All cattle ranchers dislike long winters. All ski resort owners like

Manhattan Explanation

I would suggest diagramming this one. It doesn't take long, and when you see simple conditional statements like these, it's a great idea.

Notice we have no conclusion. Only 3 statements:

cattle rancher --> ~like long winter
resort owner --> like long winter
some lawyers --> cattle ranchers

Then the question stem adds this conclusion:
resort owner --> ~lawyer

Now what we have is essentially a sufficient assumption question. Our job is to connect the dots in such a way that the conclusion given in the question stem is made correct.

The only way we can prove that resort owners are definitely not lawyers is to somehow prove that lawyers do NOT like long winters.

Something like "no lawyers like long winters" would do this:
lawyer --> ~like long winter.

Given that this is the LSAT, things are unlikely to be so simple when the test-writers could add one extra step. That extra step is to use "cattle ranchers" as a middle-man between lawyers and winters.

Just as "no lawyers like long winters" would suffice, so would "no lawyers is a cattle rancher," because this arrives at the same result:
lawyer --> cattle rancher --> ~like long winters

This is exactly what C does, and none of the others comes close.

As a quick elimination game, we could've eliminated every choice that did not contain either "lawyers and long winters" or "lawyers and cattle ranchers". This alone would've gotten us to A and C. Then, as timmy pointed out, we'd have to choose C because the argument already gave us A ("some" is a two-way street; if we know some A are B, then we know that some B are A).

Can a correct answer contradict details given in the passage? I see the last line says some lawyers are cattle ranchers. I would consider some and all to be mutually exclusive ways of describing a portion of a group (ie some and all are two different proportions)

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C is correct because it absolutely ensures that there are no lawyers who own a ski resort (by virtue of the fact that they are all cattle ranchers and cattle ranchers don't like long winters)

All cattle ranchers dislike long winters.
All ski resort owners like long winters because long winters mean increased profits.
Some lawyers are cattle ranchers.

Which one of the following statements, if true, and added to those above, most supports the conclusion that no ski resort owners are lawyers?

(A) Some cattle ranchers are lawyers.
-repeat of what we already know...if some lawyers are cattle ranchers, then it follows that some cattle ranchers are lawyers
(B) Some people who dislike long winters are not cattle ranchers.
-OK, that's fine, but this doesn't do what C) does, which is rule out the possibility that a lawyer is also a ski resort owner
(C) All lawyers are cattle ranchers. CORRECT
(D) All people who dislike long winters are cattle ranchers.
-doesn't have to be true, nor does this serve the purpose that C) does
(E) All people with increasing profits own ski resorts.
-again, an extreme choice, irrelevant

A correct choice will never contract the details in the passage. The passage as presented is perfectly fine.

All of the cattle ranchers includes the subset of individuals who are lawyers too.

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