The fewer restrictions there are on the advertising of legal services, the more lawyers there are who advertise their services,...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
The fewer restrictions there are on the advertising of legal services, the more lawyers there are who advertise their services, and the lawyers who advertise a specific service usually charge less for that service than lawyers who do not advertise. Therefore, if the state removes any of its current restrictions, such as the one against advertisements that do not specify fee arrangements, overall consumer legal costs will be lower than if the state retains its current restrictions.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the argument concerning overall consumer legal costs?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| The fewer restrictions there are on the advertising of legal services, the more lawyers there are who advertise their services |
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| and the lawyers who advertise a specific service usually charge less for that service than lawyers who do not advertise |
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| Therefore, if the state removes any of its current restrictions, such as the one against advertisements that do not specify fee arrangements, overall consumer legal costs will be lower than if the state retains its current restrictions |
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Argument Flow:
The argument moves from two related premises about lawyer advertising behavior to a conclusion about consumer costs. First, we learn that fewer restrictions lead to more advertising. Second, we see that advertising leads to lower prices. Finally, the author concludes that removing restrictions will lower overall costs.
Main Conclusion:
If the state removes current advertising restrictions, overall consumer legal costs will be lower than if restrictions remain in place.
Logical Structure:
The argument uses a chain of causation: fewer restrictions → more lawyers advertise → lower prices → lower overall consumer costs. The logic assumes that the relationship between advertising and lower prices will translate directly into lower overall costs for consumers.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would reduce our belief in the conclusion that removing advertising restrictions will lead to lower overall consumer legal costs.
Precision of Claims
The argument makes specific claims about quantity (more lawyers advertising), activity (advertising behavior), and quality (lower costs for advertised services). The conclusion is about overall consumer legal costs being lower.
Strategy
To weaken this argument, we need to find scenarios that show how removing restrictions might NOT lead to lower overall consumer legal costs. We can't question the given facts (fewer restrictions = more advertising, advertisers charge less), but we can introduce new information that disrupts the logical chain leading to the conclusion about overall costs.
This tells us the state has already removed some advertising restrictions, but this doesn't weaken the argument about what will happen if they remove more restrictions. If anything, this might provide supporting evidence if those previous changes led to lower costs. This doesn't attack the logical connection between removing restrictions and lower consumer costs.
This states the state probably won't remove all restrictions, but the argument only claims that removing 'any' restrictions will help. The argument doesn't require removing all restrictions to work, so this doesn't weaken the conclusion about the benefits of removing some restrictions.
This compares the quality of services between advertising and non-advertising lawyers, but quality isn't relevant to the argument. The argument is purely about costs and pricing, not service quality. This information is outside the scope of the argument's reasoning chain.
This says lawyers would continue specifying fees even if not required, but this doesn't impact the core relationship between advertising and pricing. Whether lawyers voluntarily specify fees or are required to do so doesn't affect whether removing restrictions leads to lower consumer costs.
This directly attacks the causal assumption in the argument. The argument assumes that advertisers charge less because they advertise, but if most advertising lawyers don't lower their fees when they begin advertising, then getting more lawyers to advertise won't create more price reductions. This breaks the chain: if current advertisers didn't reduce prices due to advertising, then increasing advertisers won't increase price reductions, so overall consumer costs won't necessarily decrease.