At first glance, the LSAT feels unforgivingly fast. Thirty-five minutes per section. Dense passages. Answer choices engineered to waste your time. It’s no surprise that many students come away believing that speed is the primary skill the test rewards.
But that belief is exactly what holds many scores back.
The modern LSAT — especially after the removal of Logic Games — is fundamentally a test of precision under time pressure, not raw speed. The pressure is real, but the students who succeed aren’t the fastest thinkers. They’re the cleanest ones.
Understanding why requires looking more closely at what actually consumes time during the exam.
Where Time Is Really Lost on the LSAT
Most students don’t lose time because they read too slowly. They lose time because they read imprecisely.
Imprecision shows up in dozens of small ways: misunderstanding the question stem, misidentifying the author’s position, failing to notice a qualifier, or overlooking the logical role of a sentence. Each of these mistakes forces a correction later — rereading, re-evaluating, or second-guessing — which quietly drains the clock.
Over the course of a section, these small inefficiencies add up to several lost minutes. That’s why students often feel rushed even when they aren’t objectively slow.
Precision as an Efficiency Multiplier
Precision doesn’t just improve accuracy. It multiplies efficiency.
When your initial read is clean, answer choices become easier to evaluate. You eliminate wrong answers more confidently. You move on without lingering doubt. This is why higher-scoring students often finish sections feeling less frantic, even though they’re working just as hard.
This dynamic becomes obvious in LSAT classes, where instructors can watch two students approach the same question. One reads quickly but vaguely and then wrestles with the answers. The other reads carefully, more slowly at first, and then finishes decisively.
The second student often finishes faster overall.
Why Speed Training in Isolation Fails
Many students try to solve timing problems by practicing faster. They skim passages, shorten reading time, or rush answer choices in the name of efficiency.
What usually happens is a spike in careless errors, followed by hesitation and self-doubt. The student then rereads more, not less, and the net effect is negative.
Speed drills without precision training are like pressing harder on the gas while driving blindfolded. You might move faster briefly, but control disappears.
This is why effective LSAT tutoring almost never starts with speed. It starts with tightening reasoning so speed emerges naturally.
Reading Comprehension After Logic Games
With Logic Games removed, Reading Comprehension now plays an even larger role in score differentiation. RC is where precision matters most.
Strong RC performance depends on understanding structure: why each paragraph exists, how viewpoints relate, and where the author stands. Students who chase speed often miss these relationships and are forced to hunt for answers later.
Precision in RC reduces rereading. It also improves inference accuracy, which is where many points are lost.
This is one reason ongoing LSAT classes that emphasize discussion and structural analysis tend to outperform short-term courses that focus on timing hacks.
Logical Reasoning and Front-Loaded Precision
Logical Reasoning rewards students who invest a few extra seconds at the beginning of each question.
Understanding the task — what the question is actually asking you to do — prevents wasted effort evaluating irrelevant answers. Students who rush through the stem often end up doing twice the work.
This front-loaded precision feels slow at first, but it pays off across the section.
The Role of Stamina in the Precision vs. Speed Debate
Even precise thinkers break down when fatigued.
Late in the test, small imprecisions become more frequent: missed qualifiers, sloppy assumptions, rushed eliminations. This is where stamina intersects with precision.
Students who train endurance — through back-to-back sections and long study blocks — preserve precision deeper into the test. This is why long-term prep consistently outperforms cram-style studying.
Why Structure Beats Hacks
There are no shortcuts to precision. It develops through repetition, feedback, and consistency.
This is why structured LSAT classes and tutoring programs are effective: they correct imprecise habits before they harden and create timing issues later.
Affordable, subscription-style LSAT classes — like Kingston Prep’s four-nights-per-week model — give students enough exposure to refine precision without overwhelming them.
When Speed Finally Matters
At the highest score levels, students must be both precise and efficient. There’s no denying that.
But speed only becomes the limiting factor after precision is stable. Until then, chasing speed caps improvement.
This is why students who focus on precision early often see a sudden improvement in timing later, without consciously trying to move faster.
Final Thought: Precision Is the Path to Speed
The modern LSAT doesn’t reward frantic motion. It rewards controlled reasoning under pressure.
Speed isn’t a separate skill you add on at the end. It’s the byproduct of clarity, confidence, and consistency.