LR Question 22 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: A tax preparation company automatically adds the…
QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption
CONCLUSION: The disclaimer serves no purpose.
REASONING: If the tax preparation company suggests the client do something illegal, the disclaimer serves no purpose.
ANALYSIS: This is a tricky question. I solved it without drawing. I’m going to do a drawing below to show you the logic, but I’m not convinced this drawing would have been useful in timed conditions. I do think it’s useful for explaining, but I was only able to draw it after I had solved the question.
We know the disclaimer’s only purpose is legal protection. And if the company recommends illegal action, then the disclaimer offers no protection and serves no purpose.
Ok, great. But what if the company doesn’t recommend anything illegal, but a client does something stupid anyway? Maybe then the disclaimer can offer protection. That’s answer A.
Here’s that in a diagram:
Illegal advice (IA) ➞ no legal protection (LP) ➞ no purpose (P)
Here’s the diagram with answer A as well. Now whether or not there is legal advice, the result is no purpose either way: IA or IA ➞ LP ➞ P
I noticed that two of the answers are necessary assumption type answers. If you negate them, it may seem as though the argument falls apart. I never normally write in caps, but I know a lot of people try to negate sufficient assumptions answers, so:
DO NOT NEGATE ANSWERS ON SUFFICIENT ASSUMPTION QUESTIONS.
Seriously, don’t. Necessary and Sufficient assumption questions are completely different. You need to mentally separate them, because the LSAC is now trying to trap you with necessary answers on sufficient questions.
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CORRECT. The only purpose of the disclaimer is legal protection. This answer definitively shows that the disclaimer has no purpose.
- If there is a suggestion to do illegal things, then the disclaimer offers no legal protection. (from the stimulus.)
- And now, if there’s no suggestion to do illegal things, then no legal protection is needed. So all cases are covered.
- This tells us why a company should avoid recommending illegal acts. But it tells us nothing about the disclaimer.
- This tells us that the disclaimer is often ignored – but the disclaimer might still serve some purpose even if it’s ignored. “Don’t blame us, we warned you here, see!”
- This is a necessary assumption type answer. It does nothing to prove that the disclaimer has no purpose.
- This is also a necessary assumption type answer. This doesn’t help prove the disclaimer has no purpose.
More Resources for Sufficient Assumption Questions
- Conditional Reasoning Article: Learn about conditional statements.
- LR Diagrams Guide: Learn how to draw LR diagrams.
- Intro to Conditional Reasoning: Learn conditional reasoning basics.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Sufficient Assumption questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers sufficient assumption questions.
Answer B is incorrect due to the fact that illegal action does not by default result in “penalties.” Your reasoning that “it tells us nothing about the disclaimer” does not appear to be follow logically. The disclaimer literally states, “advocating any violation…” Advocating a violation is synonymous with suggesting that the recipient do something illegal.
I love this site but some of the explanations seem a bit iffy.
But B doesn’t say that illegal action always results in penalties. It merely says that penalties could happen.
This is a sufficient assumption question. We have to prove that the disclaimer serves no purpose. The argument has shown that the disclaimer serves no purpose if the email recommends illegal action. B is wrong because it merely adds on to that line of reasoning.
I wrote that B doesn’t tell us about the disclaimer: what I meant is that B adds nothing further to specifically show the disclaimer serves no purpose. A does that by showing the disclaimer isn’t useful where no illegal action is recommended.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.