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- Tue Jul 19, 2016 9:36 pm
#27336
Strengthen-CE,#%. The correct answer choice is (D).
This relatively straightforward stimulus presents just two sentences, as follows:
1. The explanation: Defendants who can afford expensive private lawyers are convicted less often than defendants who rely on court-appointed public defenders.
2. What it explains: Criminals who commit lucrative crimes are convicted less often than street criminals.
We're tasked with strengthening that explanation, meaning we need to provide information in an answer choice that supports the connection between lower conviction rates and the use of expensive, private lawyers. This is a causal relationship, where the active reason behind the observed lower rate is the use of private lawyers instead of public defenders.
When strengthening causality there are typically two ways to do it: you can either strengthen it directly by showing the cause and effect coexisting in other instances (or providing further evidence for why the cause and effect are likely to go together), or, less obviously, you can strengthen indirectly by removing from contention some competing, alternate cause.
The first of those two tends to be pretty straightforward, and is easily handled by most test takers. After all you're just adding more clear evidence in support of the relationship in question.
But the indirect strengthening, where you increase the likelihood of a desired cause by eliminating another possible cause, is tricky and, for many people, counterintuitive. Since that's what ultimately happens in this question, let me give you an example of how it might work to better illustrate the concept:
Imagine I tell you that "Pharmacy X is the most popular pharmacy in town because they have the shortest wait times to get prescriptions filled." That's causal: short wait time
popularity. To strengthen, you could go direct and say something like "the average wait time at other pharmacies is 20% longer," or "Pharmacy X has more pharmacists on staff than their competitors, enabling them to process orders extremely quickly." Those would both work, but they're pretty obvious (and thus not terribly valuable if you're a test maker).
But what about the indirect, remove-an-alt-cause approach? Would it help my causal argument here if you learned that "Pharmacy X has the highest prices of any pharmacy in a 200 mile radius"? Prices may seem irrelevant, but consider all the possible reasons besides short wait times that could be behind X's popularity: friendly staff, large inventory, low prices, convenient location...any of those could be the real reason so many people choose Pharmacy X, as each is a cause that could compete with the one (short waits) in my argument. So when we can rule even a single one of those competing causes out, the conclusion's cause becomes a tad more likely. It has less competition, so it's got a better shot at winning/being right. Saying the prices are super high rules out affordability as the alt cause and therefore makes short wait times a slightly improved explanation.
So how does this idea apply in question 23?
As we'll see in the correct answer choice, if we can rule out a different reason—not better attorneys but something else to explain lower conviction rates—then we've made the author's reason (private lawyers) stronger.
Answer choice (A): This answer actually weakens the argument, because it suggests that many street crimes should allow the criminal to afford expensive private attorneys. So why are these criminals convicted more often? There must be another, non-lawyer cause behind it, which attacks the author's view that lawyers are the cause.
Answer choice (B): This answer weakens, too. Instead of supporting the idea that private lawyers are the cause, it shifts the reason for the lower conviction rate to the prosecutors: most are not competent (skilled enough) to handle technical financial cases, and are more skilled/successful at prosecuting street crimes like robbery and simple assault. In other words, the higher conviction rate for street criminals with public defenders isn't due to the lawyers, but to prosecutor abilities. This is a classic alternate cause, and directly attacks the author's view that the lawyers are behind the conviction rate discrepancy.
Answer choice (C): Be careful here. This stimulus is about "rate." not volume ("number"). So it doesn't matter at all how many criminals of various types are convicted. All we care about is the percentage/frequency/rate of conviction. You see this idea a lot in questions with numbers/percentages elements, so be careful not to confuse rate with amount. They don't have to be equivalent.
Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer. As mentioned above, here we're strengthening by removing a competing cause. Specifically, an alternative cause behind the different conviction rates could well be the actual guilt of the defendants. That is, if street criminals (with public defender attorneys) tend to be almost unanimously guilty of the crimes for which they're prosecuted, while white-collar criminals (with pricey private attorneys) are almost always innocent, then the different rates of conviction might not be due to the lawyers at all. They could simply be justice well-served. Accurate verdicts that would likely have been delivered regardless of the defense.
So by saying that there is no difference in rates of people actually committing the two types of crimes (and then employing the two attorney types)—"they're equally guilty when using public or private defense lawyers, but one group still gets off way more often"—we're eliminating an alternative explanation (true guilt) and making the author's explanation (better lawyers) ever so slightly more probable.
Again, this is a tricky idea, but it comes up a fair amount in Strengthen-Causality questions so it's important to understand.
Answer choice (E): And we close with a third weakening answer choice, this time with the alt cause of jury sympathy: it's not that the lawyers are better or worse for the different groups, it's that juries are much more likely to render guilty verdicts for violent crimes (street crimes/public attorney) than for "victimless" crimes (lucrative white-collar/private attorney). So once again it's not lawyers but something else (juries in this case). This would be a great answer for a Weaken question, but it's immediately wrong in Strengthen.
