#20 - The company president says that significant

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[maximbasu]

Hi,
I chose answer choice A while C was correct.

The stimulus states:
1. Huge changes were made: neither the President nor Y was told about them
2. Principle: Company president OR any lawyer must be told about the changes in contract
3. Conclusion: contract was violated

Task: what's assumed?

A seemed to fill in the gap--if Y wasn't told about the changes, then the contract was violated because due to the principle, only the President or a lawyer must have been told. Y was not the President, so she must have been a lawyer. Why else would the President randomly mention Y? To confuse LSAT students?

Assumption Negation Technique: "Y is not a lawyer in the company's legal department."

Is A wrong because the President was just casually mentioning Y? The fact that Y is not a lawyer doesn't matter--she can be the President's BFF.

C seems correct and I understand it; the Y character is the only thing that bothered me about this question!

[Adam Tyson]

Take another look at the question stem, Maxim, and you'll find that it is not an assumption question at all, but a Justify question. We need to prove the conclusion is true by adding some new piece of info to the argument.

Why was Yeung mentioned? The cynic in me says it was to get you to pick answer A or else answer B. Yes, it was there to mess with you, to distract you, to get you to take your eyes off the ball. So what if A is a lawyer - is she the ONLY lawyer in the company's legal department? Neither A nor B gives that key piece of info, so they don't prove the conclusion (that either one of the statements is wrong or else the contract was violated).

Answer C gives us the whole puzzle piece that we need to complete the argument - no lawyer was told. It's irrelevant whether Yeung is a lawyer - she could be the head janitor for all we know or care. If no lawyer was told, and we know the President says he wasn't told, then either someone is mistaken or else the contract was violated.

Don't be fooled by the use of the word "assumed" in the stimulus - that's not enough to make it an assumption question. For one thing, assumption question stems do not include the word "if" in them, because there is no question of "if" about an assumption - either the author made the assumption or else they did not. The stem asks us to allow the conclusion to be properly inferred, which means we need to find the thing that makes the conclusion necessary, or justified.

Take another run at that one and see if it makes more sense to you as a Justify rather than an Assumption. Good luck!

[mhassan72]

I got stuck between E and C on this question and I ended up choosing E, because with justify question I usually like to pick the answer that connects a premise with the conclusion. My guess is the mistake I made was that the conclusion is not saying the contract was violated instead, that it was either violated or they are wrong, and since E doesn't mention the either/or conclusion it is incorrect. Is this the proper way of looking at it.

[Zierra28]

Can someone elaborate on why E is wrong??

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Zierra,

Thanks for your question!

Answer choice E is wrong because we don't know that no lawyer in the legal department was told before the changes were made. Who is Yeung? A lawyer in the legal department? We don't know - if she is, then the contract has in fact not been violated. In other words, even if E is true, we haven't necessarily proved the conclusion, and since this is a justify question, that is what we must do.

I hope that helps!

[ChicaRosa]

I just want to make sure my understanding of the stimulus and the correct answer makes sense.

P1: The company president says that she nor Yeung were not told about the significant procedural changes until after the fact they were made.

P2: Grimes says that the contract requires that the company president or any lawyer in the company's legal department be told about procedural changes before they are made.

Conclusion: Unless, Grimes or company president's claims are incorrect then the contract is violated.

From the stimulus it looks like the company president and Grimes' claims contradict each other.

A and B are irrelevant so my contenders were C,D, and E.

C is correct because the company president and Yeung, who are not lawyers, were told about the procedural changes after the fact they were made which means that Grimes is incorrect in her statement and the contract wasn't violated.

D is wrong because we know that the company president was told about the procedural changes after the fact they were already made.

E is wrong because if the company president was told before hand about procedural changes then it would mean that the contract wouldn't be vlolated and Grimes' statement would be correct which would contradict the company president's statement of being told afterwards.


I hope my line of reasoning is correct?

Lastly, the answer choices that state, "No lawyer..." and "If no lawyer" do they mean that someone who isn't a lawyer?

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

I just want to make sure my understanding of the stimulus and the correct answer makes sense.

P1: The company president says that she nor Yeung were not told about the significant procedural changes until after the fact they were made.

P2: Grimes says that the contract requires that the company president or any lawyer in the company's legal department be told about procedural changes before they are made.

Conclusion: Unless, Grimes or company president's claims are incorrect then the contract is violated.

From the stimulus it looks like the company president and Grimes' claims contradict each other.

A and B are irrelevant so my contenders were C,D, and E.

C is correct because the company president and Yeung, who are not lawyers, were told about the procedural changes after the fact they were made which means that Grimes is incorrect in her statement and the contract wasn't violated.

