A circuit and method for reducing intersymbol interference due to pre-cursor distortion. A first set of circuit elements located along a first circuit path of a receiver device process an analog input signal of the receiver to form an equalized representation of the input signal. A second set of circuit elements are located along a second circuit path that has lower latency than the first circuit path. The second set of circuit elements form a scaled signal as one of the following: a scaled representation of the input signal, an inverted scaled representation of the input signal, a scaled derivative of the input signal, and an inverted scaled derivative of the input signal. The scaled signal is combined with the equalized representation to cancel out a pre-cursor portion of the equalized representation.