Least favorite LR question

AlenaLSAT

This question really bothers me. I do not understand it. PT 68-part 2, question 21. This is a disagree question about why law firm decided to settle a case instead of going to trial. Do we need to assume that jury/judge would not award more than the legal fees if the case went to trial? Why are they talking only about settlement and not judgement?

David Wayne

I don't see why you would assume that the legal fees would be would be repaid to them. That would probably act as a weakener to one of their arguments, but we aren't being asked to be evaluative of our speakers' arguments in identifying a point of disagreement; accordingly, we have to accept the positions of both individuals irrespective of their arguments' logical rigor.

Do you understand why E is correct? It may help to rewrite it as a contrapositive, which made it super clear for me.

anne2hoang

The agree/disagree question is simply asking you to “identify” information that is already contained in the passage. Since this is an identification type question, it is not asking you to make any assumptions. You should approach this question differently than you should with the assumption questions.

The way I imagine how the test makers write the agree/disagree questions would be to cut out two paragraphs from two different news articles, then place them side by side. Then ask, “What do these two people agree/disagree on?”

It is very important to note here that the two authors cannot disagree on something that was not said. In other words, the point of agreement/disagreement has to be explicit. The visual cue that you should be looking for is the same word (or phrase) that appears twice in both passages. Find those words and circle them.

For the disagreement questions, these are all wrong answer choices:
- A statement that A and B both agreed on.
- A statement that A mentioned, but B did not.
- A statement that B mentioned, but A did not.
- A statement that neither A nor B talked about.

In question #21, the word that appears in both passages is "settled." Justine and Simon both argues that Pellman "settled" (but for different reasons). Answer choice "E" contains the word "settled." Therefore, "E" is the correct answer choice.

That is basically all there is to it. I hope that clears it up for you.

ikethelsat

Anne summed it up completely. I'd just add that you need to avoid thinking outside the box with the LSAT and focus only on the information that they give you. Doesn't matter if you think the legal reality of the case doesn't make sense, that's completely irrelevant. There's a question in PT 71 (SPOILER) where the correct answer to a 'must be true' question is that for an economy to be successful, communication MUST have occurred between scientists and young people.

Even though I knew it was the right answer, I hesitated for a second because it was such a weird, bold, sweeping statement. But the LSAT does that all the time. I imagine people with medical knowledge especially must find it hard to contain their outside extra knowledge in the face of the odd statements the LSAT makes you mark as correct. But you just have to do it, and remember that the LSAT universe is not yours, but a parallel one where only the text is real.

AlenaLSAT

Thank you guys. Being a paralegal, questions involving legal issues make me think about what happens in real life. I forget, I cannot do it. You are right that if you look just at the information in the stimulus, and solve this question technically, it is easy to see why answer choice E is correct.