To understand the passage and what follows, it is actually important to know what "Lincoln's Inn Hall" is. And to be clear, it's not an "inn" in the standard modern usage of the term, but rather a rather a professional association for lawyers.
You can figure out from later context that it's some kind of legal institution with an associated court. The students were also allowed to look things up: "Facilitators also provided subjects with access to online resources and dictionaries and told them that they could also use their own cell phones as a resource" [0]
Yes, agreed completely. You can get a lot (but not everything) from context. The text will be clearer if you look up unfamiliar terms (which they were allowed to do). But if you gloss over Lincoln's Inn Hall as "obviously some kind of inn", you won't have a full understanding of what follows.
