#8 - Must Be True

[avengingangel]

Hi there - I checked A off as an immediate loser because it says "but others served exclusively in one court or the other." We don't know that to be necessarily true, because, according to the passage: "there was some overlap of personnel between the civil bar and the ecclesiastical bar." (Lines 42-43) From what I know about the word SOME in the LSAT, that means at least one person overlapped, possibly all.

Any thoughts?? Thanks. I will note that I'm taking the exam on Saturday...

[David Boyle]

Hi there - I checked A off as an immediate loser because it says "but others served exclusively in one court or the other." We don't know that to be necessarily true, because, according to the passage: "there was some overlap of personnel between the civil bar and the ecclesiastical bar." (Lines 42-43) From what I know about the word SOME in the LSAT, that means at least one person overlapped, possibly all.

Any thoughts?? Thanks. I will note that I'm taking the exam on Saturday...

Hello avengingangel,

Sometimes people can take things too literally, at the expense of common sense. "Some" might mean "all" on the logical reasoning portion, or maybe even the reading comprehension portion, of the LSAT. In a reading passage, though, "some" probably means what it means in regular English, i.e., "some but not all". If the passage meant to say there was total overlap (an unlikely occurrence in the first place), it would probably have said so.

Hope this helps,
David

[lathlee]

A) was one of my final consideration as well but I took it off cuz I didn't see any clear and direct supporting text where "Some English lawyers who practiced in civil courts also practiced in church courts, but others served exclusively in one court or the other" but I saw E) was supported by line 51-54.

[Francis O'Rourke]

Lines 51 - 54 give us evidence for the richness of medieval English church records. These lines do not compare the English church records at the time to the civil records. Answer choice (E) is thus unsupported.

[tetsuya0129]

I would like to share my two cents for those suffering about why the latter part of A being supported.

I eventually came to accept it after reviewing Line 38-43. It's a short argument:

some overlap of lawyers with civil bar and those with church bar.
-----
Thus, church law lawyers do not more likely to lapse than civil law lawyers do.

This is a comparative argument between these two types of lawyers. So If "some" here means "probably all", then the Author cannot logically make a comparative statement in conclusion. In other words, it order to say A is not less than B, A and B must be two different subjects. Thus we can infer that A and B completely cannot be completely overlapped.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi tetsuya!

Thanks for sharing your perspective! Yes, "some" in this case really does just mean "some." It wouldn't make sense for it to mean total overlap in the context of the argument the author is making. Good job!

Best,
Kelsey