Logical Reasoning: Deduction First, Then Critical Reading
Logical Reasoning carries the largest weight in AILET. It tests structured thinking rather than legal knowledge: syllogisms, analytical puzzles, series, coding-decoding and blood relations, plus a heavy share of critical reasoning - assumption, strengthen/weaken, inference and conclusion items.
Core tools
- Syllogism: draw Venn diagrams; do not convert statements loosely.
- Puzzles: build a grid (people × floors × cities × subjects) and fill only what the clues force.
- Critical reasoning: separate the conclusion from the premise, then locate the gap. That gap is the assumption.
- Series and coding: check differences, ratios, alternating patterns and letter positions.
Worked example
Statements: All lawyers are graduates. Some graduates are politicians. Conclusion: Some lawyers are politicians. Draw it: lawyers sit entirely inside the graduates' circle. Politicians overlap graduates but may sit wholly outside the lawyers' circle. So the conclusion is not valid - it can be false while both statements remain true.
Traps that cost marks
- Illicit conversion: All A are B does not mean All B are A.
- Reading some as some but not all; here some simply means at least one.
- In strengthen/weaken items, picking a true but irrelevant fact instead of one that hits the assumption.
- In puzzles, assuming an arrangement before the clues force it.
- In assumption questions, choosing a restatement of the premise rather than the unstated link.