LSAT "previous year papers" are not something Myndaq can offer: the tests LSAC has released are its own, distributed through its own practice platform, and anything written before August 2024 includes a section — Logic Games — that no longer appears. What can be practised freely is each kind of reasoning the current test asks for. The ten questions below are drawn from the Myndaq practice bank and are not reproductions of any official item. Eight are Logical Reasoning, covering the task types that recur most, and two form a Reading Comprehension set, each with a worked answer, alongside the Myndaq LSAT course.
The pattern you are practising for
- Four 35-minute multiple-choice sections: two scored Logical Reasoning, one scored Reading Comprehension, one unscored section of either type in any position.
- A 10-minute break after the second section.
- Scoring: 120–180. Your raw score is the number answered correctly, with no deduction for incorrect answers — never leave a question blank.
- LSAT Argumentative Writing is separate and unscored, but your score is not released without it.
Because Logical Reasoning is two of the three scored sections, it is where most of your preparation time should go.
Logical Reasoning: necessary assumption
Stimulus. A wildlife biologist argues that a proposed lakeside development should be halted because it would threaten a rare species of frog that breeds only in the shallow waters along that shore. Destroying those shallows, she claims, would eliminate the frog's sole breeding habitat and lead to the species' local extinction.
Question 1. The biologist's argument depends on assuming which one of the following?
- (A) The frog species is more valuable to the ecosystem than any species that would benefit from the development.
- (B) The development cannot be modified to preserve the shallow breeding waters.
- (C) The frogs cannot successfully breed in shallow waters elsewhere along the lake.
- (D) The developers are unaware that a rare frog species inhabits the area.
- (E) No other threats currently endanger the frog species besides habitat loss.
Answer: (C). The step from "destroying these shallows" to "local extinction" works only if the frogs have nowhere else to breed. Negate it: if they can breed elsewhere on the lake, the extinction claim collapses. That is the test for a necessary assumption. (B) is tempting but concerns what should be done about the development, not whether its effect on the frogs would be extinction.
Logical Reasoning: weaken by alternative cause
Stimulus. A regional health authority noted that counties that fluoridate their public water supply report fewer cavities per capita than counties that do not. On this basis, the authority argued that fluoridation is the most cost-effective public policy for reducing tooth decay, and it recommended that all counties in the region adopt water fluoridation.
Question 2. Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the health authority's recommendation?
- (A) Fluoride can be delivered through toothpaste as well as through water.
- (B) The counties that currently fluoridate their water also happen to have far more dentists per resident and much higher rates of routine dental checkups.
- (C) The health authority has recommended other public health measures in the past.
- (D) A small number of residents object to fluoridation on personal grounds.
- (E) Counties without fluoridation have larger populations on average than those with it.
Answer: (B). The argument moves from a correlation (fluoridation, fewer cavities) to a cause. (B) supplies another difference between the two groups of counties — more dentists and more check-ups — that could explain the lower cavity rate on its own. (A) mentions an alternative delivery of fluoride, which does not touch the causal claim; (D) is about popularity, not effect. Correlation-to-cause arguments are the single most common target of weaken questions: look for the third factor.
Logical Reasoning: must be true (conditional chain)
Stimulus. In the Valdez region, every vineyard that irrigates with river water produces grapes with elevated mineral content. Vineyards that produce grapes with elevated mineral content cannot be certified organic under the current provincial standard. Some vineyards in Valdez are certified organic, and all certified-organic vineyards in the province participate in the annual harvest festival. No vineyard that participates in the harvest festival uses imported fertilizer.
Question 3. If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true?
- (A) No vineyard in Valdez that irrigates with river water is certified organic.
- (B) Every vineyard in Valdez participates in the harvest festival.
- (C) All vineyards with elevated mineral content use imported fertilizer.
- (D) Every vineyard in Valdez that uses imported fertilizer irrigates with river water.
- (E) Some vineyards that participate in the harvest festival irrigate with river water.
Answer: (A). Chain the first two statements: river water → elevated minerals → not certified organic. So no river-water vineyard is certified organic. The others reverse a conditional or read "some" as "all". Method: write each statement as an arrow and follow the arrows only forwards.
Logical Reasoning: resolve the paradox
Stimulus. A regional aquaculture cooperative switched its salmon feed from a fishmeal-based formula to a plant-protein formula in order to cut costs. In the two years following the switch, the average weight of harvested salmon rose by nearly twelve percent, and the fish reached market size several weeks earlier than before. Yet over the same period, the cooperative's total revenue from salmon sales fell by eight percent, even though the number of fish harvested each year remained essentially unchanged and the cooperative sold every fish it raised. Market prices for salmon in the region, as reported by independent auditors, were stable throughout the two-year interval, and the cooperative did not alter the retail channels through which it sold its product.
