LSAT PrepTest 44 Section 1 Question 7 Explanation | Reading Comprehension

I didn't write the following blog post. It was already on the blog when I took over the URL. The following blog post may contain mistakes. -Steve

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This Reading Comprehension question is from the October 2004 LSAT.

Let's recall the paragraph summaries we wrote for this passage when we did Question 18:

Paragraph 1 = CAW pays for legal services

Paragraph 2 = Lawyers concerned

Paragraph 3 = Plan hurts legal services

So, the mention of marketing devices in line 43 that the question asks about is in the context of the final paragraph. That paragraph, on the whole, talks about how the plan hurts legal services. Looking at lines 40-47, to get a good idea of the immediate context of line 43, we see that the mention of marketing devices is to show that the lawyers in the plan would be less experienced (since they're the ones that would benefit from the plan's help in marketing). That means lower quality legal services, the author is saying. This fits in the paragraph as one way in which the plan hurts the quality of legal services.

So, let's pre-phrase an answer, something like "the purpose of mentioning that is to show how the plan hurts legal services by providing less knowledgeable lawyers." This fits A very well. Let's go through the other answer choices quickly:

A) Correct.

B) Outside of the scope of that part of the passage. It's talking about how the plan will hurt legal services, not about how the plan's proponents think it will help legal services. So, that can't be the purpose of that part of the passage.

C) The opposite of what we want. The author says this is a bad point of the plan, not a benefit. Our paragraph summary helps here, showing us that the point of the paragraph is to show the bad points of the legal services plan.

D) The opposite of what we want. It's the author saying that this part of the plan is bad. He never attributes this to anyone other than himself.

E) Beyond this part of the passage's scope. The author says nothing about why inexperienced lawyers support the plan or even if they support it at all. So, this cannot be the main point the author was trying to make in and around line 43.

Remember:

1) Use paragraph summaries that you make while reading the passage on as many questions as you can, since they give you a good overview of where the passage is going. Note how useful they were on this question in eliminating wrong answer choices.

2) Pre-phrase an answer whenever possible, to save time in looking through the wrong answer choices and find the right one more quickly. Pre-phrasing is usually possible when there is only one possible answer (even if it can be phrased in a number of ways). That's the case here, since it's asking for the main purpose of line 43, and there is only one main purpose, of course.

3) Look out for answer choices that are outside the passage's scope (or the scope of the part of the passage we're looking at, if the question specifies a certain part) and that are the opposite of the right answer (oddly enough, if you aren't careful, these can trip you up). Paragraph summaries and pre-phrasing help here.