PT109 · S1 · Q22 Lawyer: Did Congleton assign the best

Did this lawyer need to assume (takes for granted) that Congleton was not forced to assign the people she did? Yes! If we negate that it becomes an objection we can use. "Yes, counsel, Congleton did assign the best people to the job. But that's not because she wanted the project to succeed. It's because she was forced to assign those people to the project. If she had had the choice, she would have assigned incompetent people to the project, since she wanted it to fail." The lawyer interprets Congleton's assignment of top notch people as an indication of her desire for the project to succeed, so the lawyer assumes it was volitional.

Since this begins with fails to consider / ignores possibility, we can ask ourselves whether this idea would weaken. It sure would. "Yes, counsel, Congleton did assign the best people to the job. But that's not because she wanted the project to succeed. It's because she knew that these people wouldn't work well together, and she wanted the project to fail." The lawyer interprets Congleton's assignment of top notch people as an indication of her desire for the project to succeed, but this is pointing out a Part vs. Whole assumption that just because the best individuals are assigned to a project doesn't mean you'll end up with the best (or even a good) team.

Since this begins with fails to consider / ignores possibility, we can ask ourselves whether this idea would weaken. It does. The lawyer is being too extreme in saying, "So, you lied to the court when you said Congleton wanted the project to fail". Witnesses can provide untrue testimony, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are lying. They might have no intention to deceive; they are just reporting their true impressions of the matter and those impressions happen to be wrong. The lawyer should have said, "So, you were wrong when you said earlier that ..." This answer is making that sound as weird as possible by saying, "The witness wasn't lying. They were just confused. They knew that Congleton assigned the best people and thus should have inferred that Congleton wanted the project to succeed, but they failed to infer that." As we said earlier, on EXCEPT questions it's common for three of the valid answers to work one way and the fourth to work a different way. The other three answers we're eliminating are saying, "Yes, she assigned the best people, but she still wanted the project to fail, after all, [answer choice]." This answer is objecting by saying, "Yes, she wanted the project to succeed, but that doesn't mean the witness was lying, after all, [answer choice]."

Since this begins with fails to consider / ignores possibility, we can ask ourselves whether this idea would weaken, and it would. "Yes, counsel, Congleton did assign the best people to the job. But she didn't allow them to succeed; she deprived them of the time and resources they would need, because she wanted the project to fail." This allows us to show how you could appoint the best people to a project (making it look like you're rooting for the project to succeed) but then still undermine it or sabotage it in other ways, because you actually want it to fail.