LSAT 74, Reading Comprehension, Q9, LSATHacks

RC Question 9 Explanation, by LSATHacks

DISCUSSION: To prepare for main point questions, you should always ask yourself “why is the author telling me this?”. Pretend they’re a real person, talking to you.

Lines 11-15 are key. They show that the point of the article is to discuss how certain studies indicate that “stealing thunder” can be an effective tactic.

___________

1. This answer is false. Lines 11-12 say that stealing thunder’s effectiveness in actual trials has never been studied.
2. The passage never mentions “predicting jurors’ attitudes”. This answer is designed to mislead you. The only negative to stealing thunder is if the information is very important, see lines 54-59.
3. CORRECT. This covers the whole passage. Paragraph 1 shows that lawyers believe in the effectiveness of stealing thunder. Lines 11-20 show that the rest of the passage will be about the psychological evidence that supports stealing thunder.
   This answer doesn’t mention the negative effects in paragraph 4, but a main point answer doesn’t have to include every bit of information that’s in a passage.
4. This doesn’t match the passage. The passage said that making information readily available was an advantage of stealing thunder. See lines 33-43. If information is widely available, it will be judged to be less important.
5. This is too strong. First, most of the research was psychological research. It was not designed to test stealing thunder’s effectiveness.
   Second, there hasn’t been any direct research testing stealing thunder’s effectiveness in courtrooms (lines 10-11). So we can’t say that stealing thunder has been “vindicated”. The research merely supports the idea that stealing thunder works.

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