Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT146 S3 Q20 Explanation

The company president says that

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsSufficient Assumption

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Stimulus

The company president says that significant procedural changes were made before either she or Yeung was told about them. But, according to Grimes, the contract requires that either the company president or any lawyer in the company’s legal department be told about proposed procedural changes before they company president said is incorrect, the contract was violated.

What this question is testing

Sufficient Assumption

Your task

Find the assumption that, if added, guarantees the conclusion follows.

Common trap

Answers that only partly bridge the gap, leaving the conclusion unproven.

Winning move

Identify the new term in the conclusion and pick the choice that links it to the evidence.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
20.

The argument’s conclusion can be properly inferred if which one of the

Answer choices

  1. Strengthens, Doesn't Prove20% picked this

    Yeung is a lawyer in the company’s

    Our job is to establish that no one in the legal department was told about this big procedural change. We know Yeung wasn't told, so when we find out he's part of the legal department it scratches one lawyer off our list, but we need to find out that none of the lawyers were told in order to say the contract was violated.

  2. Unrelated to Goal4% picked this

    Neither Grimes nor Yeung was told about the procedural changes until after

    All we care about is whether or not anyone in the legal department was notified of these big changes. If it's not talking about that (as this is not), then it's useless to our goal of proving the contract was violated.

  3. Correct62% picked this

    No lawyer in the company’s legal department was told about the procedural changes until after

    Why this is right

    This is what we came for. Since the president wasn't notified and no one in the legal department was notified, the contract was violated.

    Skill tested: Sufficient Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

  4. Unrelated to Goal4% picked this

    If the company’s president was told about the procedural changes before they were made, then the

    All we care about is whether or not anyone in the legal department was notified of these big changes. If it's not talking about that (as this is not), then it's useless to our goal of proving the contract was violated.

  5. No Impact10% picked this

    If no lawyer in the company’s legal department was told about the procedural changes before they were made,

    Agreed, choice (E). Good summary of where were at when we came over here to the answer choices. We knew that for the contract to be violated, we had to establish that the president wasn't told and that no one in the legal department was told. The president said she wasn't told. Check. So ... if no lawyer in the legal department was told, then the contract was violated! Alright answer choices, what do you got? Choice (E) is holding a mirror up to our thought process, not providing us with the new fact we're looking for. We're trying to prove "the contract was violated" ... it happened. it's a fact. We need to know "no lawyer in the legal department was told beforehand" as a fact. This answer is presenting it as a hypothetical.

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