Free LSAT Practice Test

Editorial: In the city of Fairview, municipal bus ridership increased by 25 percent over the past three years. During the same period, the city implemented a program offering free unlimited bus passes to all downtown municipal employees. Therefore, the municipal bus pass program was the primary cause of the overall increase in citywide bus ridership. The editorial's argument depends on assuming which one of the following?

A recent psychological study found that adults who regularly participate in recreational team sports report significantly lower levels of chronic work-related stress than adults who do not engage in team sports. The researchers concluded that participating in team sports actively reduces an individual's chronic work-related stress. The reasoning in the researchers' argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the ground that it:

Agricultural Analyst: Crop yield losses due to insect pests on organic tomato farms in the region dropped by 40% following the introduction of predatory ladybug beetles. However, neighboring conventional farms that applied synthetic chemical pesticides experienced no significant change in pest-related crop losses during the same season. Therefore, biological pest control via natural predators is more effective at controlling tomato insect pests than synthetic chemical pesticides. Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the agricultural analyst's argument?

Economist: Last year, the province of Veltland raised its mandatory minimum wage by 15 percent. Critics predicted this wage hike would lead to widespread layoffs and an increase in the provincial unemployment rate. However, over the twelve months following the wage increase, Veltland's total unemployment rate actually declined by 0.8 percentage points. This demonstrates that raising the minimum wage does not negatively impact overall employment levels. Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the economist's argument?

Every municipal museum in Riverdale that houses Renaissance artwork also maintains an active climate-control archive. No municipal museum in Riverdale with a climate-control archive is located within a designated flood evacuation zone. The Belmont Gallery is a municipal museum in Riverdale located within a designated flood evacuation zone. If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?

Read the passage excerpt below: In Anglo-American jurisprudence, the doctrine of stare decisis—adherence to established legal precedent—is frequently defended on grounds of judicial predictability and institutional legitimacy. Proponents argue that when appellate courts consistently bind future decisions to settled legal principles, individuals and commercial entities can structure their conduct with confidence, insulating the rule of law from arbitrary political oscillation. However, legal theorists from the Critical Legal Studies movement contend that the ostensible neutrality of precedent frequently operates as an ideological camouflage. They argue that historical precedents are not discovered through neutral deduction, but rather reflect the socioeconomic hierarchies and property relations of the eras in which they were established. When contemporary jurists reflexively invoke nineteenth-century common law doctrines to adjudicate modern labor or digital property disputes, they risk reifying historical inequities under the guise of procedural impartiality. Consequently, a progressive legal framework requires not blind fidelity to historical holdings, but a dynamic hermeneutic that continuously reassesses precedent in light of contemporary constitutional values and democratic equity. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the primary purpose of the passage?

Based on the passage excerpt, proponents of the Critical Legal Studies perspective discussed in the second paragraph would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?

The author of the passage refers to "nineteenth-century common law doctrines" in the second paragraph primarily in order to:

Biomedical Ethicist: When a pharmaceutical research sponsor suppresses clinical trial data detailing adverse drug reactions, trial subjects and prospective patients cannot provide genuinely informed consent. Furthermore, any medical treatment administered without genuinely informed consent constitutes a direct violation of fundamental patient autonomy. Therefore, Dr. Vance's action in concealing the Phase II cardiovascular side-effect data for the experimental anticoagulant Cardiavex constituted a direct violation of fundamental patient autonomy. The ethicist's conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?

Art Historian: Every genuine seventeenth-century panel painting produced in Rembrandt's Amsterdam workshop was rendered on Baltic oak boards bearing tree-ring growth signatures matching the pronounced 1631 regional drought anomaly. A newly discovered portrait of a Dutch merchant, recently uncovered in an estate in Utrecht, was painted on Baltic oak boards that exhibit this exact 1631 tree-ring anomaly. Therefore, the portrait must be a genuine work produced in Rembrandt's Amsterdam workshop. The reasoning in the art historian's argument is flawed because the argument:

Municipal Energy Official: Last autumn, the city of Vangrove launched an aggressive green rebate program, subsidizing 80 percent of the purchase and installation cost for homeowners who replaced their older residential electric furnaces with high-efficiency geothermal heat pumps. These modern geothermal units require 40 percent less kilowatt-hours of electricity per degree of ambient heating produced than the systems they replaced. Nevertheless, municipal utility records reveal that total household electrical consumption for home heating in Vangrove was substantially higher during this past winter than during the preceding winter, despite identical average winter temperatures in both years. Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy described by the official?

