How to prepare for CLAT at home? Find your answer here

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What is CLAT?

CLAT stands for Common Law Admission Test. It is an all India entrance examination conducted by the National Law Schools/universities for admissions to their undergraduate and post graduate degree programmes (LLB and LLM). The responsibility of conducting the exam is rotated and given based on seniority in the establishment.

Syllabus and types of questions

Basically, the questions are from our basic Class 10 syllabus with a slight twist in the way the questions would be framed. So, the English language section would be based on unseen passages, the way it was in Class 10 boards but here the questions asked would not be very direct. We need to answer a lot of questions based on hidden ideas, which are called assumptions, and many more questions where we need to find a new information from the given one, called inferences. The same is true for the Legal Reasoning section, the questions are based on legal topics mostly.

Last year, CLAT slightly deviated from its love for sections like Torts and Criminal law but the Constitution was given its due place in three questions and International law and family law was a delight to see. Concepts like Monism and Dualism which is usually LLM level topic was seen and like always Contract had its spot in one question. Three passages were from the Constitution including the right to religion, Writ of Mandamus and Freedom of movement.

In the Quant section, questions were mostly Class 10 level. They were as expected data interpretation questions with topics involving percentage, profit and ratio. Quite doable and not so lengthy.

And General awareness including GK was based on current affairs, with some static GK based questions. Passages in the General Knowledge section were, like always, not much helpful in finding answers and were only to set the context.

How to prepare at home

Now, the big question is ‘How can one prepare for this exam at home?’ Let us begin with the belief that the exam requires the basic skills and knowledge already covered till class tenth. Keeping in mind the changes introduced by CLAT this year, some aspirants may misconstrue the reduction of number of questions from 150 to 120 as something totally in their favour. But, looking at the trend in the last few years, the paper is going to be lengthy with a number of para-based questions in almost all the 5 sections. The English language section may be full of passages with a lot of critical reasoning-based questions. So, one has to practice at least 2-3 passages daily and work a lot on assumptions, inference, conclusion type questions. These are clearly skill-based questions and the aspirants need to practice a lot of questions to reach a good accuracy level.

General knowledge and current affairs questions can be dealt with properly, only if a student has given time to daily newspapers and magazines. GK capsules and ppts on current events really come handy to the students and keep their interest in this particular area during the preparation. This section particularly can help students gather a lot of marks with very less time consumed. If one knows an answer it is just the strain of a muscle required to tick the right answer. So, be thorough with the last six months current affairs at least and go through some school level static GK as well. Some year books can be helpful which gives the details of all the important events of that particular year.

The Quantitative techniques section is relatively easier and getting all the questions correct may not be very difficult. It is the Legal Reasoning and Logical Reasoning section which requires thorough preparation as these are relatively newer areas for most of the students. Legal Reasoning section is expected to have facts and principles embedded in a passage. Being thorough with the constitutional laws, Legal Maxims, contract, torts, etc… may require some real hard work. One can go through the legal terminologies and also practice legal based passages from different books or they can buy the correspondence course material from T.I.M.E.

For Logical Reasoning one should go through questions based on critical reasoning, arrangements, puzzles, Blood relations, syllogism, analogies, Series, Coding-Decoding, cause and action, etc. A lot of practice is required to develop the ability to solve these types of questions.

Last, but not the least, one has to practice a number of mocks to handle the pressure of the exam. Time management and stress management hold the key to success. Analysing the mock and identifying the strengths and weaknesses should be the next step.

Leaving questions which is beyond the abilities of an aspirant can save the much-needed time which can thereby be used in solving other doable questions. This habit is something very different from the board exams where a student is advised to do every question. There has to be a clear-cut difference which aspirants should keep in their mind about strategies to be used in this exam CLAT. And any rigid mindsets can be very detrimental.

(The author is senior regional head at T.I.M.E)