LSAT Exam Questions

Necessary Assumption:

Reporter: "I called every one of our legislators to ask how much paid leave they offer their staff. About half responded, and most of them reported that they offer their staff more than the minimum amount required by law. This clearly shows that most of our legislators think that the minimum amount is not enough for their own staff."

1. The reporter's argument requires assuming which one of the following?

• A. Some of the legislators who did not respond offer more paid leave than required by law.
• B. Most legislators believe their staff deserves more paid leave than most other employees.
• C. Legislators who offer more paid leave than others were not disproportionately more inclined to hide that fact.
• D. Some legislators who offer the minimum would offer less if the law allowed it.

Answer: C. The reporter sampled only about half of legislators and generalized to "most." This assumes the responders were representative — option C rules out a self-selection bias where legislators offering more leave were more (or less) likely to respond.

Resolve the Discrepancy:

Forestry official: "Lightning was historically the main cause of forest fires in this region. Due to climate change, the number of annual thunderstorms has declined significantly over the last two decades, yet there has been no significant decline in the total area of forest burned per year."

2. Each of the following, if true, helps resolve this discrepancy EXCEPT:

• A. An increasing number of fires have been caused by people.
• B. Lightning-prone tree species have become more pervasive.
• C. There have been fewer but more intense storms with more lightning.
• D. Lightning-started fires often aren't discovered until they cover a wide area.
• E. The region gets less rainfall now, so forests are drier and burn more readily.

Answer: D. Options A, B, C, and E all explain why the burned area stayed high despite fewer storms. Option D is about discovery timing, not about why the total annual area burned failed to decline — so it doesn't resolve the discrepancy.

Valid Inference (Modus Tollens):

"Many companies claim their employees are their most valuable resource. If companies truly believe this, they will report to investors about things like training spend and employee turnover. But very few companies report about these things."

3. If the statements above are true, which must be true?

• A. Very few companies keep records of training spend or turnover.
• B. Most employees believe their company's most valuable resource is its employees.
• C. Very few, if any, companies actually believe employees are their most valuable resource.
• D. Investors usually want to know about training spend and turnover.

Answer: C. This is modus tollens: (Truly believe → report to investors); very few report; therefore very few truly believe.

Flaw in Reasoning:

Contractor: "Most interior walls of houses are not structural walls. If a wall is not structural, it's safe to remove it. This wall is in the interior of this house. Therefore, it's definitely safe to remove this wall."

4. Which most accurately describes a flaw in this reasoning?

• A. It fails to define what's required to safely remove a wall.
• B. It focuses on structural walls without explaining their importance.
• C. It uses "structural" inconsistently.
• D. It generalizes about all houses from one wall.
• E. It treats a claim that a wall probably lacks a feature as proof that it definitely lacks it.

Answer: E. "Most interior walls are not structural" only means this wall is probably not structural — the contractor wrongly treats that probability as a certainty ("definitely safe").

Resolve the Discrepancy:

"The design of modern refrigerators makes them nearly 50 percent more efficient than models from several decades ago. Nevertheless, refrigerators now, on average, use significantly more electricity than those earlier models did."

5. Which most helps resolve this apparent discrepancy?

• A. There's a much greater range of models available now.
• B. Electricity costs less in real terms than it used to.
• C. More families own two or more refrigerators.
• D. New refrigerators are considerably larger than earlier models.
• E. More families own refrigerators than before.

Answer: D. Efficiency is energy used per unit of volume cooled. A much larger refrigerator can be 50% more efficient per cubic foot yet still use more total electricity because it's cooling far more space.

Reading Comprehension — Inference:

Passage excerpt: defenders of literary minimalism argue that by eliminating detailed exposition, minimalist writers grant readers freedom to form their own impressions, and encourage skepticism toward the "unchallengeable authority" conventional fiction writers adopt over their stories' meaning.

6. It can be most reasonably inferred that the author holds which view about fiction?

• A. It should reflect both positive and negative aspects of human experience.
• B. It should refrain from suggesting motives for characters' actions.
• C. It should invite readers to recognize the narrator's incompleteness.
• D. It should offer readers the chance to expand the range of their experiences.
• E. It should convey its meanings clearly and directly.

Answer: D. Later in the passage, the author argues readers seek fiction precisely to expand their range of experience vicariously through characters — so the author views fiction's job as offering that expanded experience, a standard the author uses to critique minimalism.