PrepTest 131 - Section 4 - Passage 2 - Question 11

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A proficiency in understanding, applying, and even formulating statutes—the actual texts of laws enacted by legislative bodies—is a vital aspect of the practice of law, but statutory law is often given too little attention by law schools. ███

Author's perspective · Statutes are critical to practicing law, but not given enough attention in law school

Current law school approach · Focuses on judicial decisions

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Benefit of changing focus · Much actual work is based on how statutes apply

Sometimes how statutes apply are obvious. But other times it's not, so it's important for law students to learn to interpret statutes.

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Additional benefit of changing focus · Ability to synthesize laws

Caselaw focus doesn't do good job of helping students understand interrelations among laws. Focus on statutes helps students see how laws fit together. This can help when students encounter other areas of law.

Potential objection · Statutes are different from region to region

Concession · Specific knowledge of statutes isn't usually transferrable between regions

So a focus on statutes may not seem appropriate for nationally-oriented schools.

Response to objection · Skills acquired in mastering a set of statutes are transferable

Focus on statutes is still important for national-oriented schools.

Passage Style

Critique or debate

Problem-analysis

11.

Which one of the following ██████ ██ █████ ████ ██████ ███ ████████ ████████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ████████

Question Type

WSE (RC)

The author’s conclusion is that schools should give more focus to teaching statutory law. His main premises are that legal practice frequently requires the ability to interpret statutes (P2) and that understanding statutes helps students and lawyers to see the big-picture relationships between laws in a given area of specialization (P3). We should look for any key assumptions. The author assumes that on-the-job training doesn’t do at least as good a job at building these skills. (If on-the-job training were good enough, why should schools provide that training?)

Many law school ██████████████ █████████ ███ █████████ ██ █████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ████████

This aligns with author’s own argument: law schools should include statutory law training in their curricula. The author never suggests nor assumes that law schools themselves are oblivious to the need for statutory law training. If anything, (A) strengthens the author’s argument by showing that his recommendation has support from many law schools.

Most lawyers easily ███ ███████ ███████ ███████████ ██ █████████ ███ ███████ █████ ████ ███████████ █████ ███ ███████

One of the author’s premises for why schools should focus more on statutory law is that practicing lawyers need proficiency in statutory law (see P2). But if lawyers already easily and quickly develop that proficiency through on-the-job training, there’s much less rationale for schools to provide that training.

90%

Most lawyers do ███ ████████ ███ ██ ███ ████ ██████████ ████ ██ █████ ████ ████████ ███ ███████

The author accounts for this possibility in P4. In fact, the purpose of P4 is to protect his argument from this line of attack. He notes that even though a given set of statutes in one region isn’t applicable to other regions, the skills you develop by studying any set of statues are still transferable from one place to another.

The curricula of ████ ██████████ ████████ ███ ███████ ████ █████████ ██ ████████ ██ ██████

This just further reinforces a point the author already makes: law schools put a lot of emphasis on case analysis.

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The author argues in P4 that even though knowledge of a given set of statutes in one region isn’t applicable to other regions, the skills you develop by studying any set of statues are still transferable from one place to another. (E) is consistent with this argument: lawyers only learn a certain narrow set of statues, but that’s fine, because what matters is that they’ve gained the underlying skills in analyzing and interpreting statutes.

PrepTest 131 - Section 4 - Passage 2 - Question 11

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