Q14

[jennifer]

I do not understand why B is a better answer than A? Can someone please shed some light on this, I can not figure out what I am missing. Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Great question! Answer choice (B) can be taken most directly from lines 22-25 and 31-34.

So let's go look at the incorrect answer choices:

(A) is partially true, but also definitely makes a claim that is not supported in the passage. The author does believe that both regionally- and nationally-orientated law schools have been deficient in statutory law. But the author never suggest that regionally-orientated law schools have been "equally deficient" in covering case law.
(C) is unsupported. The author never claims that lawyers trained in statutory law will have a higher level of efficiency in manipulating details of past cases.
(D) is contradicted by the passage. The author claims that seeing all of the statutes of a particular region actually helps the law student see the statutes as a coherent whole. The author does suggest that statutes in one region may not be applicable to other regions, but never suggests that we should look at the statutes of various regions, but rather all of the statutes from a particular region.
(E) is unsupported. The author discusses the advantages of studying statutory law, but never limits it to those who will specialize, but rather suggests that since most lawyer specialize, the ability to see a coherent whole is particularly important, but not that including statutory law in a legal education is not important for those who do not specialize.

Hope that helps!

[huskybins]

Although it is a most-likely-to-agree question, I still think it would be necessary to expect a high-degree coherence between the original text in the passage and the answer choice. While in B, it refers "resolve legal questions" to "interpret them (statutes) accurately " in line 25 for a proof of its qualification as the correct answer, which is what I cannot agree. From the passage, there is nowhere suggesting a lawyer who can interpret statutes accurately must be able to resolve legal questions, or vice versa. It may also be true in realities that a lawyer interpreting very well the statutes but fails to resolve the legal issues.

Furthermore, in passage the author emphasizes the importance to training "law school students" to acquire such an ability above, which seems to me a quite different concept from training lawyers in statutory laws as stated in B, which is more like a post-career training.

So it is quite questionable to me in getting this question right. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[ohthatpatrick]

(B) doesn't guarantee that someone with training in statutory law would be able to resolve all legal questions with ambiguous statutes.

It just claims that training would help them in that endeavor.

So the existence of situations in which someone IS adequately trained in statutory law but still cannot definitely resolve a legal question would not impact (B) at all.

Lines 21-25 definitely convey that the author thinks that learning how to interpret statutes accurately is related to helping us when statutes' meanings and their applicability are not obvious.

Hope this helps.