Suff and Nec in Law School

as5324therapy

anyone know how much sufficient and necessary is used in actual law school? just curious

Nilesh S

Its a conceptual tool that definitely helps out in looking at things... its primary purpose is the training of the mind but I can think of some areas where it is helpful such as determining if an issue is precluded in a subsequent suit (provided that no compulsory counterclaim rule exists in the state and contributory negligence is a complete defense) if in a suit for negligence there is a counterclaim for contributory negligence and the court decides that A was negligent and B was contributory negligent. The issue is only precluded if the determination was necessary for coming to the determination. However in this case both findings are independently sufficient for verdict so neither is necessary. But yeah things like that.

Alex Short

I interpret the post above mine to be a clear affirmative of the necessity (see what I did there?) of such an understanding of sufficiency and necessity

LSATisland

It's useful like most logic concepts, but doesn't get the heavy focus that the LSAT places on it, especially the LSAT's focus on the contrapositives and flawed versions.

I think sufficient and necessary conditions were only mentioned explicitly once, and it was by my Torts professor during 1L. I remember thinking, "yes, we are familiar with this, we just took the LSAT." Professor took the pre-modern LSAT, so he might not have known, or he was just reviewing it just in case.