Academic studies frequently cite the student version (ranging from 8.7 to 9.3) for various research tasks:
Some advanced features, such as automated stepwise model search or certain "modification indices" automation, are disabled. You must request modification indices manually and interpret them yourself—which is actually better pedagogy. lisrel student version
for data screening, cleaning, and generating polychoric correlation matrices, but it is restricted in terms of sample size. Functionality and generating polychoric correlation matrices
Before opening the software, define your (how latent variables are measured by observed indicators) and your Structural Model (the hypothesized relationships between those latent variables). lisrel student version