Question

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?

• A. The state is unlikely to remove all of the restrictions that apply solely to the advertising of legal services.
• B. Lawyers who do not advertise generally provide legal services of the same quality as those provided by lawyers who do advertise.
• C. Most lawyers who now specify fee arrangements in their advertisements would continue to do so even if the specification were not required.
• D. Most lawyers who advertise specific services do not lower their fees for those services when they begin to advertise.

Hint:

The argument depends on advertising actually lowering prices; look for the option that denies exactly that link.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

To weaken a chain-of-reasoning argument, the sharpest attack targets the one link the whole conclusion depends on, here, the claim that advertising causes lower prices.

1. The argument's chain is: fewer restrictions → more advertising → lower prices for advertised services → lower overall consumer costs.
2. Option A only questions how many restrictions get removed, not the price-lowering link itself.
3. Option B talks about service quality, a separate issue from cost.
4. Option C is about lawyers' voluntary behaviour on fee disclosure, not about whether advertising lowers prices.
5. Option D directly denies the crucial middle link: if advertising lawyers mostly do not actually lower their fees, then more advertising will not translate into lower overall costs, collapsing the argument's conclusion.

Only option D attacks the specific mechanism the conclusion depends on.

So the correct answer is option D.