Note-taking on the LSAT: less than you think, and different

A lot of LSAT note-taking advice was written for a test that no longer exists. The Analytical Reasoning section rewarded elaborate diagrams because the questions were about a system you had to build. The current test does not have that section, and most of the habits it produced are now pure overhead.

The test for any note is simple and worth applying ruthlessly: did writing it save more time than it cost? On a 35-minute section, a note that takes fifteen seconds has to earn fifteen seconds back.

Logical Reasoning: almost nothing

Most Logical Reasoning arguments are short enough to hold in your head, and the questions are answered by reading precisely rather than by transcription. Copying the argument out is the most common way to spend a minute achieving nothing.

Three exceptions are worth the ink:

• Conditional statements when they stack. Two or three conditionals chained together are genuinely hard to hold, and a compact arrow or two is faster than re-reading.
• The conclusion, if the argument buries it. Underlining or a one-word margin note stops you answering about the wrong claim, which is a common and expensive error.
• Your elimination marks. Crossing off answers as you rule them out, with a reason, stops you relitigating a choice you already killed.

Anything more elaborate — full symbolic translations of every premise, formal notation for arguments that did not need it — usually indicates a comprehension problem being solved with handwriting.

Reading Comprehension: structure, not content

Which tells you what to note. Not the content — a few words per paragraph saying what that paragraph is DOING. "Sets up theory." "Objects." "Author's own view." That is enough to answer Main Point, Function and Organization questions without re-reading, and it takes seconds.

The two things worth marking in the text itself are the author's own voice, wherever it finally appears, and the turns — the however, the yet, the in fact. Those carry the argument's shape regardless of what the passage is about.

Heavy highlighting is the classic failure here. Highlighting everything important is indistinguishable from highlighting nothing, and it usually means you were reading passively with a marker in your hand.

Practice the way you will test

Whatever system you settle on, use it in every timed practice section so it is automatic. A note-taking habit invented on test day costs time exactly when you have least of it, and switching systems in the last two weeks is a reliable way to lose a few points to unfamiliarity.