FTC Labels ABA a Monopoly (Ep. 537)
Thinking LSAT
Nathan Fox and Ben Olson
4.6 • 886 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The FTC submitted a letter to the Texas Supreme Court supporting its decision to drop the ABA as the state’s official accreditor. Ben and Nathan agree that the ABA has been slow to modernize and often lags behind student needs, but they don’t fully align with the FTC’s reasoning.
Also in this episode:
- A listener asks whether to choose a part-time or full-time law program.
- Whether to cancel an official score that comes in lower than a prior LSAT.
- A personal statement with an unusually bold opening.
Links Mentioned:
FTC Letter to Texas Supreme Court
Check out all of our “What’s the Deal With” segments
Get caught up with our Word of the Week library
Questions? help@thinkinglsat.com
0:00 When to Take Practice Tests
6:11 FTC Claims the ABA is a Monopoly
21:43 Full-Time vs. Part-Time Law Programs
29:47 Tips from Departing Demons
35:02 Performing Worse on the First Section
43:19 Cancelling a Lower Score
46:45 Personal Statement Gong Show
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Texas Supreme Court moving toward accrediting Texas law schools themselves, the Federal Trade Commission has commented. |
| 0:09.0 | The ABA is dominated by practicing attorneys who have strong interest in limiting competition. |
| 0:14.4 | Wait, hold on. The Supreme Court is equally run by attorneys. |
| 0:30.1 | Below and welcome to episode 537 of the Thinking ElSat podcast. |
| 0:31.0 | I'm Van Olsen. |
| 0:32.4 | With me is Nathan Fox. |
| 0:36.7 | We're the co-founders of Elsaid Demon.com and the Elsaid Demon Daily podcast. We have an email here from |
| 0:39.4 | Hadeel subject taking practice tests. Hi, Demon team. I'm on my third round of studying for the |
| 0:46.1 | LSAT this time using the demon. My diagnostic was a 156 and my official score in June of 2024 was a 163. |
| 0:54.9 | I sat for the exam again in February 2025, but I got a lower score. |
| 1:00.0 | I started studying using the demon in June 2025 and have seen steady progress since. |
| 1:07.2 | I'm wondering what's the best way to approach taking practice tests. |
| 1:14.6 | I've only taken one so far in October, where I scored a 168. I held off on taking a PT for so long since I wasn't seeing the accuracy scores I wanted. |
| 1:20.6 | Now that I'm around the 85 to 100% accuracy range. |
| 1:28.5 | Should I be taking practice tests every few weeks? |
| 1:31.4 | Every week? |
| 1:32.6 | I'm not sure what the best schedule would be. |
| 1:35.6 | Thanks so much for your help. |
| 1:36.7 | You guys are the best regards. |
| 1:38.5 | A deal. |
| 1:39.1 | What do you think? |
| 1:41.1 | Yeah, generally speaking, |
... |
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