Khan Academy’s LSAT prep and resources will no longer be accessible to students preparing for upcoming exams beginning July 1.

Following the decision to remove the exam’s analytical reasoning section — otherwise known as the “logic games” — the six-year partnership between the online-education nonprofit and the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT, is coming to an end.

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

In its place, the LSAC and Pre-Law Advising are encouraging USC students, who are preparing for the upcoming August exam and onward, to use LawHub, a site that will feature updated test preparation resources. 

“When we partnered with Khan Academy, LawHub didn’t exist. The test was still a paper and pencil test. Khan Academy was a way to get test prep to a wider range of people,” said Katya Valasek, director of pre-law advising at the LSAC. “Moving test prep resources into LawHub provides another avenue for people preparing for the test to practice in the technology that they’ll be using on test day.” 

Besides serving as a site that can provide aspiring law students with preparation resources, Valasek said she hopes LawHub will foster a deeper understanding of the application, the profession and law school. 

“We want people to feel like they can come to us if they’re not sure about whether law school is the right path for them,” Valasek said. “We want people to hear from lawyers about what it is they do before they make the investment into starting the application process.”

As the LSAC continues to promote LawHub, Valasek said she hopes the perception of the LSAC would expand beyond just being a company that administers tests.

“We really are looking to be a greater support to individuals going through their journeys to law school and beyond,” Valasek said. 

Some admitted and aspiring law students feel differently. Austin Brewster, a graduate student studying law and an LSAT tutor, said she was concerned that Khan Academy would no longer be a resource students can turn to. Ending the partnership under the justification of taking away logic games didn’t seem like a fair decision, she said. 

“I don’t think that Khan Academy’s strength was in teaching logic games,” Brewster said. “I think their strength was in teaching logical reasoning, which is now two-thirds of a test-taker’s score for the next cycle.”

Alexander Subias, a junior majoring in public policy and aspiring judge, said he viewed the decision to remove logic games as largely positive. 

“It’s good because, to be honest, I don’t really see how logic games … apply to what you’re gonna do in law school,” Subias said. “Logical reasoning, I can really see why it’s important.” 

While the decision to remove logic games remains as a largely positive action, Brewster said she believes the resulting choice to dissolve the partnership creates a knowledge deficit.

“It doesn’t seem like [ the LSAC is] making up for the deficit they’re creating by removing Khan Academy from the resources that LSAT takers can pull from,” Brewster said. “It seems they’re just monopolizing the test-taking industry.” 

Many students applying to law school, including Brewster, have been disadvantaged by the LSAC’s restrictions on fee waivers, she said. The council would consider parents as responsible for paying fees, in the process denying fee waivers to students who, in between tax years, are independents but are not labeled as such. 

In these cases, instead of being encouraged to pursue a legal career, students are barred from entry as a result of financial burdens, Brewster said. 

“I don’t agree with the idea of putting a paywall onto the LSAT,” Brewster said. “It means that people from minority communities who usually do not have the money to face all the costs of becoming a lawyer … can’t pay hundreds of dollars per month for LSAT preparation.”

As a resource, she said Khan Academy, with its free services, met the preparation needs of many people from distinct backgrounds, providing them with strong foundations and serving as a reliable supplement. 

“I know so many law students, right at USC Gould, who used only Khan Academy to meet their needs for preparatory secondary sources when they were studying for the LSAT,” Brewster said.

While LawHub may provide students with updated resources in line with the LSAT changes, Brewster said she believes the switch may still hurt students. 

“When they move [resources] onto LawHub, they aren’t offering the exact same programs and the exact same structure that Khan Academy did,” Brewster said. “So, there’s a huge deficit in foundational knowledge.”

While these concerns remain, in a statement published on Khan Academy’s website, the organization wrote that it believes “students will be best served by having one centralized place to go to prepare for the LSAT” — that place being LawHub. 

Valasek said she hopes that, in creating this change, students won’t feel worried about engaging with the LSAC’s platform and instead will find it to be a reliable and trustworthy source they can turn to as they navigate the law school application process.  

“We hope individuals … feel like they can trust us and they can turn to [the LSAC] for information,” Valasek said.