The recent experimental results of Gibson and coworkers, for inelastic scattering of pions on⁷Li, leading to the first five excited states of⁷Li are analyzed using a shell model description including configuration admixtures and representing the transition nucleon densities following Helm model, used extensively in the context of inelastic scattering of electrons. With the transition radii for protons and neutrons chosen to be 3.9 fm and 4.1 fm respectively, good fits to the experimental cross sections are obtained. In contrast to the distorted wave Born approximation (dwba) calculations using optical model codes, we find the present work is able to reproduce the observed maxima and minima precisely. Moreover this analysis reveals the importance of considering the configuration admixtures especially in the transitions to²⁴P_5/2 (7.48 MeV) and²⁴D_7/2 (9.67 MeV) levels.