Archival Scientist: Many institutional preservationists argue that converting historical paper manuscripts and parchment rolls into high-resolution digital files is the ideal method for guaranteeing their perpetual preservation, as digitized records do not physically decompose. However, digital storage formats, optical encoding standards, and hardware playback devices typically become obsolete and unreadable within a matter of decades. Sustaining digital archives requires continuous, expensive format migrations and data integrity verifications that frequently introduce bit rot, corrupted metadata, and catastrophic file loss. Therefore, the widespread conviction that digital conversion offers a more durable and foolproof safeguard for historical texts than physical conservation of original paper documents is mistaken. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main conclusion of the archival scientist's argument?

Nutrition Policy Analyst: Levying a municipal excise tax on sugar-sweetened sodas is an effective and necessary strategy to combat adolescent obesity, as empirical economic studies demonstrate that increasing retail prices reliably suppresses consumer purchasing volume of taxed beverages. Beverage Association Representative: That conclusion overlooks critical behavioral substitutions. When a neighboring metropolitan district implemented an identical excise tax on carbonated sodas, consumers responded by purchasing untaxed sweetened tea, fruit punch, and processed energy beverages containing equal or greater quantities of refined sugar. Consequently, total caloric consumption across the population remained completely unchanged. The beverage association representative responds to the nutrition policy analyst by:

Water Quality Inspector: If the concentration of dissolved nitrates in the reservoir exceeds ten parts per million, the automated water treatment system activates the secondary reverse-osmosis filtration unit. The secondary reverse-osmosis filtration unit was not activated at any point during yesterday's operational cycle. Therefore, the concentration of dissolved nitrates in the reservoir could not have exceeded ten parts per million during yesterday's operational cycle. Which one of the following arguments displays a pattern of valid reasoning most closely parallel to that in the water quality inspector's argument?

Evolutionary Biologist: In many species of bowerbirds, females overwhelmingly choose to mate with males that maintain the brightest and most iridescent plumage. Synthesizing carotenoid and structural plumage pigments requires substantial metabolic energy and cannot be achieved by birds with elevated blood parasite counts. Therefore, female bowerbirds select brightly colored mates solely because vibrant plumage serves as a reliable indicator of hereditary genetic resistance to avian blood parasites. Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the evolutionary biologist's argument?

Archaeological Anthropologist: Excavations at the inland ceremonial center of Chalcatzingo uncovered a cache of high-grade green obsidian prismatic blades whose trace-element geochemical signature matches only the Sierra de Pachuca source, located over 250 kilometers away. Some researchers argue that these prestige items reached the site through diffuse, down-the-line village barter. However, down-the-line exchange inevitably results in blades being repeatedly broken, re-flaked, and drastically diminished in size as they pass through successive hands. Because the Pachuca blades recovered at Chalcatzingo were uniformly pristine, extraordinarily long, and completely free of secondary edge re-sharpening, they must have been transported directly via dedicated, elite-sponsored trade expeditions. Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the anthropologist's argument?

Transportation Planner: Expanding the interstate highway from six to ten lanes through our metropolitan corridor will not resolve peak-hour traffic delays. Due to induced travel demand, the additional capacity will swiftly attract drivers who previously used commuter rail or traveled at off-peak hours, returning highway congestion to its former gridlock within two years. Therefore, the regional transit authority should allocate its infrastructure budget toward expanding commuter rail frequency and route coverage rather than widening the highway. The transportation planner's argument relies on assuming which one of the following?

Under the corporate governance charter of Zenith BioTech, any research and development expenditure exceeding $10 million must be approved by the scientific advisory board. No expenditure that involves human gene-editing protocols can be approved by the scientific advisory board unless it has received prior ethical clearance from the institutional review council. Last quarter, Zenith BioTech's board of directors authorized a $15 million capital outlay for Project Helios, which does not have ethical clearance from the institutional review council. If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?

