The question stem says the argument's conclusion can be properly inferred if which of the following is assumed.

So, if assumed, conclusion properly inferred means this is a sufficient assumption question.

The correct answer, if we add it to the premises, will guarantee the conclusion.

But according to Grimes, the contract requires that either the company's president or any lawyer in the company's legal department be told about proposed procedural changes before they are made.

So those are the premises, and we're about to get the conclusion introduced by thus.

Thus, unless what Grimes or the company president said is incorrect, the contract was violated.

So the conclusion is this last part here, and it is designed to be supported by these two premises.

Now, I'm going to break down the logic underlying this argument, but I do want to point out that there's this extra complication that they're throwing in here that I want to make sure we understand so that it doesn't bog down our analysis.

So, do you notice that these two premises are not necessarily stated as facts, but they're stated as what people say.

The company president said something. Grimes said something. We're getting something according to Grimes.

Now, ordinarily, you would not have to accept what someone says as true.

The fact the company president says that changes were made before either she or Young was told about them would not actually prove that she wasn't told before the changes were made.

And the fact that Grimes said this thing would not necessarily prove that this is what the contract requires.

But if the conclusion is starting off with, unless what Grimes or the company president said is incorrect, what that means is, for the purpose of this conclusion, let's just accept what they said as correct.

You can translate unless what Grimes or the company president said is incorrect as if what Grimes and the company president said is correct, then the contract was violated.

So that's why for the purpose of the rest of this analysis, I'm not going to engage with the idea of the company president saying something or Grimes saying something.

And I'm also not going to care about the first half of this conclusion, the unless portion, because even though that's technically part of the conclusion,

logically the way that we're analyzing that part of the conclusion is really just treating what the people said in the premises as true.

This is really just a complication that the LSAT sometimes throws in where the premises will now be in the form of someone's viewpoint or what they said,

but then the conclusion says, pretend that's true. They're just trying to throw us off by making things more convoluted.

So with that understanding, let's go ahead and break down the premises.

Let me start with this premise about what the contract requires.

The contract requires that either the company president or any lawyer in the company's legal department be told before these changes are made.

Now, there's a number of ways you could visualize that if you wanted to diagram it, and I'm not saying you have to diagram it.

What's important is just understanding it accurately, but for the purpose of this explanation, I'll go ahead and diagram it.

And the way that I'll do that is if there is a procedural change that is made, if you want to make a procedural change,

then you have to tell either the company president or a lawyer in the legal department.

And the way that I'm representing that is you have to tell at least one lawyer in the legal department.

Now, by the way, I am translating this in a way that helps you understand what the requirement means.

When it says you have to tell the president or any lawyer in the company's legal department, in this context, the word any just means some.

You have to tell a lawyer, at least one lawyer.

Now, I know in other contexts, the word any actually means something more like all or each, but that's not how it's being used in this sentence.

Now, in this explanation, I can't really get into a complete breakdown of the exact meaning of the word any in various contexts,

so I would encourage you to do some independent reading if you're very interested in that.

But I'll just emphasize here that the word any here, you can translate to at least one lawyer.

So that's one of the premises here.

Now, the conclusion is trying to prove that the contract was violated.

And in particular, the assumption is that this rule is being violated.

Now, I'm going to go ahead and put underneath this line just the idea that the contract was violated.

But as a matter of substance, what that means is the author believes that this rule was not followed.

It was contradicted.

The author believes a change was made without actually satisfying this necessary condition.

And if that way of understanding contract violated makes sense to you, then you can think of contract violated as the statement,

there was a change made, but at the same time, we did not meet the necessary condition.

And so here's how you can think of that.

The author is saying the change was made, but we did not tell the president or tell at least one lawyer.

So now let's take a look at the other premise and see whether we actually got facts that show this rule was violated.

So what did the company president say?

Well, they said that significant procedural changes were made.

And so we do have changes being made.

Now we want to know that we don't meet this necessary condition.

And so does the president give us that?

She says the changes were made before either she, meaning the president, or Young was told about them.

Now, we do know that the president wasn't told because she was not told.

So we are given this part.

But remember, the necessary condition was you have to tell the president or tell at least one lawyer in the legal department.

So you would be allowed to make a change without telling the president as long as you tell a lawyer in the legal department.

So the fact that the president wasn't told, that by itself does not prove that the contract was violated.

We would also want to know that changes were made without telling at least one lawyer in the legal department.

But is that what we get?

Not at all.

We're just told that Young, whoever that is, was not told about them.

So the additional fact here that we get is that Young was not told.

But I have no idea how this fact here relates to whether or not at least one lawyer in the legal department was told.

