Hi everyone!
Last year I contributed a free RC guide to the community which was warmly received.
I’ve wanted to create a free LR guide ever since then but it was hard trying to figure out where to start.
So, I ended up deciding to dedicate this first post to the stimulus-type you’ll see the most on test day: argument-based questions.
The strategy for analyzing arguments is fairly straightforward: CPR.
- Find your Conclusion
- Find your Premises
- Find your Relationship between the premise(s) and the conclusion (this is where the flaw/assumption live.)
When it comes to arguments on the LSAT, it is critically important to consider the relationship between the premise(s) and the conclusion.
How to find the relationship: After finding the conclusion and premises, ask yourself: Do these premises fully justify the conclusion?
If the answer is yes – the argument is valid. If the answer is no, then the argument is invalid.
Most (but not all) arguments on the LSAT are invalid, and every invalid argument has an assumption – an unfair leap of logic that the argument makes between the premise(s) and the conclusion.
The assumption lives in the relationship. Why does the assumption matter?
The assumption is what we want to weaken in a weakening question. It’s what we want to strengthen in a strengthening question. And it is what we want to describe for a flaw question. (etc.)
IMPORTANT: Our strategy for analyzing argument stimuli does NOT fundamentally change based on question type.
The exact answer will change depending on question type…but the actual analysis of the argument does not.
CPR works on any argument-based question type:
Strengthening, Weakening, Identify the Conclusion, Method of reasoning, argument part, flaw, necessary assumption, sufficient assumption, parallel reasoning/flaw, Pseudo-sufficient assumption, principle questions, agree, disagree, evaluate
Phew. Thank you for taking the time to read this so far – the CPR method is something that I’ve taught for thousands of hours of tutoring and have multiple success stories of students in the 160s/170s using this approach. I wanted to provide this as a free LR resource because I know this test can be really tough and I am fully committed to democratizing the legal field. Also because while many prep materials imply CPR (it’s just the structure of any argument) they typically don’t spell out for us the exact 3 step approach for tackling any argument.
Feel free to reach out with any questions or if you might be interested in tutoring. Good luck!!
P.S: May do a follow up post on how to keep a wrong answer journal (a super important part of improving on LR) if there ends up being interest 🙂