Consumer Advocate: The independent safety analysis published by Dr. Thorne, which concluded that the synthetic food preservative BenzoGuard degrades into toxic aromatic compounds under standard shelf temperatures, should be entirely discounted. Prior to releasing this report, Dr. Thorne served as a paid expert witness in a product liability lawsuit on behalf of an organic food consortium that actively lobbies against synthetic preservatives. Because Dr. Thorne clearly has a financial and professional bias against synthetic food additives, BenzoGuard does not pose any health hazard to consumers. The consumer advocate's reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on the ground that it:

Materials Engineer: Every individual composite strut used in the framework of the deep-sea submersible is exceptionally lightweight and flexible. Therefore, the assembled structural framework of the deep-sea submersible as an entire unit must be exceptionally lightweight and flexible. The flawed reasoning in the materials engineer's argument is most closely paralleled in which one of the following?

Read the passage excerpt below: For centuries, Western philosophical orthodoxy—rooted in Cartesian dualism and twentieth-century logical positivism—treated metaphor as a mere rhetorical ornament, an artistic flourish devoid of cognitive substance. Under this 'objectivist' paradigm, language was presumed to function as an unmediated mirror of an objective external reality, with meaning residing exclusively in truth-conditional propositions. Thought itself was conceived as an abstract, disembodied manipulation of arbitrary formal symbols. This foundational dogma was forcefully dismantled by cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who demonstrated that human conceptual systems are fundamentally metaphorical and inextricably grounded in bodily sensorimotor experience. We do not merely deploy metaphors to decorate our speech; we conceptualize abstract domains through experiential mapping from concrete physical domains. For example, our ubiquitous conception of argument as warfare ('she defended her position,' 'he shot down my claims') is not a stylistic device, but an embodied cognitive schema that actively dictates how disputants perceive, structure, and conduct debates. Because human neurological architecture evolved to navigate spatial orientations, gravity, and bodily containment, abstract concepts such as time, morality, and social hierarchy are systematically structured via 'primary metaphors' rooted in physical embodiment. Consequently, meaning is not an autonomous, disembodied calculus, but an experiential phenomenon shaped by human biological embodiment. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the primary purpose of the passage?

The author's attitude toward the 'objectivist' philosophical paradigm described in the first paragraph can be most accurately characterized as:

Based on the passage, the author would be most likely to agree with which one of the following assertions regarding how humans understand abstract concepts?

Read the passage excerpt below: When NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew directly through the cryovolcanic plumes erupting from the south polar tiger-stripe fractures of Saturn's moon Enceladus, its ion and neutral mass spectrometers detected water vapor, molecular nitrogen, simple organic compounds, and crucially, substantial concentrations of native molecular hydrogen (H₂) and methane (CH₄). The co-occurrence of excess H₂ and carbon dioxide strongly implies that serpentinization—an abiotic geochemical reaction wherein iron-rich olivine minerals in the moon's porous rocky core react with hydrothermal water—is actively occurring at the floor of Enceladus's sub-ice ocean. However, astrobiologists face a profound interpretative dilemma in accounting for the observed abundance of methane. While methane can be produced abiotically via Fischer-Tropsch-type catalytic reactions at hydrothermal vents, quantitative geochemical models reveal that abiotic synthesis alone cannot easily reproduce the high methane-to-dihydrogen ratios measured in the plumes under Enceladus's inferred alkaline conditions. To account for this anomaly without invoking biological activity, geochemists must hypothesize extraordinarily rich primordial reserves of comet-delivered organics trapped in the core, or unprecedented rates of low-temperature abiotic catalysis. Alternatively, methanogenic archaea utilizing the hydrogenotrophic pathway (consuming H₂ and CO₂ to generate CH₄ and water)—identical to terrestrial microbes inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal chimneys—would readily reconcile the geochemical imbalance. While Cassini's data does not constitute definitive proof of alien biology, it establishes that Enceladus possesses both the thermodynamic disequilibrium and chemical feedstocks necessary to sustain a thriving chemosynthetic biosphere. Which one of the following most accurately describes the organizational structure of the passage?

The author of the passage mentions 'terrestrial microbes inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal chimneys' primarily in order to: