The fewer restrictions there are on the advertising of legal services

Hi Vivek,

It's very good to see your detailed analysis - this is the way to go to understand CR questions. So, you are on the right path

The other benefit of sharing such analysis is that an expert can figure out the exact problem in your thinking and provide you a solution that helps you not only in this particular question but also in other CR questions too.

Let me now respond to your questions.


"Overall" sort of means total; it does not mean each and every cost. So, when we say overall cost of living has come down, we mean that total cost of living has come down, not that each and every cost (eatables, cars, cylinders etc) has come down. Similarly, in this case, overall means total - includes both who advertise and those who don't - so, even if one of the categories reduces its charges, it leads to reduction in overall costs. Both of them need not reduce the charges. So, option D is not required for the conclusion in the argument to hold and thus, we cannot conclude it from the argument.



GENERAL ADVICE
Whenever you are confused about the meaning of a word, try to use that word in a regular everyday sentence and see what it means - that would help you in most of the cases. While solving CR questions, we tend to take very literal meaning (overall means all) of the words but if we can think of a regular everyday use of the word, that would provide us the right context and meaning of the sentence.


Option C is not an assumption. It is a direct inference from the first statement of the passage. The first statement says that
"The fewer restrictions there are on the advertising of legal services, the more lawyers there are who advertise their services"

So, we know from this statement that if we reduce restrictions, more lawyers will advertise their services. This is what option C says:
If the restriction against advertisements that do not specify fee arrangements is removed, more lawyers will advertise their services

It does not matter which restrictions are removed, we know if any restriction is removed, it will lead to more lawyers advertising their services.

GENERAL ADVICE
It happens to lot of us that as we move through an inference passage, we read them as in other question types - i.e. we try to get an overall hang of the passage. However, unlike in other question types where not every statement is critical and the overall understanding matters most, in Inference questions, we must read each statement very carefully because the answer statement could just be an inference or restatement of a single statement in the passage.

Hope this helps

Thanks,
Chiranjeev