D is wrong because we know that the company president was told about the procedural changes after the fact they were already made.

E is wrong because if the company president was told before hand about procedural changes then it would mean that the contract wouldn't be vlolated and Grimes' statement would be correct which would contradict the company president's statement of being told afterwards.


I hope my line of reasoning is correct?

Lastly, the answer choices that state, "No lawyer..." and "If no lawyer" do they mean that someone who isn't a lawyer?

Thanks!

Hello ChicaRosa,

No, the president and Grimes don't contradict each other.
As for answer choice C, we don't know whether the president or Yeung is a lawyer or not. This does not contradict anything Grimes says. C is correct because if neither the president nor lawyers were told, and Grimes is correct, then the contract has been violated.
As for answer D, the conditional is wrong in that it can be diagrammed violation president not told. But there might be other things that could also violate the contract, maybe, so that the president not being told, is not a requirement for violating the contract.
As for answer E, it's a conditional ("if...") which still lets a lawyer be told about the changes. E.g., I could offer a conditional, "If the sun turns into ice cream, we're all gonna get really cold." However, since the sun is not going to turn into ice cream (I believe), that conditional doesn't operate, and we're not going to get really cold. ...Also, I don't understand your logic in your response to E. You might want to reread the stimulus and answer choices over again, carefully. Answer E doesn't say anything about the president.
As for "Lastly, the answer choices that state, "No lawyer..." and "If no lawyer" do they mean that someone who isn't a lawyer?": no, they might mean that nobody was told, not even a lawyer. (Maybe a computer went crazy and approved the contract without telling anyone.)

Hope this helps,
David

[ChicaRosa]

Hello ChicaRosa,

No, the president and Grimes don't contradict each other.
As for answer choice C, we don't know whether the president or Yeung is a lawyer or not. This does not contradict anything Grimes says. C is correct because if neither the president nor lawyers were told, and Grimes is correct, then the contract has been violated.
As for answer D, the conditional is wrong in that it can be diagrammed violation president not told. But there might be other things that could also violate the contract, maybe, so that the president not being told, is not a requirement for violating the contract.
As for answer E, it's a conditional ("if...") which still lets a lawyer be told about the changes. E.g., I could offer a conditional, "If the sun turns into ice cream, we're all gonna get really cold." However, since the sun is not going to turn into ice cream (I believe), that conditional doesn't operate, and we're not going to get really cold. ...Also, I don't understand your logic in your response to E. You might want to reread the stimulus and answer choices over again, carefully. Answer E doesn't say anything about the president.
As for "Lastly, the answer choices that state, "No lawyer..." and "If no lawyer" do they mean that someone who isn't a lawyer?": no, they might mean that nobody was told, not even a lawyer. (Maybe a computer went crazy and approved the contract without telling anyone.)

Hope this helps,
David

I reread the stimulus again and I still don't see how the company's president and Grimes don't contradict each other?

I thought they contradicted each other because the club president says she was told about the procedural changes after they were made while Grimes says that the contract requires the company president or any lawyer in the company to be told about procedural changes ahead of time.

Also if I were to graph the stimulus' conclusion would it look like this ?

CV GIC or PIC

contrapositive: GIC and PIC CV

CV= Contract violated
GIC= Grimes being incorrect
PIC= Company President being incorrect

Thanks!

[Kristina Moen]

Hi ChicaRosa,

The changes were made before the President and Yeung were told.
Grimes says changes can only be made after the President or a company lawyer are told.

You first are given some facts about what happened (changes made before P or Y told). Then you're given a rule (changes can be made only if P or a company lawyer is told). The conclusion is that the facts violated the rule. The question asks you to justify that conclusion, which should tell you already that the conclusion does not follow and you need another piece of information to get to the conclusion that the facts violated the rule.

The key here is the word "or." The contract requires that the President OR any lawyer be told. All we know from the facts are that the President and Yeung were not told. We are not told any facts about whether any lawyers were told (which is where Answer (C) comes in).

Here's another example:
You left school without telling Ms. Jones or the principal.
The school rule says you have to tell the principal or one of your teachers before you leave school.
Thus, you are in big trouble because you violated school rules!

A savvy student might respond and say that they did tell one of their teachers, just not Ms. Jones or the principal. And a savvy school counselor would check with all the teachers to make sure the student did not tell one of them before coming to that conclusion (similar to Answer (C) ).

To respond to your diagram: You diagrammed the conclusion correctly using the Unless Rule. However, the conclusion itself is suspect. Grimes and the President can both be correct, and the contract is still not violated because a company lawyer might have been told about the changes before they were made.

Hope this helps!