Planning to crack the national level entrance examination for law? Here are the details of the new exam pattern and tips to prepare for it.
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Download EBookTeam Careers360 | March 24, 2021 | 11:50 AM IST
By Rajneesh Singh
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Practice Questions: Legal Reasoning | Quantitative | Criminal Law
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Monthly Legal Current Affair: August Month | CLAT 2025 Registration Link
While its basic nature and main objective remain the same, the Common Law Admission Test, or CLAT, has changed a lot. The changes make CLAT 2021, the admission test for the National Law Universities, more efficient, student-friendly and better organised.
Those who qualified CLAT 2020 displayed certain traits:
CLAT 2021 is likely to reward the same characteristics and skills.
CLAT 2021: A brief overview of the new pattern
Overall, the CLAT is designed to be a test of aptitude for a legal education rather than prior knowledge, although it is useful for the “current affairs” section.
The UG-CLAT 2021 will be a two-hour test, with 150 multiple-choice questions carrying one mark each. For every wrong answer, 0.25 marks will be deducted. The questions will be divided into five categories or subjects:
The following table shows how important a section is based on the number of questions in it.
Subjects | Approx. No. of questions | Approx. Weightage (%) |
English language | 28-32 | 20 |
Current affairs, general knowledge | 35-39 | 25 |
Legal reasoning | 35-39 | 25 |
Logical reasoning | 28-32 | 20 |
Quantitative techniques | 13-17 | 10 |
CLAT 2021: Changes that matter
This year’s CLAT 2021 will be a pen-and-paper test. This has some pros and cons.
ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
To overcome the problems, one must practice by taking pen-and-paper mock tests. Use OMR sheets for marking the answers. Make use of a pen for marking the sheets. CLAT aspirants must keep many copies of OMR sheets and use them for section tests along with mock tests. Just marking answers takes up six to 18 minutes and many exam-takers don’t realise how time-consuming it can be. The quicker way to darken the ovals is to use a thicker ball-point pen and by answering one full section at a time.
CLAT 2021: Most questions will be based on paragraphs
This change may seem like a big one but it isn’t. The only significant point is that the English questions are likely to be all reading comprehension and the GK part, a little different. Quantitative techniques (or mathematics) questions becoming paragraph-based doesn’t make any difference to how a candidate must prepare. Most verbal reasoning and analytical reasoning questions were already paragraph-based and so was legal reasoning.
The reading-comprehension section requires practising within time limits and maintaining at least 80 percent accuracy while answering. The candidate must also check which way of solving works best for them. There are mainly three ways to do so.
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For GK, preparation is easier and less time-consuming. This is because instead of 50 separate questions being asked on different topics in a full paper, there will be only six to eight topics in passage-form. This has increased the chances of only the very important topics being included.
CLAT 2021: There only 150 questions instead of 200
This won’t make much difference from the preparation perspective but may push the cut-off score up. In 2020, the paper was quite tough and yet candidates needed to score more than 62 percent to secure a seat in NLSIU Bengaluru.
Students but must decide on which questions to skip or come back to later quickly and without wasting time.
Legal reasoning
This section can be tricky but now it does not include common legal principles unlike the papers till 2019. It will largely contain current affairs passages most relevant to the legal fraternity. This has decreased the burden on students and they do not need to study laws.
These can be practised to become good at legal reasoning:
Study the legal issues of the past year: This will help enhance speed. Familiarity with a topic can increase both the accuracy and speed of answering. Previously, familiarity with the common principles helped but now the section is more about current affairs.
Stick to the law/rule/matter in the passage: Though the golden rule is to just stick to legal principle, correct answers are often a result of applying correct reasoning, common sense and rational assumptions within the scope of the principle or rule.
Quality discussion: The only way to improve one’s reasoning gradually is to make one’s mind more rational and unbiased. Candidates should refrain from irrelevant discussions on a question that does not have a distinct answer. While preparing for the legal aptitude test, candidates will come across many materials which have wrong answers, complex explanations and poor quality questions. Candidates should only focus on quality study material and discussions for CLAT preparation.
Tackling tough sections: Legal reasoning questions become tough or time-consuming when multiple principles are involved, or the text is huge. Candidates can leave these questions in case other sections or questions are easier. But sometimes, in a tough paper, one will be forced to attempt such questions. Candidates will need to practice them and they should read with patience and care.
CLAT 2021: Consortium support
The Consortium plans to publish various preparatory materials for the UG-CLAT 2021, including:
The Consortium will also provide candidate, who have successfully completed their application to the UG-CLAT 2021, access to a learning platform where they will find the preparatory materials as well as have their work scored on various exercises and model question papers.
Rajneesh Singh is an online CLAT coach.
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