LSAT study hours, sourced
How many hours should you study for the LSAT®?
There's no official number of hours. LSAC, which makes the test, says no single timeline suits everyone. The prep companies do give numbers, and their answers run from 200 hours to about 900. Here they are side by side, with their dates, and a way to count the hours you actually put in.
Sources checked · LSAC, Blueprint Prep, The Princeton Review, 7Sage
What the prep companies say
First, the test maker. LSAC gives no hour count. It says “there is no single timeline that will be appropriate for everyone,” that the more pertinent issue is the “workload,” and that it often recommends “three months as a sort of baseline” (LSAC, Official LSAT Prep®, no date shown). The prep companies do put a number on it. Each figure below is quoted from its own page.
| Source | Total | Per week | Written |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blueprint Prep | “a total of 200 to 300 hours of study time,” over “about three to six months” | “20 hours per week at a minimum, ideally pushing 30” on its 12-week plan; “about 12-18 hours per week” over 4 to 5 months; “about 7-11 hours per week” over 6 months | Patrick Moore, July 9, 2024 |
| The Princeton Review | “250 to 300 hours of LSAT preparation over a period of a few months,” and “at least three months (and ideally more)” | “approximately 20 hours per week” over three months | No byline, no date shown |
| 7Sage | “about 900 hours of studying total”: about 300 for its own course and about 600 for taking all the PrepTests included with its Ultimate+ plan and Blind Reviewing them, assuming “a ~10-15 point increase (or more)” | “~20-25 hours per week,” which it says people who work or study full time are often best off with; 30 is “probably the healthiest maximum” | Nicole Hopkins, July 25, 2016 |
Quoted from each page as it read on September 24, 2026; follow the links for the full advice and the reasons behind it. LSAC changed the multiple-choice sections starting with the August 2024 LSAT, so the 2016 and July 2024 pages were written for the earlier test, and The Princeton Review's undated page still mentions “certain types of games,” a section the current test no longer has. The three companies sell LSAT prep and are named only to cite their published figures; none of them is affiliated with Added Time. If a figure has changed, tell us and we'll fix the table.
What the test itself asks of your time
From the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which makes the test:
- Four 35-minute multiple-choice sections: one Reading Comprehension, two Logical Reasoning, and one unscored variable section.
- A 10-minute intermission between the second and third sections.
- About 3 hours in all: LSAC says the test takes approximately 3 hours for standard test takers.
- LSAT Argumentative Writing™, taken separately and remotely: 15 minutes of prewriting analysis (you can move on after five), then 35 minutes to write the essay.
- Where you sit it: starting with the August 2026 LSAT, the multiple-choice part is moving toward in-center testing for almost all test takers, with limited exceptions.
From the LSAC pages Specifications of the LSAT and LSAT Argumentative Writing and its LSAT FAQ, checked September 24, 2026. Neither page shows a date. As plain arithmetic, the four sections and the intermission come to 150 minutes (4 × 35 + 10).
Turn a total into a week
This part is plain arithmetic, not advice. Hours a week is the total divided by the weeks you have; hours a day is that divided by the days you'll study. So 250 hours over 12 weeks is about 20.8 hours a week, or about 3.5 hours a day on six days. Over 24 weeks it's about 10.4 hours a week, or about 1.7 a day.
| Total hours | Over 12 weeks | Over 16 weeks | Over 24 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 16.7 a week | 12.5 a week | 8.3 a week |
| 250 | 20.8 a week | 15.6 a week | 10.4 a week |
| 300 | 25.0 a week | 18.8 a week | 12.5 a week |
Rounded to a tenth of an hour. 7Sage's own example runs the other way: about 900 hours at 25 hours a week is 36 weeks, which it calls “a 9 month estimated study period.”
A study tracker for the LSAT®, from someone who needed one
“I built this to hold myself to hours I'd promised myself — the LSAT, problem sets for my physics degree, and a weekly count of hours in the air. I didn't need another app to tell me my screen time was bad. I needed those hours to actually happen.”
Mathias B Jacobson, who made Added Time
In Added Time, make a subject called LSAT and tell it what the goal asks: 3 hours a day, or 20 hours a week. Start a block and the clock counts up; every half hour lands as ink on today's page. Interrupted? Hit the whistle, and the pause is added on to the end instead of lost. Timed sections and practice tests done away from the clock can be added by hand. The Record keeps every hour since your first block, free.
There's no account and no servers of ours. Everything it records is yours, and none of it comes to us.
Free to download · no account · the record is free forever
Time a practice section in your browser
On a laptop, open the free focus & study timer, choose Your own, and set a 35-minute block, the length of one section. The clock counts up, and at 35:00 the whistle blows. It's free, with no sign-up, and every half hour you put in inks a tally mark in that browser.
LSAT study hours: common questions
How many hours a day should I study for the LSAT?
The sources above count in weeks, not days. The nearest thing to a daily figure is 7Sage's example of a 25-hour week: “5 hours on Saturdays and 4 hours each weekday.” As plain arithmetic, The Princeton Review's approximately 20 hours a week comes to about 3.3 hours a day on six days, and Blueprint Prep's 7 to 11 hours a week over six months to about 1.2 to 1.8 hours a day on six days.
How many hours a week should I study for the LSAT?
Blueprint Prep says “20 hours per week at a minimum, ideally pushing 30” on a 12-week plan, about 12 to 18 over four to five months, and about 7 to 11 over six months. The Princeton Review says approximately 20 hours a week over three months. 7Sage (2016) says people who work or study full time are often best off with about 20 to 25, and calls 30 “probably the healthiest maximum.”
How long is each LSAT section?
35 minutes. LSAC says the LSAT has four 35-minute multiple-choice sections, with a 10-minute intermission between the second and third, and that the test takes approximately 3 hours for standard test takers. LSAT Argumentative Writing is taken separately: 15 minutes of prewriting analysis, then 35 minutes to write.
How do I track my LSAT study hours?
Any way you'll keep up with. A spreadsheet or a paper log works fine: a row a day, with the date, what you did and for how long. If you'd rather it counted itself, Added Time for iPhone runs a clock that counts up, inks every half hour, takes hours added by hand, and keeps them all in the Record, free. On a laptop, the free focus & study timer keeps your marks in the browser.
See also: Added Time for iPhone · Focus & study timer · Support
LSAT® and Official LSAT Prep® are registered trademarks, and LSAT Argumentative Writing™ is a trademark, owned by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, Added Time or this site.