June 2010 LSAT Section 5 Question 24

Which one of the following is given by the passage as a reason for the difficulty a lawyer would have in determining ...

melissahamilton316 on February 13, 2020

Contra positives

I feel like for the trap answer on question 2 it would be easier if we did the contrapositive but he didn't do any of them. Is that just to save time?

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SamA on February 14, 2020

Hello @melissahamilton316,

Mehran diagrammed all of the information from the stimulus in the top right corner. You are correct that he didn't do a contrapositive for each statement. When you are very comfortable with sufficient and necessary reasoning, you can see the contrapositives in your mind without writing them down. To me, when I see X - - - > Y, I am automatically thinking not Y - - - - - > not X. I won't always write it down, because it does take time.

However, you are welcome to use any strategy that will help you answer the question. It is ok to over-diagram as you practice your conditional reasoning. As you get better at it, you won't have to diagram quite as much and you will be faster. For now, do whatever it takes to understand the logic and answer the question correctly.