Question 4. Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the cooperative's total revenue fell despite the heavier, faster-growing fish?
- (A) Salmon raised on the new feed reached market size several weeks earlier.
- (B) Buyers in the region pay a premium for salmon whose flesh has the deep coloration produced by a fishmeal diet, and the plant-fed fish were markedly paler.
- (C) The plant-protein feed cost substantially less per ton than the fishmeal-based feed.
- (D) A neighbouring cooperative that kept the fishmeal feed saw its revenue rise over the same two years.
- (E) The average weight of harvested salmon had also risen slightly in the two years before the change.
Answer: (B). Same number sold, stable market prices, heavier fish — yet less revenue. Something must have cut the price these particular fish fetched, and (B) supplies it. (C) explains lower costs, not lower revenue — the classic trap of answering a different question. (A) only repeats the stimulus.
Logical Reasoning: main conclusion
Stimulus. A museum director claims that lowering ticket prices would increase total revenue by drawing far more visitors. It is true that lower prices attract larger crowds. But the museum's galleries are already near capacity on most days, so a large jump in attendance is physically impossible. Any increase in visitors would be modest, and the added visitors would not make up for the lower price paid by everyone. Lowering ticket prices would thus reduce, not raise, the museum's total revenue.
Question 5. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion of the argument?
- (A) The museum's galleries are near capacity on most days.
- (B) The museum director wants to increase total revenue.
- (C) Any increase in visitors from lower prices would be modest.
- (D) Lowering ticket prices would reduce the museum's total revenue.
- (E) Lower ticket prices tend to attract larger crowds.
Answer: (D). "Thus" introduces it, and everything else supports it. (C) is an intermediate conclusion — supported by the capacity point, but itself support for (D). Test: ask "why?" of each candidate; the main conclusion is the one the others answer.
Logical Reasoning: parallel reasoning
Stimulus. If the startup's revenue doubles, then it will either open a new office or expand its staff. Its revenue doubled, and it did not open a new office. Therefore, it expanded its staff.
Question 6. Which one of the following arguments is most similar in its reasoning to the argument above?
- (A) If sales rise, the shop hires more clerks. The shop hired more clerks, so sales rose.
- (B) If the crop fails, prices rise or imports increase. Prices rose. So the crop failed.
- (C) If the alarm rings, either the door opens or the light flashes. The alarm rang and the light did not flash. So the door opened.
- (D) Either the road or the bridge is closed. The road is not closed, so the bridge is closed and traffic diverts.
- (E) If the temperature drops, the pipes freeze or burst. The pipes did not freeze. So the temperature dropped.
Answer: (C). The structure is: if P then (Q or R); P; not Q; therefore R. Only (C) has all four parts in that order. (A) and (B) reason from the result back to the trigger; (D) has no conditional; (E) concludes the trigger from a denied disjunct. Method: reduce each argument to letters and compare skeletons, not topics.
Logical Reasoning: identify the flaw
Stimulus. Debater: My opponent argues that the museum should extend its evening hours. But everyone knows that my opponent rarely visits museums and has openly admitted to finding most exhibits dull. Since someone so indifferent to museums can hardly be trusted to know what museums need, the proposal to extend evening hours should be dismissed out of hand.
Question 7. The debater's argument is flawed in that it
- (A) generalizes about all museums from a claim about one museum
- (B) confuses what most people believe with what is actually the case
- (C) assumes that extending hours is the only way to increase attendance
- (D) treats an absence of evidence against the proposal as evidence for it
- (E) rejects a proposal merely by disparaging the person who advanced it rather than assessing the proposal's merits
Answer: (E). An attack on the person, not the proposal. (B) picks up "everyone knows", but the argument's error is not about popular belief — it is that nothing is said about whether longer hours are a good idea.
Logical Reasoning: apply a principle
Stimulus. Museum conservator: An artifact should be restored only when doing so serves the public's understanding of the object's original function. If restoration would primarily satisfy aesthetic preferences without clarifying how the object was used, the artifact should be left in its found condition. Moreover, even when restoration would aid understanding, it must not obscure evidence of the object's later history, since that history is itself informative. Restoration that erases such evidence is never permissible, regardless of the gain in clarity about original function.
Question 8. Which one of the following judgments most closely conforms to the conservator's principles?
