Test prep companies and the LSAC (Law School Admissions Council) point to a remarkable statistic when people question the effectiveness of the LSAT. That stat? High performance on the LSAT is strongly correlated with success in the first year (year 1L) of law school.

Of course, as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, bloody lies, and statistics.” But suppose this statistic is true. (I have no reason to doubt it and have found no alternatives online.) Does this mean that your LSAT score is your destination in your first year of law school?

To answer this question, let’s take a look at what the LSAT tests for, and then look at law school to see what the connection might be.

The LSAT (according to the LSAC website) uses three types of questions: reading comprehension, analytical reasoning questions, and logical reasoning questions. But for test takers, two distinct types of questions stand out: reading comprehension and “logic games” (which are essentially math puzzles).

Reading comprehension tests how quickly you can read and understand unfamiliar information. This ability translates directly to the first year of law school because the first year involves high-volume reading in an unfamiliar field. Legal language can be arcane, and professors often pick on historical, misspelled, and overturned cases in the first few months of class. Navigating through this material takes time, and good reading skills can keep this time to a minimum. Also, good readers often write well, which is a key skill in law school.

Logic games test how well you can follow a set of rules and you learn to take a test. These skills translate to law school, but much more loosely. Following the black letter rules is key to legal analysis. And learning the tricks for exams gives you a competitive advantage over your classmates. But the rules and strategies of logic games are very different from the legal rules and strategies.

So even though these skills transfer, it seems odd that there is such a strong correlation between the LSAT and 1L success. Why would students who enter as better readers and who can learn how to do math puzzles necessarily do better than other smart students, such as top college writers? After all, no one knows the rules before their 1L classes, and law school test tricks are different than LSAT tricks. Also, most law school tests are essay-based exams, not the multiple-choice format found on the LSAT.

I think the best explanation for this strong correlation is that success on the LSAT is correlated with a strong testing strategy. If teachers taught legal rules and exam strategies, success would come down to rule memorization and writing ability. But first-year teachers don’t teach that way. Instead, professors teach through the method of jurisprudence.

The jurisprudence method, like any other, has pros and cons. Because the law is taught through cases, some rules are more memorable because they are tied to a story. But often, black-letter rules get buried and never made clear to students. Therefore, the ability to learn the material on your own while using sound test-taking strategies becomes paramount. For example, students who searched for bar exam material would be on the right track.

In my view, LSAT success correlates strongly with 1L success because freshmen are not taught test strategy. Instead, students are busy trying to figure out the rules hidden within each case, instead of focusing on test-taking as a learnable skill. Therefore, students who do poorly on the LSAT must learn the subject efficiently. Y Work on practice problems/mock tests to quickly improve your test-taking skills. With that preparation, this strong correlation need not be fate.