The world’s attention (and my TV) has been on the World Cup. However, each team’s journey to the World Cup started long before its opening match. In fact, qualifying for this four-week tournament started more than three years ago. It might not be obvious, but the World Cup and the LSAT have a lot in common.

If you’re just starting to think about law school and the LSAT, one of the first things you’ll need to figure out is when to start studying. As you prepare, keep in mind that on Test Day you will have two key things in common with the World Cup squads competing right now in South Africa:

1. Your success or failure will be formally decided within several pressure-packed hours

2. Your likelihood of success will have been determined well in advance

A team’s build-up to the World Cup is important for several reasons. Friendly matches help a coach evaluate his team’s strengths and weaknesses, so he can better address them. Practice time allows the players to get a feel for each other and their coaches, so they’re prepared to work together well when it counts. Too little time preparing can lead to disaster. However, too much practice can lead to a team being worn out by the time the World Cup begins.

Similarly, in your pre-LSAT studying you will need some time to assess strengths and weaknesses. The week before the test is a pretty bad time to discover that you don’t understand logic games. However, if you’re aware of that struggle early, you’ll have plenty of time to address it. Also, you want to have time to get a feel for the test. My students are often surprised to realize that the logical reasoning section alone has 12 different question types. You need enough study time to learn how to distinguish each of those types and learn to deal with each one effectively and efficiently. That’s no small task.

So how close to Test Day can you cut it before you have to start studying? One month is the absolute minimum. And if you are taking the one-month approach, an hour a night after work just isn’t going to get you the best score you’re capable of. You should be prepared to devote a significant portion of your life to the LSAT because there is a lot to learn about this test.

On the high end, the maximum I would recommend is six months, and even that is a lot. The dangers of starting too late are clear; the dangers of starting too early are less obvious, but equally serious. Many students who start studying for the LSAT too far in advance of their test date lack urgency, so they tend not to invest much effort into studying and are lulled into a false sense of security until the test is only weeks away. Others have the opposite problem. They study so much over such a long period of time that when Test Day rolls around they are completely burned out and not ready to give their peak performance. I had one student that took every full-length PrepTest that was available, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 tests. By the time she took the one test that counted she was too burned out on the LSAT to do her best, and her score reflected that.

The perfect time to start studying for the LSAT is about three and a half months before your test date. You have plenty of time to prepare, take a class and practice as long as you take your studying seriously, but not so much time that you will burn yourself out. Just like those World Cup teams, you want to make sure that you’re ready to give your best when it matters most.