Diagnostic Blind Review & Seeding the Error Log
Recap: Turning a Score Into Data
A raw score by itself tells you almost nothing about why you missed what you missed. Blind review is the tool that separates "I didn't understand the argument" from "I understood it fine but ran out of time" — and those two problems have completely different fixes.
Blind-Review Protocol
- Redo every question you circled or marked, untimed, before looking at any answer key.
- Write one sentence of reasoning for each one — why you now think the answer is what it is.
- Only then check the actual answers.
- Compute your blind-review score: your original timed score, plus every marked question you got right on the untimed redo. The gap between your timed score and your blind-review score is the single most diagnostic number from the whole diagnostic. A big gap means the core problem is speed — you know the material, you're just not fast enough yet. A small gap means the core problem is understanding — more time wouldn't have saved you, so the fix is technique, not pacing.
Error-Log Lab
For every miss (and every lucky guess — those are worth logging too), record in the Performance panel: the question's type if you can identify it, an error category (misread the stem, missed the logical gap, made a conditional-logic error, fell for a specific trap, ran out of time, a plain reading error, or overthought a question that had a simpler read), and one lesson in your own words. This log is the raw material every later adaptive remediation day pulls from.
Decision Rules: What Your Diagnostic Means for the Timeline
| Diagnostic score | Path |
|---|---|
| 163+ | If you want Fall 2027 entry, the compressed February 2027 track is realistic (register by Dec 29, 2026; Georgetown's rough deadline is ~March 1). Otherwise, stay on the core 28-week plan. |
| 155–162 | Core plan, April 2027 sitting. This is the expected range for most people starting cold. |
| 148–154 | Core plan, but register for April while planning to use the free date-change to June at the Day 125 go/no-go checkpoint. |
| Below 148 | Plan for June 2027 from the start. Activate the 8-week Extension Track early, and treat August 2027 as the retake buffer. |
Whatever the number is today, it is a starting point, not a verdict — the entire rest of this curriculum exists because diagnostic scores move substantially with 6+ months of structured work.
Practice items on this page are curriculum-authored in LSAT style; they are not official LSAC questions. Real drilling happens on LawHub — see the assignment below.
Seed Trap-Library Entries
These are the most common ways wrong answers get made to look right. You'll keep adding to this library after every timed section for the rest of the plan.
- LR-TOO-STRONG — an answer that says more than the evidence supports (uses "always," "never," "guarantees" where the stimulus only supports "sometimes" or "tends to").
- LR-REVERSED-CONDITIONAL — an answer that mistakes p→q for q→p.
- LR-OPPOSITE-TASK — picking an answer that does the opposite of what the stem asked (weakens instead of strengthens, etc.) — usually from misreading the stem.
- LR-TRUE-BUT-IRRELEVANT — a factually plausible-sounding statement that doesn't actually bear on the argument's logic.
- RC-EXTREME — an RC answer that overstates what the passage actually claims.
- RC-WRONG-VIEWPOINT — a true statement from the passage, correctly worded, but attributed to the wrong person (critic's view stated as the author's, or vice versa).
Trap Drill
Q1. A stimulus states "most experts recommend the new protocol." An answer choice states "experts unanimously endorse the new protocol." What's wrong with the answer choice?
Q2. The stimulus says "if the bridge is closed, traffic on Route 9 increases." An answer choice concludes "since traffic on Route 9 increased, the bridge must be closed." What trap is this?
Peek into Tomorrow
Back to conditional logic for round two — "unless," quantifiers, and chaining multiple conditionals together. If your diagnostic had conditional-logic misses, this is where you start closing that gap directly.