argument3 [0710G +U Aug小组]第23次作业

ddbearUID: 2275294

TOPIC: ARGUMENT3 - The following appeared in a newspaper article about law firms in the city of Megalopolis.

"In Megalopolis, the number of law school graduates who went to work for large, corporate firms declined by 15 percent over the last three years, whereas an increasing number of graduates took jobs at small, general practice firms. Even though large firms usually offer much higher salaries, law school graduates are choosing to work for the smaller firms most likely because they experience greater job satisfaction at smaller firms. In a survey of first-year students at a leading law school, most agreed with the statement that earning a high salary was less important to them than job satisfaction. This finding suggests that the large, corporate firms of Megalopolis will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work."
WORDS: 305          TIME: 0:27:00          DATE: 2007-8-17

In this argument, the author claims the law school graduates are more willing to take jobs at small, general firms. By citing the survey of first-year students from one law school, it is recommended that the large, corporate firms should increase the benefits and reduce the working hours to attract the law graduates. However, there are some critical flaws involved within this argument which render it open to doubt.

To begin with, the author falsely assume that the law graduates do not wish to take jobs at large firms by citing that number has declined by 15 percent. Yet there is no evidence to explain how the researchers could get this ratio and what it means. Consider the increasing net number of graduates from law school. Perhaps the large, corporate firms employ the same amount of law graduates every year which, however, takes a decreasing part of total amount of graduates. If this is the case, this ’15 percent ’ is meaningless to demonstrate that large firms lose the law graduates in recent years which is the first assumption of this argument.

Secondly, the author fails to provide reliable survey results as well. As mentioned in the argument, the survey is taken from first-year students at a leading law school. Without showing how many law school and law students are there in Megalopolis and how many students have responded this survey, we cannot confidently conclude that this survey is able to present the true thoughts of the law students in Megalopolis. At the same time, first-students could not be chosen as the symbol of the whole graduates. Since with the increasing survival pressure, they might change their mind after several years. Therefore, the argument could be supported as the author claims.

Thirdly, even if all the above phenomena are true in the city of Megalopolis, it is unreasonable to be surprise and to force the large, corporate firms to change their policy in order to attract the graduates back to them. The author did not show any evidence that the decline number of law graduates who enter the large firms will harm the interest and revenue of those firms. What’s more, it is highly possible that with the increasing number of small, general firms which build and grow significantly recently, it is necessary and required for more and more law students to work in those new-founded firms. Thus, the author’s suggestion is unwarranted and not the direct consequence of his former reasoning.

To sum up, the argument does not well supported. To strengthen it, the author should provide more and firm evidence that it is really a serious problem in Megalopolis that law graduates trend to take jobs in small, general firms instead of large, corporate firms. And this phenomenon will affect the improvement of those large firms so that they must to act to pull the students back.

还是后来补全的……汗……

571633UID: 2333480

感觉写的不错，就是速度慢了点。我考试的时候感觉issue写得好快，半个小时就写完了。但是arg却感觉时间不够，没有检查的时间。考试的时候没有检查字数的。你感觉差不多了就可以。