So that's where the problem in the argument is.

According to the second premise here, we have to follow this rule.

And the argument is trying to prove that this was violated.

Or in other words, that this was contradicted.

Now, we do know that changes were made.

So what we want to know is that the president was not told and that no lawyer in the legal department was told.

That's what it would mean to contradict this premise.

But unfortunately, all that we know from the other premise is that the president wasn't told and that Young wasn't told.

But that doesn't tell us that we didn't tell at least one lawyer in the legal department.

Now, by the way, in case you want something that's a little bit more simplified,

because I know that a lot of people will just get thrown off when we start diagramming things out.

So if you're looking for something that's a little bit more simplified, essentially what's happening is this.

In order to follow the contract, we have to tell either the president or at least one person in the legal department.

As long as we do one of those two things, then we follow the particular contract provision that we're told about.

So if we want to prove that we didn't follow what the contract requires,

we want to show that we didn't tell the president and that we didn't tell anyone in the legal department.

That's what we want to show.

But the premise is only established that the president wasn't told and that a person named Young was not told.

But we still don't know whether anyone in the legal department was told.

So to make this argument valid, I want an answer that is going to establish that nobody in the legal department was told.

If we could establish that, then we would show the contract was violated.

So let's start with answer choices B, D, and E, because it usually comes down to the other two.

And remember, the question is, if we add this to the premises, would it prove that the contract was violated?

Well, the problem with answer choice B is, if I add B to the argument,

I still don't know whether we told a person in the legal department.

If we told at least one person in the legal department, then the premises don't prove that we violated the condition here.

Because we just have to tell the president or a lawyer in the legal department.

So because B doesn't establish that I didn't tell a lawyer in the legal department, it's not correct.

then the contract was not violated, but I'm trying to prove that the contract was violated.

D is telling me, oh, here's how you would know the contract was not violated.

But if you're attracted to answer choice D, you're essentially just mixing up sufficient and necessary conditions.

I want to prove that these premises prove that something was violated.

D is like an answer that says, oh, if something else were true, then there wouldn't be a violation.

But an answer that gets me to the destination of violation, so answer choice D,

if you were thinking of it in terms of like an if-then statement, the arrow would be pointing to no violation.

D is about telling me, here's how you prove no violation.

But if I want to prove that something was violated, something that tells me what leads to no violation

is never going to prove what leads to a violation.

So that's why D is not correct here.

then the contract was violated.

Now the problem with answer choice E is that if you add E to the argument,

I still don't know whether no lawyer in the company's legal department was told.

E is starting with the word if. If no lawyer was told, then there was a violation.

But actually, I already knew that. I already knew that because the president wasn't told,

and so if no one in the legal department was told, then we're not following this contract requirement.

The missing piece is not the idea of if no one in the legal department was told, there was no violation.

The missing piece is the fact that actually says no one was told in the legal department.

That's what I want, and that's not what answer choice E gives me.

So that's why answer choice E is not correct.

So now let's take a look at answer choice A versus C.

Now this is such a tempting answer because the way the argument is presented

makes you think that Young is a lawyer in the legal department.

So there's just something compelling about A where it says something that you probably thought the author was suggesting.

But let's actually think this through.

If we add A to the argument, does that guarantee no lawyer in the legal department was told?

The answer is no, because A just says Young is one of the lawyers in the legal department,

but there could be many other lawyers.

For example, maybe Young here. Young was a member of the legal department, and so we know she wasn't told.

But what if we have a Bob here, or a Hermione, or we have Neville?

What if we have three other lawyers in the legal department?

If that were the case, it's possible we told one of these people, and then we wouldn't have violated.

So answer choice A, if you add it to the argument, actually does not guarantee the conclusion.

Now A could have been good if it said Young is the only lawyer.

If it said Young is the only lawyer in the company's legal department, then A would be a good answer,

because then we know she wasn't told, and then that would mean no one in the legal department was told,

because she's the only lawyer.

But that's not what it says. It just says she is a lawyer that leaves open the possibility of other lawyers,

and so we might have told other lawyers and not violated the contract.

was told about the procedural changes until after they were made.

If that were true, that would establish no lawyer in the legal department was told,

and so that would mean we haven't told the president, we haven't told anyone in the legal department,

and to be more precise, any lawyer in the legal department,

and that means we haven't satisfied the conditions of the contract.

The contract said if a change is made, you have to do one of these two things.

If you add C to the argument, that would prove we haven't done either of those things.

That's why C is correct.

C would establish that we did violate this contract here.

We didn't tell the president, and we didn't tell at least one lawyer in the legal department.