Rob Tauler, Co-Founder
LSAT Freedom, LLC
DECEMBER 23, 2010 \\ was founded by Ron DeSantis, Robert Fojo and Rob Tauler. The three were roommates at Harvard Law School and formed LSAT Freedom in 2010 when they saw the need for affordable and high-quality LSAT prep on the market.
Read the Full Q&A Below
So what would make three Harvard Law graduates with promising legal careers start an LSAT prep company?
Well, we had been doing some tutoring on our own and we started to see the same thing: students were frustrated with the high cost and low return of their traditional LSAT courses, and they signed up for some individual tutoring in the hopes that they could finally get where they needed to be. We compared notes and thought we could provide a better product than what the traditional companies were offering, but — equally importantly — we could do so in a way that was substantially more affordable for students. The results have been very gratifying.
What would you say is the most fundamental LSAT advice you could give to someone thinking about taking the LSAT?
Well, first and foremost, someone thinking about taking the LSAT should prepare for it. This may seem obvious, but many students take no LSAT course their first time around. Ideally, students should spend about ten weeks preparing, with a goal of 2-3 hours per day of studying. This should be focused prep where students try their hand at real LSAT problems and review their responses. Students should avoid study groups and “simulated” LSAT questions that are dissimilar from what will appear on the actual exam. Finally, students should practice by taking real practice exams in test-like conditions. We have built our course around this philosophy because many other courses will prepare their students using hand-picked problems that are useful in the classroom pedagogically but do not best prepare students for the diverse set of problems they may face on exam day.
You have touched upon this already, but can you give me a general overview of the LSAT Freedom approach to LSAT instruction?
When prepping for the LSAT, it is tempting to look for shortcuts or an easy way to get a quick score increase. Generally speaking, however, there is no “magic formula” to improve your LSAT score. Nonetheless, many other LSAT prep services highlight gimmicks for solving LSAT problems and leave students ill-prepared when the makers of the exam inevitably tweak their approach. At LSAT Freedom, we see LSAT prep as an opportunity for students to develop reasoning abilities that will serve them not only on the LSAT, but in law school and in their legal careers. Thus, our approach to LSAT instruction focuses on developing these skills. This is done by reviewing over 1,000 LSAT questions and demonstrating to our students how to approach each one in a straightforward manner, as well as examining the logical foundations of the exam in our tutorials and e-books.
Do you offer any live courses?
LSAT Freedom is completely online. This allows us to cut down our overhead and offer LSAT prep for the lowest prices on the market. Plus, it allows us to focus more on our content, rather than worrying about the logistics of a classroom course.
Since you raise cost, how much does an LSAT Freedom membership cost?
A membership to our course costs just $499, which is less than half of what a traditional LSAT course costs. That includes detailed video explanations of over 1,000 past LSAT questions, access to our video tutorial library explaining strategies for specific problem areas on the exam, our e-books that cover logical reasoning, logic games, and LSAT anxiety, and access to all of the LSAT exams we cover in our video explanations.
Why do students choose to do their LSAT prep online as opposed to a standard LSAT course?
There are a couple of reasons that students find an online LSAT course superior. Primarily, we find that convenience, flexibility, and cost are primary drivers of students to our course. With LSAT Freedom, students can learn any time of day for as long as they like and at their own pace. Moreover, as I mentioned, since we do not have the same overhead as classroom courses, we can pass on the savings to our students.
Does your course provide any feedback to students?
Yes. Under each video explanation and video tutorial, we have an interactive question-and-answer feature that allows students to ask questions to our instructors. The instructors respond in a timely manner, which other students can then review. The goal is not only to provide feedback to students with questions, but also to create an enduring body of LSAT knowledge that students can utilize.
What sort of structure do you provide to your students in terms of what they should study and when?
Since we have a wide array of students with different timelines for the exam, there is no mandatory schedule we have for going over the material. We do have a 6-week and a 10-week LSAT study schedule for those students who want to stick to a study plan. Generally, since our tutorials and our e-books focus on the foundations of the exam, these should be the focus early on, while reviewing actual exams and explanations should be the focus as test day approaches.
Do you feel that students are at any disadvantage taking a course that is online as opposed to in-person?
Absolutely not. Studies have shown, in fact, that online learning is superior to classroom instruction. The U.S. Department of Education recently completed a 12-year meta-analysis of research on the subject, which found that higher education students in online learning generally performed better than those in face-to-face courses. One reason online learning is more effective is the efficiency in which it operates. No time is wasted driving to class, chit-chatting with other students (who only make you nervous anyway), and laughing at canned jokes from the instructor. LSAT preparation online focuses only on what is most important: instruction and practice. Unlike a classroom course, LSAT Freedom allows you to revisit tutorials as many times as you like and review difficult problems for as long as you like until you learn what you need to know. Obviously, in this type of educational setting, you will learn more and much more efficiently. Many of our students, in fact, are former students of other test prep companies that were not satisfied.
So what does the future hold for LSAT Freedom?
We hope that in the coming years that we will change the way people look at LSAT prep. Nowadays, so many people feel that they have to pay up to $1500 to prepare for the LSAT. This simply isn’t so. With technology being what it is, and with studies showing the online learning is superior to classroom learning, I think students will come to find that they can get superior LSAT prep without paying for a corporate LSAT course