LawHub and Khan Academy — real questions from real exams, at no cost. Whatever else you use, use that, because it is the actual test rather than anyone's impression of it.