What is a good LSAT score?

The LSAT is scored from 120 to 180. Beyond that, the question does not have a general answer, and the sites that give you one are selling something.

Good is a comparison, not a threshold

A score is good relative to the schools you are applying to and to the rest of your application. The same number can be comfortably above one school's admitted range and below another's. There is no absolute line, and treating some round number as one is how people end up retaking a score that would have been fine.

The useful move is to work backwards. Find the schools you would actually attend, look up their published admitted-student score ranges, and set your target from that. That is a real number attached to a real decision, unlike a generic benchmark.

Law schools publish these ranges, and they change year to year. Use current figures from the schools themselves rather than an aggregator's summary from an unspecified cycle.

Why we do not quote percentiles here

Set the target as a range

This follows directly from how the test reports itself. LSAT scores go to law schools with a score band, because a single score is an imperfect estimate of proficiency. The band comes from the standard error of measurement, which LSAC describes as very stable and about 2.6 scaled score points.

So a target of exactly 165 is a target the test cannot resolve. Something in the mid-160s is a target that respects the instrument. This is not a lowering of ambition; it is an accurate description of what the number can carry.

It matters most for the retake decision. If you scored 163 and want 165, you are chasing a difference smaller than the test's own measurement error, and a retake could return 162 without anything about you having changed. If you scored 158 and want 165, that is a real gap and a real study plan.

A word on what a good score is worth

The LSAT is one input. It is a heavily weighted one, and pretending otherwise would be silly, but a score does not decide an application on its own and no number obliges a school to admit you.

The practical reading of all this: pick a target range from real school data, work toward it, and re-evaluate on a trend across several full-lengths rather than on any single sitting. Anyone promising you a specific score is promising something the test itself does not.