The Loophole in LSAT Logical Reasoning

I've been studying for the LSAT for a while now. While I haven't gotten my dream score and I haven't finished studying, I feel that this book has been an invaluable aid in my LSAT journey. I started out with Mike Kim's LSAT Trainer, which was big and daunting (in fairness, you don't have to read the Logic Games sections anymore). I remember chugging through the book and feeling semi-dazed after completing it. I thought I would be ready to take the test after finishing his book, yet I still didn't feel confident when I approached the questions. While I will probably review his section on RC, I found his extensive categorization of different LR questions to be hard to remember and harder to implement. My next phase of studying was with 7Sage. I completed the Foundations course offered by J.Y., and it was certainly informative. I'm grateful for the level of depth that J.Y. went into in his videos. He covered loads of interesting and useful concepts on the test, and he's a really intelligent guy. The problem for me was that it just became a little too theory-heavy, and at some point, after watching hours and hours of his curriculum, my eyes would start to glaze over. It reminded me of watching Zoom lectures during COVID. Even after completing Foundations, I still (!) felt shaky with LR questions. I found myself misreading the stimulus, making simple mistakes, and failing to understand what I was reading. And that's where The Loophole comes in. After poking around on the LSAT subreddit (as one does), I saw Ellen's book recommended by a couple of folks. I was intrigued by the notion of focusing primarily on the stimulus rather than the question stem (the stimulus, after all, is where the majority of information in a given question is contained). As someone who studied English in college, this approach just felt more intuitive to me. I realized that a lot of the trouble that I've been having with LR questions is just understanding what in the world these dense little blocks of cryptic prose are saying, under time pressure! (I can read John Milton or James Joyce, but seriously, some of these LSAT stimuli are infuriating.) I'm currently practicing Translation + CLIR drills. For the uninitiated, this means putting the stimulus into your own words and breaking it down. Ellen describes the CLIR process in an approachable and thoughtful way. While I will transition to taking practice tests soon, these translation drills have been important for me in building confidence in reading and understanding (or at least, attempting to understand) these challenging stimuli. It is worth noting that, while the book does encourage you to write out your translations by hand, the Elemental team now encourages you to time yourself and record yourself speaking out loud. For the monstrous stimuli, I will still jot a few notes down on scratch paper. I found Ellen's book to be highly readable. She uses some funny examples in earlier sections and has (in my opinion) a good sense of humor. Other reviewers have noticed that the margins of the book are rather narrow, such that the text runs rather close to the binding. This can be easily remedied by purchasing and using a wooden book stand (I got mine from H&S on Amazon), which also makes reading more enjoyable in general. While working through The Trainer felt like a slog (a little like Murakami's 1Q84), I didn't feel that way while reading The Loophole. Perhaps it's because I had a foundation already, but it felt much smoother to read and work through. I think the book manages to be informative and clear as well as relatively fun to read, which is something I never thought an LSAT prep book could be. If you're just starting your LSAT journey, or if you've been studying for a while now but are feeling stuck with how to approach LR, you should consider trying The Loophole. I think it's worthwhile to hear Ellen's perspective, and the book is filled with plenty of valuable nuggets, like the CLIR or SW SCCER. Even her breakdown of sufficient-necessary was much easier to understand for me than 7Sage. Plus, there are funny jokes in the margins. Give it a shot.

The Loophole helped me a lot with my understanding of LR in general. Translation and CLIR drills made me realize that I need to predict an answer before attempting the answer choices. And now I’m planning to use the method for RC. Thank you!

Awesome and straight forward book for the LSAT. Easy to follow and understand the content of each chapter.

Before I started my lsat journey, I did a ton of research about what book I should buy to really understand logical reasoning because I STRUGGLED! And everything pointed towards this book and I bought it and WOW I FREAKING LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!!! This book is literally priceless!! Every single chapter of this book has helped me tremendously with logical reasoning (and you can use a lot of the things that you learn in here and apply them to reading comprehension as well). Just make sure to read all the chapters and take your time with them if you struggle and DO NOT skip anything in between! This book has also made me look towards studying everyday because of how entertaining Ellen has made the book to be which has made learning fun rather than boring! When reading the book, I felt like Ellen was sitting right beside me tutoring me! And I feel connected to her through her book as her student! :’) I legit can’t stop talking about this book to everyone around me, and how much it has helped me, so do yourself a favor and get this amazing book NOW!!

This excellent book was my only resource for the LSAT’s Logical Reasoning sections, and I’m grateful and fortunate to have come across it early in my preparation. Its main virtue, among many, is its accessibility, a result of the author’s hard-won effort in every explanation to be direct, clear, and understood. This extends even to the presentation of the material, and that is no small thing, since well laid out books are the ones that actually get read and re-read. It is a mark of generous teaching on the part of the author that the student’s task of distilling and organizing information is already done for them. The Loophole provides an overview of Logical Reasoning from the ground up, complete with exercises along the way. Its approach is to build up your mastery of the questions in manageable increments. First comes understanding what you read, then knowing how to analyze it, and finally preparing for what will be asked of you. Every step toward acquiring these skills, starting from the very basics, is addressed and covered, and what might seem elementary, like working on reading and recall, actually creates necessary foundations and improves performance. (It was surprising to me, for example, to discover how many questions I was missing simply for failing to register or retain the content of the question prompts). With its examples and quizzes and suggested practice drills, the book also encourages participating actively throughout the process, and this of course requires considerable time and effort. But those who commit themselves to studying in this way, even if they start as beginners, are sure to be able to follow the concepts as they become more advanced. In addition to being step-by-step and systematic, The Loophole is thorough. It provides coverage of Logical Reasoning topics in all of their difficulty and complexity. Particularly helpful to me were the chapters on Conditional Reasoning and Parallel Questions, which in my own preparation caused me the most problems. Typical of the rest of the book, the treatment of these areas demonstrated how to break them down into approachable units, and then proposed logical and workable methods for handling them. I especially appreciated the emphasis here, as everywhere, on problem-solving skills rather than on theoretical knowledge for its own sake. Simplicity and practicality, made sufficient to meet even the hardest challenges of the LSAT, are what this book is all about, to the benefit of the reader. If there were a competition to determine the best model of the saying, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” I would nominate The Loophole.