LSAT 146 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The company president says that significant procedural…

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: The contract was violated, unless the company president or Grimes was wrong.

REASONING:

1. Grimes says: President not told AND No lawyer told ➞ contract violated
2. The president said they weren’t told. (Neither was Yeung. We don’t know who Yeung is)

ANALYSIS: Grimes’ statement has two sufficient conditions. The argument told us about the president. But it didn’t tell us about the lawyers: to prove the conclusion we should add that no lawyer was informed of the changes.

___________

1. This seems relevant, but it’s not conclusive. The condition is that there were no lawyers informed. It’s possible there are lawyers other than Yeung.
2. What matters is whether any lawyers were told. This answer doesn’t address that.
3. CORRECT. If no lawyer was told and the president wasn’t told, then the contract was violated.
4. We’re trying to prove that the contract was violated. You can never do that by showing a way for the contract to be not violated. That would be an incorrect negation. I’ve drawn this answer below. As you can see from the contrapositive, there’s no way to conclude “violated” – it’s only a sufficient condition.
    
   Told ➞ not violated
    
   Contrapositive: violated ➞ not told.
5. This adds a new rule. But it doesn’t prove the contract was violated, because we don’t know whether any lawyers were told.