This relatively straightforward stimulus presents just two sentences, as follows:
1. The explanation: Defendants who can afford expensive private lawyers are convicted less often than defendants who rely on court-appointed public defenders. 2. What it explains: Criminals who commit lucrative crimes are convicted less often than street criminals.We're tasked with strengthening that explanation, meaning we need to provide information in an answer choice that supports the connection between lower conviction rates and the use of expensive, private lawyers. This is a causal relationship, where the active reason behind the observed lower rate is the use of private lawyers instead of public defenders.
When strengthening causality there are typically two ways to do it: you can either strengthen it directly by showing the cause and effect coexisting in other instances (or providing further evidence for why the cause and effect are likely to go together), or, less obviously, you can strengthen indirectly by removing from contention some competing, alternate cause.
The first of those two tends to be pretty straightforward, and is easily handled by most test takers. After all you're just adding more clear evidence in support of the relationship in question.
But the indirect strengthening, where you increase the likelihood of a desired cause by eliminating another possible cause, is tricky and, for many people, counterintuitive. Since that's what ultimately happens in this question, let me give you an example of how it might work to better illustrate the concept:
Imagine I tell you that "Pharmacy X is the most popular pharmacy in town because they have the shortest wait times to get prescriptions filled." That's causal: short wait time
popularity. To strengthen, you could go direct and say something like "the average wait time at other pharmacies is 20% longer," or "Pharmacy X has more pharmacists on staff than their competitors, enabling them to process orders extremely quickly." Those would both work, but they're pretty obvious (and thus not terribly valuable if you're a test maker).But what about the indirect, remove-an-alt-cause approach? Would it help my causal argument here if you learned that "Pharmacy X has the highest prices of any pharmacy in a 200 mile radius"? Prices may seem irrelevant, but consider all the possible reasons besides short wait times that could be behind X's popularity: friendly staff, large inventory, low prices, convenient location...any of those could be the real reason so many people choose Pharmacy X, as each is a cause that could compete with the one (short waits) in my argument. So when we can rule even a single one of those competing causes out, the conclusion's cause becomes a tad more likely. It has less competition, so it's got a better shot at winning/being right. Saying the prices are super high rules out affordability as the alt cause and therefore makes short wait times a slightly improved explanation.
So how does this idea apply in question 23?
As we'll see in the correct answer choice, if we can rule out a different reason—not better attorneys but something else to explain lower conviction rates—then we've made the author's reason (private lawyers) stronger.
Answer choice (A): This answer actually weakens the argument, because it suggests that many street crimes should allow the criminal to afford expensive private attorneys. So why are these criminals convicted more often? There must be another, non-lawyer cause behind it, which attacks the author's view that lawyers are the cause.
Answer choice (B): This answer weakens, too. Instead of supporting the idea that private lawyers are the cause, it shifts the reason for the lower conviction rate to the prosecutors: most are not competent (skilled enough) to handle technical financial cases, and are more skilled/successful at prosecuting street crimes like robbery and simple assault. In other words, the higher conviction rate for street criminals with public defenders isn't due to the lawyers, but to prosecutor abilities. This is a classic alternate cause, and directly attacks the author's view that the lawyers are behind the conviction rate discrepancy.
Answer choice (C): Be careful here. This stimulus is about "rate." not volume ("number"). So it doesn't matter at all how many criminals of various types are convicted. All we care about is the percentage/frequency/rate of conviction. You see this idea a lot in questions with numbers/percentages elements, so be careful not to confuse rate with amount. They don't have to be equivalent.
Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer. As mentioned above, here we're strengthening by removing a competing cause. Specifically, an alternative cause behind the different conviction rates could well be the actual guilt of the defendants. That is, if street criminals (with public defender attorneys) tend to be almost unanimously guilty of the crimes for which they're prosecuted, while white-collar criminals (with pricey private attorneys) are almost always innocent, then the different rates of conviction might not be due to the lawyers at all. They could simply be justice well-served. Accurate verdicts that would likely have been delivered regardless of the defense.
So by saying that there is no difference in rates of people actually committing the two types of crimes (and then employing the two attorney types)—"they're equally guilty when using public or private defense lawyers, but one group still gets off way more often"—we're eliminating an alternative explanation (true guilt) and making the author's explanation (better lawyers) ever so slightly more probable.
Again, this is a tricky idea, but it comes up a fair amount in Strengthen-Causality questions so it's important to understand.
Answer choice (E): And we close with a third weakening answer choice, this time with the alt cause of jury sympathy: it's not that the lawyers are better or worse for the different groups, it's that juries are much more likely to render guilty verdicts for violent crimes (street crimes/public attorney) than for "victimless" crimes (lucrative white-collar/private attorney). So once again it's not lawyers but something else (juries in this case). This would be a great answer for a Weaken question, but it's immediately wrong in Strengthen.
Jon Denning
PowerScore Test Preparation
Follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jonmdenning
My LSAT Articles: http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/author/jon-denning
PowerScore Test Preparation
Follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jonmdenning
My LSAT Articles: http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/author/jon-denning
