#2 - The law firm of Sutherlin, Pérez, and Associates is one

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Question Classification. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[med2law]

In retrospect, I see how (C) can be as correct as (D), which I chose. But I'm afraid I will struggle with a question like this in the future if I don't understand how (D) is incorrect.

I prephrased this question by thinking, for example, "just because the batting average of a team is really high doesn't mean that the pitcher's batting average is high. That doesn't mean the pitcher is not a member of the team." So, I prephrased with this in mind. And I thought the stimulus implied that Dalton was not a member of the Sutherlin & Associates because he did not have a high acquittal rate. This is why I selected (D).

Now, I do see, even with my prephrase, how (C) is equally correct. So I must be missing something. If I had selected (C), then my prephrase would have led me to believe that the "group characteristic" is the 90% acquittal rate. But is the group characteristic in fact the "primary specialization in criminal defense cases?" If that is the case, then how should I have known to focus on "primary specialization" instead of "acquittal rate" as the group characteristic? I am assuming this is the source of my confusion, but maybe I am completely missing something else.

Really looking forward to hearing back. Thanks!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi med2law!

When you're prephrasing Flaw questions, you want to be really specific about what the conclusion is and what the premises leading to that conclusion are. All flaws boil down to the premises do not fully prove the conclusion. So you're just being asked why the premises as stated do not fully prove the conclusion as stated.

Premise: SP&A's primary specialization is criminal defense cases
Premise: Dalton's primary specialization is divorce cases
Conclusion: Dalton is not a member of SP&A

So the author concludes that Dalton cannot be a member of SP&A because he does not specialize in criminal defense cases and SP&A does specialize in criminal defense cases. That maps onto answer choice (C) perfectly: the author "concludes that someone is not a member of a group on the grounds that that person does not have a characteristic that the group as a whole has."

Answer choice (D) states: "takes a high rate of success among the members of a group to indicate that the successes are evenly spread among the members." The conclusion of the argument was that Dalton is not a member of SP&A, not that the success of the firm is evenly spread among its members. The sentence about the high success rate of the firm is actually pretty incidental to this argument. It is not used to support that Dalton is not a member of the firm--the direct support for that is that his primary specialization is divorce cases. No conclusion is made about what Dalton's success rate is or is not. At most, the sentence about their high acquittal rate just strengthens the first sentence about SP&A's specialty being criminal defense cases. But it is not directly tied to the main conclusion, which is just about whether or not Dalton is a member of the firm.

Focus on breaking down that argument structure!

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[med2law]

Thank you Kelsey. I see now that I was quite evidently thrown by the acquittal rate statistic, and dog-gone-it if the test makers didn't know I existed before they wrote this question! Just in case someone else like me comes across this forum, let me explain why I, personally, got it wrong. Here is how my mind worked when I completed (incorrectly) this question:

"Criminal defense, okay, acquittal rate of 90%. Alright. Oh, Dalton does divorce. Can divorce attorneys even have acquittal rates? Well, I don't know. Seems like a different metric would be used to measure success in divorce court. Oh my goodness, (C)!"

Obviously, I was incorrect. But gosh darn it! I feel preyed upon! I was definitely had.

Thanks again, Kelsey.

[a.hopp]

I answered this question correctly the first time around, and missed it the second (oops).

Clearly, I understood why C is correct at some point, but could you explain why E is incorrect?

E says the argument "states a generalization based on a selection that is not representative of the group about which the generalization is supposed to hold true."

I suppose "Dalton cannot be a member" is not necessarily a generalization, but I interpreted D as assuming Dalton could not be a member because he specializes in divorce cases, which is not general of the firm as a whole as its specialty is criminal defense cases. Dalton, the selection, is not representative of the group who are generalized to primarily specialize in criminal defense cases.

I'm not sure if I misread this answer choice or over-read/over-interpreted myself into a wrong answer the second time around.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi a.hopp,

The flaw in the stimulus is very specific flaw called an error of division, commonly known as a whole-to-part flaw. The way the flaw works is when one assumes that a characteristic of the whole group (organization, team, etc.) applies to each member or any specific member of that group.

For example, even if Team A is the best football team in the country, that does not mean that the quarterback of Team A is necessarily the best quarterback in the country.

Answer choices describing this flaw often use words like "part," "whole," or "member," as Answer C does.

Answer E describes a different flaw known as a biased or unrepresentative sample. This flaw often occurs with surveys or studies in which the group surveyed or studied is somehow different than the group of people for which the argument is drawing a conclusion.

For example, if a survey of college students was conducted about student loan forgiveness, they may have differ views on the subject than the rest of the population. If the argument then concluded that "most people think student loan forgiveness is a great idea" based only on a survey of college students, that would be a biased sample flaw.

The argument here is not drawing a general conclusion based on an unrepresentative sample. That would have happened if the argument concluded that most or all of attorneys at the law firm specialize in divorce based on the fact that Dalton (who we know is not typical of the other attorneys at the law firm) specializes in divorce.

These flaws are described in more detail in lesson 7 of the PowerScore LSAT course and in chapter 15 of The Logical Reasoning Bible. Familiarizing yourself with these flaws and the language used on the test to describe them will really help with these questions.