Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT131 S4 P2 Q11 Explanation

Statutory Law

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TopicsWeakenLaw

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Passage

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. Much of legal education, with its focus on judicial decisions and analysis of cases, can arriving at a speculative interpretation of the law relevant to the client's legal problem.

Lawyers discover fairly soon, however, that much of their practice does not depend on the kind of painstaking analysis of cases that is performed in law school. For example, a lawyer representing the owner of a business can often find an explicit answer as to what the client should do about a that the ability to interpret them accurately is an essential skill for law students to learn.

Another skill that teaching statutory law would improve is synthesis. Law professors work hard at developing their students' ability to analyze individual cases, but in so doing they favor the ability to apply the law in particular cases over the ability to understand the interrelations among laws. In contrast, the study of important because most students intend to specialize in a chosen area, or areas, of the law.

One possible argument against including training in statutory law as a standard part of law school curricula is that many statutes vary from region to region within a nation, so that the mastery of a set of statutes would usually not be generally applicable. There is some truth to this objection; law the study of statutory law an important undertaking even for law schools with a national orientation.

What this question is testing

Weaken

Your task

Find the choice that makes the argument's conclusion less likely to be true.

Common trap

Answers that look negative but attack a claim the argument never relied on.

Winning move

Find the assumption the argument depends on, then pick the choice that undermines it.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
11.

Which one of the following would, if true, most weaken the author’s argument as expressed

Answer choices

  1. Strengthens, if Anything4% picked this

    Many law school administrators recommend the inclusion of statutory law training in the curricula

    This sounds more like people in agreement with the author, not weakening.

  2. Correct84% picked this

    Most lawyers easily and quickly develop proficiency in statutory law through their work experiences

    Why this is right

    This sounds like an independent reason to resist the author's conclusion -- most lawyers will easily / quickly develop proficiency in statutory law as they get into the real world, so no need to waste precious law school time on it.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  3. Author Addressed This5% picked this

    Most lawyers do not practice law in the same geographic area in which they

    This would be something like an objection, except for the fact that the author explicitly took this objection head-on in the last paragraph and explained why statutory expertise would be transferrable to new geographic areas.

  4. Strengthens, if Anything2% picked this

    The curricula of many regionally oriented law schools rely primarily on

    The fact that regional law schools are mainly doing case law is supporting our author's concern: at regional schools, where you could actually study and master that region's set of laws, studying statutory law would be particularly useful.

  5. Author Addressed This6% picked this

    Most lawyers who have undergone training in statutory law are thoroughly familiar with only a

    This sounds like something the 3rd paragraph is fully aware of. The author says "the study of all the statutes of a legal system in a certain small area of the law" would nevertheless enable the students to apply this ability to synthesize in other areas of statutory law. The author is cool with the idea that law school students would emerge with thorough knowledge on a small area of law, because she thinks they will have been exposed to proper methodologies that will guide their ability to learn other sets of statutes.

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