I’ve been talking to clients and others who took the digital form of the LSAT earlier in July. As a reminder, all LSATs from here on out will be in that format.
When LSAC announced the new format, there was a fair amount of hand-wringing, some from companies that were pushing people to take earlier tests. My view was that LSAC had thought this through (as they usually do) and that it would really make no difference for most test-takers. My only reservation was about older test-takers who may be less accustomed to reading on-screen than younger test-takers.
I’ve talked to a number of people who took the LSAT under the new format. Their verdict: if anything, this format is better. It eliminates some common careless errors (bubble sheet translation errors, for example). Older test-takers concurred, so my initial hesitation about age turns out, at least so far, to have been overly precious. My basic conclusion that the new format would make little, if any, difference, appears to be correct. No one has told me that the digital format was more troublesome.
Of course, all of these people had also practiced in the new format, so they were pretty clear about how it all worked going in. Although there are only a few tests available digitally now, even that number seemed sufficient, and I’m quite sure that LSAC will expand the number available in the future.
The keys to the best LSAT preparation, in short, are what they have always been; if anything, the new format eliminates some white noise in test-taking.