[james-kim528]

However entitled and snobby that title may come off, it is a necessary question to ask for anyone preparing for the LSAT.

Essentially I want to know why I should invest my time prepping with your book instead of the more conventional and trustworthy methods.

Is it just the fact that I am lucky enough to have come across an all new revolutionary way to study, or is the inactivity evidence that the lsattrainer and this website is not up to par with other competitors standards? Was this just created because someone saw a huge market, and is trying to capitalize on it?

I really hope it is the formal because some of the content that I have read so far really reasonated with me, and it would be such a pity to see this beautifully designed website go to waste. However, I just want to know from your own words why should I invest my future with your book instead of something like the Powerscore.

I mean everything as polite as possible, really not trying to bash on the website.

[sarahfatima]

Hey James, I know you want Mike to answer this question. I just want to say that so far the trainer has been phenomenal. Mike’s approach towards LSAT is unique. He is an excellent teacher. Once you ll start the trainer trust me you won’t be able to stop. I haven’t finished it yet but I absolutely love the parts I have read so far. There are no quick fixes. His emphasis on intuitive understanding and not obsessing about knowing the terms is bang on. The trainer provides you guidance in every aspect. I honestly feel it’s worth every single penny and more 🙂

[Mike Kim]

Hi James —

I understand where you are coming from — I constantly ask myself the same question (though perhaps not in those words) —

What I equate it to is this — imagine you go to buy a car, and the dealership has Hondas and Fords and VW’s and such, and then you see this guy on the side of the road with a little self-made shop, and he has this strange looking vehicle next to him, and he says “Hey, I built this car all by myself — you want to give it a test-drive?”

I realize I am that weirdo.

So again, I definitely understand where you are coming from —

I also want to point out that I have nothing but respect for Powerscore — I would argue that, in my lifetime at least, no other company has done more for LSAT students than Powerscore has — and maybe they are masters at working evil schemes behind the scenes, but from everything I’ve witnessed, they seem like a class act all they way.

Okay, with all that out of the way, here’s some information that might match what you are looking for —

1) The LSAT Trainer is not new — it was released about two and a half years ago — but this site, Lsatters, is brand new — just about a month old now. And before creating the Trainer, I co-created Manhattan LSAT, which is one of the most well-respected LSAT prep companies in the country, so I’ve been around in the industry quite a while.

2) Based on my rough estimates, about 20% of all students who take the LSAT will have prepared with the learning products that I’ve personally developed. My best guess is that the Trainer is the second or third most commonly utilized LSAT study resource in America.

3) Since its release, the Trainer has earned more Amazon reviews than any other LSAT study guide, and done so with a significantly higher average rating than any other popular guide. It is also spoken of very favorably and commonly recommended on every other general LSAT forum, including TLS and Reddit/lsat.

4) This is all despite the fact that I hardly spend any time or money on marketing or advertising. In fact, other than for maybe a half-dozen instances where I’ve asked particularly inspiring students to share their success stories with others, I’ve never publicly or privately asked any student to even write a review or endorse my book in any other way.

5) I work on my own – I don’t have investors, partners, marketers, or even an assistant — and this is all by design. I make the books, the videos, and the websites by myself, and I’ve learned how to do each of these things along the way. On my end, I personally love the challenge of being a counterpoint to the larger educational corporations — I want to see how great an influence one teacher, working alone, can have. More importantly, by working this way, I feel I can best ensure that the student gets the highest quality materials I can possibly produce at the lowest possible price point.

6) My lack of focus on marketing (as well as my utter ineptitude at it) is probably a big reason for what you perceive as a relative lack of activity on this site thus far. I’m used to it — I went through this with the release of the Trainer study guide as well — the first few months it was out very few people heard about it and sales were fairly abysmal — but those who did find it appreciated their experiences and the popularity of the book grew organically. My hope and expectation is that the same thing will happen with this website.

Having said all that, I also believe that —

1) Your choice of which study resources to utilize is indeed a very important one, and you shouldn’t make it based on what I tell you or what anyone else tells you.

2) Every student is different, and the value of an LSAT learning product is largely based on fit — what is very useful for one student might be less so for another.

And so what I encourage you to do is thoroughly investigate, for yourself, each of the learning products that you are most interested in, and to make your decisions based on the actual impact you experience — don’t limit your options unnecessarily at the get go, and instead give yourself a chance to try out all attractive tools to find the one(s) that work best for you.

