Words Indicating Sufficient / Necessary Conditions, and Time

Sufficient condition words: all, any, every, if, in order to, the only, to be, when, whenever. They sit before the arrow. Necessary condition words: must, only, only if, only when, requires, depends upon, then. They sit after the arrow. The sufficient condition guarantees the necessary one, whether it comes before or after it in time.

"Only if" introduces the necessary condition. "A only if B" means if A, then B, so B goes after the arrow. That's the one people flip most often.

Indicator words at a glance

In conditional statements (if-then) statements, the sufficient condition is the one that goes before the arrow, and the necessary condition is the one that goes after the arrow.

Sufficient —> Necessary

X —> Y

is equivalent to:

if X, then Y.

X is the sufficient condition, and Y is the necessary condition.

Logical Reasoning is where conditional statements show up most, but you can also find them in Reading Comp. (Logic Games used to be full of them too, before LSAC dropped that section in August 2024.)

First, some words that indicate each type of condition.

Sufficient (before the arrow)

All, any, every, if, in order to, the only, to be, when, whenever

Necessary (after the arrow)

depends upon, must, only, only if, only when, requires, then

I like to think of the relationship between sufficient and necessary conditions in the following 2 ways:

Way #1: the sufficient condition activates the necessary condition, indicating that it will happen.

Way #2: the sufficient condition is enough to guarantee that the necessary condition happened already.

If the sufficient condition occurs, then the necessary condition must also occur (Way #1), or it must have also occurred at some point (Way #2). Yes, that’s right, in Way #2, the necessary condition might occur before the sufficient condition.

I can hear some of you saying, “How could such a thing happen? If the necessary condition appears after the sufficient condition in a sentence, it must occur after the sufficient condition in real life too!”

Not so. But first, let’s deal with the easier way (Way #1):

—

The sufficient condition can occur before the necessary condition (Way #1):

If A occurs, then B must occur afterwards.

For example, if I slam my head into a brick wall, then my head will hurt.

This could also be phrased, “Whenever I slam my head into a brick wall, my head hurts.”

(A = slam head, B=head hurting)

If we take the contrapositive of this statement, we can say:

If my head doesn’t hurt (NOT B), then I must not have slammed it into a brick wall (NOT A).

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However, the sufficient condition can also occur after the necessary condition (Way #2):

If C occurs, then D must have already occurred.

For example, if I seduce an LSAC employee to get an advance copy of the LSAT, I must have traveled to LSAC’s headquarters in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

(C= Seducing LSAT’s test-writers, D=traveled to LSAC HQ in Newtown, PA)

This means that if you see me in NYC, I must not be seducing an LSAC employee at the moment.

(I know I’m going to get some emails requesting an advance copy of the LSAT, so I’ll tell you right now – that sentence was a joke.)

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Also see LSAT Logic | Necessary vs Sufficient Conditions.

Frequently asked questions

What words indicate a sufficient condition on the LSAT?

All, any, every, if, in order to, the only, to be, when, and whenever. Each one introduces the part of the statement that goes before the arrow, and it guarantees the necessary condition.

What words indicate a necessary condition on the LSAT?

Depends upon, must, only, only if, only when, requires, and then. They mark the part after the arrow, the thing that has to be true.

Can the necessary condition happen before the sufficient condition?

Yes. Sufficient means enough to guarantee the necessary condition happened, not that it happens next. If you're standing inside LSAC's headquarters, you must have already traveled to Newtown, PA. The flip side, how to negate a conditional statement, trips up more people than the indicator words do.

Where do conditional statements show up on the LSAT?

Mostly in Logical Reasoning, which is 2 of the 3 scored sections. They turn up in Reading Comprehension passages too, especially in the author's claims about what has to be true.

I've written free explanations for every question in LSAT PrepTest 159, 158, 157, 156, 155 and 154, with the right answer and why each wrong answer fails. All LSAT explanations are here.

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