- (A) A cracked ceremonial bowl should be repaired because visitors find the crack unsightly, even though the repair leaves its original use unclear.
- (B) A damaged loom should be restored, even though restoration erases evidence of its later use, because seeing it whole helps visitors grasp how it originally worked.
- (C) A tarnished silver cup should be left uncleaned solely because cleaning it would take considerable time.
- (D) A plow whose worn edges show decades of farming use should not be sharpened to its original form, because doing so would remove marks that document its later history.
- (E) A statue missing its arms should be given new arms of the curator's own design to make it more visually complete.
Answer: (D). Erasing later history is "never permissible", and (D) refuses restoration for exactly that reason. (B) violates that absolute rule; (A) and (E) restore for aesthetics; (C) is right in outcome but for a reason the principle does not use — and a principle question asks for the principle's reasoning, not just its result.
Reading Comprehension
Passage.
In literary criticism, the term 'unreliable narrator' describes a storyteller whose account the reader has reason to doubt. Critics distinguish two ways in which a narrator can be unreliable. The first is unreliability of fact: the narrator misreports events, whether through ignorance, faulty memory, or deliberate deception. Here the reader, given enough clues, can reconstruct what actually happened and set the record straight. The second is unreliability of value: the narrator reports events accurately but judges them by a moral or aesthetic standard the text invites us to reject. In this case there is nothing to correct about the facts; what the reader revises is the narrator's evaluation of them.
The distinction matters because it changes how a reader must work. With factual unreliability, the reader plays detective, sifting evidence to determine the truth behind the narrator's words. With evaluative unreliability, the reader plays judge, accepting the reported facts but weighing them against a standard different from the narrator's own. A single narrator may of course be unreliable in both ways at once, and part of a critic's task is to determine which kind of doubt a given passage calls for.
What signals unreliability is not the narrator's own admission — unreliable narrators rarely announce themselves — but a gap between the narrator's account and cues the author plants elsewhere in the text: inconsistencies, the reactions of other characters, or ironies of tone. When no such gap exists, the reader has no warrant to distrust the narrator, however unusual the narrator's perspective may be.
Question 9. A critic argues that a narrator whose viewpoint is highly eccentric should always be treated as unreliable. Based on the passage, the author would most likely respond that this argument
- (A) overlooks that a narrator can be unreliable in both ways at once
- (B) wrongly assumes that readers must play judge rather than detective
- (C) is correct, because eccentric narrators typically misreport events
- (D) is mistaken, because without a gap between the account and other textual cues there is no warrant to distrust the narrator
- (E) confuses unreliability of fact with the narrator's open admission
Answer: (D). The last sentence answers it almost word for word: no gap, no warrant, "however unusual the narrator's perspective". An eccentric viewpoint is an unusual perspective, nothing more.
Question 10. Consider a novel in which the narrator accurately describes cruelly humiliating a servant but presents the act as a harmless amusement, while other characters recoil in visible dismay. This narrator is best classified as displaying
- (A) unreliability of value, which the reader detects through a gap between the narrator's judgment and cues such as other characters' reactions
- (B) unreliability of fact, which the reader corrects by reconstructing events
- (C) no unreliability, since the facts are reported accurately
- (D) a merely unusual perspective that provides no warrant for distrust
- (E) unreliability that the narrator openly admits
Answer: (A). The facts are accurate, so this is not unreliability of fact; the judgement ("harmless amusement") is what the text invites us to reject, and the other characters' dismay is the planted cue. (C) is the trap — accurate facts do not make a narrator reliable in value.
How to use practice like this
Label every Logical Reasoning question by task before you answer it; the task tells you what to look for, and most wrong answers come from answering a different task — a strengthener chosen for a weaken question, an intermediate conclusion for a main one. Then practise full 35-minute sections, since the LSAT is as much about pace as reasoning. For the format in full, see the LSAT syllabus and sections; for a study plan, see the LSAT preparation guide.
Quick answers
Are there free LSAT previous year papers?
Released LSATs are distributed by LSAC through its own platform. Myndaq's practice questions are original and follow the current format.
Is there negative marking on the LSAT?
No. LSAC says there is no deduction for incorrect answers; your raw score is the number you answer correctly.
Which LSAT section should I practise most?
Logical Reasoning, which makes up two of the three scored sections.
Are Logic Games still tested?
No. Analytical Reasoning was removed in August 2024.
How long is each LSAT section?
35 minutes, with four multiple-choice sections and a 10-minute break after the second.