To that end, if you don’t want to buy the Trainer to see if you’ll find it useful, I offer eight chapters of it — roughly ⅕ of the book — for free on the Trainer website — http://www.thelsattrainer.com/lsat-trainer-sample-chapters.html — if you spend an hour or two with those, I’m sure you’ll know whether the Trainer will be useful to you or not.

The last thing I’ll say is that I’m happy to offer my friendship to you whether you use the Trainer or not — if you ever need any help, come on by, and I’ll do my best to be of use to you —

MK

[james-kim528]

Thanks for the response Sarah. I appreciate the input.

Actually Mike, to be honest, I was sold from the get go. After reading the free samples of the book, and all the instrucational blog posts I instantly bought the book. I felt as if you really had a strong grasp and understanding on the LSAT and how students go about it, it was almost as if you named all my problems, and explained in a very simple way as to why they are problems.

Thus, the real reason why I posted this was because I wanted to know what was in it for you, or what is your motivation, and I got my answer from #5. By the way, the statistics are really impressive.

I’m excited to start this journey with your book, as a veteran of the LSAT (this is going to be my second time), this book actually got me really excited to start studying again, I believe this will be able to get me the improvements that I always wanted.

I am going to include some points that I enjoyed in the introduction ch, I want to provide you with my unique insight on why I was attracted-so you could use this information some way-as a thank you for providing a means of studying that sparks excitement without breaking my wallet: (I took a two month Testmasters course, and paid an extra 700 for the extended online version (your website introduced me to velocity, and I wished I saw it before-hand)).

1. Using your own natural ability to answer the problems and having it be as simple and clean as possible. This was never mentioned in Testmasters, I just stuck as closely to mastering their techniques because I believed this was the best way. Once I started thinking for myself after three months of failing, I was able to break into the 160s and have a stronger grasp on LR. & being simple and clean, haven’t tried this yet, because I’m not that far in the book, but I really like the idea behind it. I did almost every LR problem because I thought the more I did the more I would understand what they would do, and nothing would surprise me come test day. The idea of only focusing on two or three fundamental problems is interesting.
2. I was totally “drawn to learning systems that are technical and (seemingly) sophiscated!” In fact, I didn’t know there are different ways or techniques to solving a problem.
3. Training the elephant, training the unconcious. Again, never mentioned in Testmasters, very attractive idea.
4. Focusing on skills and habits. This instantly caught my attention. I gauged my readiness by doing PT tests. The month before the LSAT, I took 6 PTs a week. Taking a day off for the Lord’s day, got to give thanks, you know,  and from there it would be wildly inconsistent, and the reviews wouldn’t be that meaningful. I couldn’t grasp where I had problems, actually I believed that given enough time I would be able to figure out every LR problem, and my problem was just with timing. I was trying to somehow figure out a way I could create more time by making the easier ones easier or the hard ones easier, thus, test after test I was focusing on my timing.But using skills-and I love the quote because I think this is an awesome idea-“I am not confident about this logical reasoning quesiton because I don’t think I am accurate at doing Y.” For me it was, “okay, I’m not ready because I’m scoring X.” But to think of it this way is genius because first you could grasp where you’re weak, drill it, then move on. The outcome, you are confident you can answer that type of LR on test day with ease and grace and move on.

I’m excited to start this journey Mike, expect me to be an avid user on this site, and I’ll do some free promoting!

-James Kim

[trasi28]

Mr. Mike Kim, I absolutely Trust You and not blindly. Your book is all that you say it is and the clarity in your videos on youtube are the reason I was attractive to all things/learning pertaining to Mr. Mike Kim. You responded to me the other day regarding the test booklets I should purchase, and when I look in my inbox, there is no message there. I can’t locate your response or reread your response to me. Please help!
On lsac.org, I see “The 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests™ series
Online Price: $24.00” IS this correct?
Thank you!! And good price!

[Mike Kim]

Ha – suckered another one! 🙂

Thanks for trusting in me, James — I hope the Trainer helps you get to a point where you feel like you have a genuine shot at taking this exam fully prepared and at your very best — if that happens, I’m confident you’ll end up with a score that puts a big smile on your face —

Excited to see what you think of the book — thanks again for the comments, and if you run into any trouble, you know where to find me — mk