LSAC administers the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) four times a year throughout the world. It is required for admission to all ABA approved law schools, some Canadian law schools and many non ABA approved law schools.

Law schools insist that the LSAT be taken by December for fall admissions.

The LSAT helps law schools make sound admission decisions by providing a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants. Prospective law students come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, ethnic groups, and cultures.

Diversity of experience among applicants both personal and academic serves to enrich the law school applicant pool and, ultimately, the legal profession. The LSAT is not, of course, the sole factor law schools use to make their admission decisions. But it is the only common yardstick by which the ability of all prospective law students can be measured fairly.

The LSAT is a half-day, standardized test designed to measure some of the skills considered essential for success in law school: the reading and comprehension of complex texts with accuracy and insight; the organization and management of information and the ability to draw reasonable inferences from it; the ability to think critically; and the analysis and evaluation of the reasoning and arguments of others.

The LSAT test consists of five 35-minute sections of multiple-choice questions. Four of the five sections contribute to the test taker's score. These sections include one reading comprehension section, one analytical reasoning section, and two logical reasoning sections. The unscored section typically is used to pretest new test questions or to preequate new test forms. The placement of this section, which is commonly referred to as the variable section, varies for each administration of the test.

The LSAT is scored on a scale from 120 to 180, with 180 being the highest possible score. A 35-minute writing sample is administered at the end of the test. LSAC does not score the writing sample, but copies are sent to all law schools to which a candidate applies.