It is such a bad resource. The passages are extremely long and some of them full of jargon, the questions are unnecessarily lengthy and have the most convoluted logic ever. A lot of these so-called "correct answers" are either unconvincing or just require fifty layers of inferrence. It only makes you feel discouraged and self-suspecting, which I think is detrimental for the actual LNAT performance.
I just started using this book, did the last 9 passages at the back, and have a percentage accuracy of around 80%.
I personally was satisfied with that, but there were a lot of rumours that it was very easy compared to the real thing. I did a 2010 past paper as well and the two seemed to be of similar difficulty. But my thoughts might only be illusions, so I hope that other redditors in this sub could provide me with your review of this practice book. Thank you very much!
Second Try:
Is trial by jury still an equitable means of dispensing justice today?
This essay argues that trial by jury still promotes fair legal reasoning in a justice system, and is a justified way of achieving a proportionate legal result. Firstly, the usage of juries avoids arbitrary decisions of judges, which increases the risk of unjust judgements. Secondly, the impact of bribery will be reduced; Some might argue that as some jurors lack legal professionalism, they are more susceptible to emotional bias, thus convicting someone who technically shouldn’t be convicted. However, such a bias could also be treated as a natural reaction when community values are infringed, which adds a layer of justification to the so-called “wrongful convictions” .
In a legal system without juries, judges are the sole authority to decide whether a defendant is liable of an accusation, or guilty of a crime. This leaves great discretion to them to decide the exact punishment of the defendant. Because judges come from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds, they have different perceptions of what a proportionate legal punishment should look like. Some judges prefer retribution, whilst others prefer rehabilitation. Because of their different personal upbringing, they will show different levels of sympathy towards the prosecutor and the defendant. For instance, female judges tend to impose harsher sentences to sexual assault offenders than male judges. In this case, if jurors don’t exist anymore, it is foreseeable that female judges will have a higher conviction rate of rape crimes than their male counterparts, and this difference could lead to more wrongful convictions and raise public questions about the justness of the legal system. When juries are present however, the 12 jurors need to reach universal consensus, which will average out individual biases and reach an outcome that reflects collective conscience. The impact of individual experiences will be minimised, which reduces the probability of personal bias affecting the decision of liability.
Not only will the presence of a jury avoid the dictating and potentially unjust judgements of judges, it will also be harder to bribe successfully to overturn legal decisions. In a system where judges decide both the liability and the sentencing, when the judge decides to form wrongful convictions because he accepted bribery, then no one at the same level could stop him. The defendant could only seek justice at higher courts, which not only prolonged the time for a just decision to be made, but also caused unnecessary waste of legal resources. When a legal system is vulnerable to corruption, public confidence towards it will also drop which could potentially enhance the anti-legalistic atmosphere amongst the society. However, when juries are present, the briber needs to bribe all 12 jurors instead of one single judge. This made the bribing process much more costly, and could be more easily detected as there would be more evidence. Therefore, with juries, it will be harder to bribe effectively, as that would require a much higher cost and a greater risk of being discovered.
Opponents of jury state that because jurors are randomly selected, and any adult from various backgrounds are eligible, some of them lack sufficient legal training. They argue that such training is essential for jurors to take a calm, analytical stance when making a verdict. Those who lack it tend to favour the side with the most expressive emotions, and could have underweighted the importance of the actual reasoning and statues. This could also lead to wrongful convictions or acquittals. This critique however, ignores the fact that criminal law is a social tool which largely reflects community values of what is right or wrong. Jurors, who are selected from the citizens, bear these values in mind. When their decision diverges from what the statute expects them to do, this could mean that such a statute goes against community values in this case. The proportionality of the statute should thus be questioned, as it has gone against a key aim of criminal law. To some extent the jury acts as a surveillance role, to check whether the law conforms to community values.
In conclusion, trial by jury remains an equitable system. Firstly, it replaces individual judicial bias with collective consensus. It also provides a robust defence against corruption, as bribing twelve citizens is significantly harder and riskier than bribing a single judge. Finally, the jury’s "lack of professionalism" is actually a strength; it ensures the law remains grounded in community values.