Businessperson: Conclusion Because the parking area directly in front of the building was closed for maintenance today, I was late to my meeting. Conclusion If the maintenance had been done on a different day, I would have gotten to the meeting on time. Support After finding out that I could not park in that area it took me 15 minutes to find an available parking space, making me a few minutes late.
We don’t have rhetorical cues (words like “since” and “therefore”) to mark whether the first or second sentence is our main conclusion. And in fact they’re logically distinct for reasons you’ll learn in law school (general causation vs. “but for” causation, for the nerds). For the purposes of our argument, though, they’re restatements of the same claim: our businessperson was late to the meeting, and they blame maintenance.
In support, the businessperson offers a causal chain: they (1) found out they couldn’t park in the area, which caused them to (2) spend 15 extra minutes finding parking, which caused them to (3) be a few minutes late to the meeting. Because this whole narrative is provided in a premise, we can’t question the links between (1), (2), or (3) – we have to take these claims as true.
So our gap lies somewhere between the sob story presented in (1) - (3) and the businessperson’s conclusion that they would have been on time if the maintenance had happened on a different day. If threading that needle feels hard, that’s because it is. You should noodle on this puzzle a bit, but it’s entirely reasonable here to move to the answer choices without having pinpointed a gap.
Spoiler alert: the correct answer choice will ask whether (0) the maintenance caused (1) the parking issues.
The answer to which one of the following questions would be most useful to know in order to evaluate the reasoning in the businessperson's argument?
What were the reasons for performing maintenance on the parking area directly in front of the building on that particular day?
The most tempting reading of (A) is to see it as a suggestion that the reason for maintenance is something that itself would have prevented the businessperson from parking in the lot. Like imagine a massive sinkhole – yes the lot is closed, but on another day it’d also be closed.
The most direct response to this reading is to lean on the stimulus’ phrasing in several core places – the businessperson’s wording suggests a routine-upkeep style closure (maintenance vs. repairs) that is the sole reason for the closure (closed for maintenance) and only takes one day (closed today; done on a different day). All these factors push against the idea that if the maintenance were done on a different day, the lot would still be closed for some other reason.
Notice that I said “suggests” rather than something stronger like “establishes”. The sinkhole reading isn’t completely invalid, just implausible given the stimulus' wording and the situation it describes.
In non-MBT questions, the LSAT often relies on readers picking the right common-sense interpretation of the language, even if there's a technically-allowable alternative interpretation.
Were any other of the meeting attendees also late to the meeting because they had difficulty finding parking?
Working out why this answer choice is wrong was quite difficult even for us, but the reasoning is solid in the end: B impacts the causal chain running from (1) parking issues to (3) lateness. That chain is firmly established in the premises.
If no one else was late due to parking issues, we might question whether the businessperson is telling the truth about (1) having trouble parking, or whether the parking issues described in their sob story really required (2) 15 whole minutes to address. Neither of these claims is open to question – both must be taken as true from the start.
Answers that provide additional support for a claim that the argument doesn't need more support for.
What are the parking patterns in the building's vicinity on days when the parking area in front of the building is open?
Correct. If the parking area is full every day, the businessperson’s tragic parking adventure would have happened even if there had been no maintenance. This weakens the argument without questioning the causal chain that (1) parking issues caused (2) extra time looking for parking caused (3) being late to the meeting.
It addresses the gap between (0) maintenance being done on that day and (1) parking issues.
Does the businessperson have a tendency to be late to meetings?
The premises establish that our businessperson was only (3) a few minutes late to today’s meeting. Even if they’re late almost every day, on this particular day spending 15 extra minutes was in fact a potential difference-maker.
On the flipside, saying the businessperson is very rarely late to meetings simply lends credibility to the causal chain already established in the premises that on this particular day (1) parking issues caused (2) extra time looking for parking caused (3) being late to the meeting. See B for more detail on this line of reasoning.
Answers that provide additional support for a claim that the argument doesn't need more support for.
Was it particularly important that the businessperson not be late to this meeting?
If showing up on time to this meeting was super-duper important, that would raise the stakes of the businessperson’s tardiness. It would not, however, address the issue of whether it was the maintenance that caused the tardiness. Same thing on the flipside – if showing up on time today was no big deal, that lowers the stakes without addressing the core causal argument.
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