CLAT Common Law Admission Test

The CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) is an entrance exam for undergraduate and postgraduate law programs throughout India . It is used by many National Law Universities (NLUs) and other law schools as a basis for entrance into their programs. The exam includes test sections on English, Reasoning, Legal Aptitude, General Knowledge and Quantitative Ability. The CLAT is administered once every year in a highly competitive environment, as this exam is a major step for many future Lawyers entering the legal field.

CLAT is conducted by the Consortium of National Law Universities and is the entrance to the NLUs and to a number of other law schools that accept the score.

• Undergraduate: class 12 or an equivalent with at least 45% in aggregate. The bar is 40% for SC and ST candidates.
• Postgraduate: an LL.B. or an equivalent with at least 50% in aggregate, and 45% for SC and ST candidates.
• Candidates awaiting results may apply, with admission conditional on producing the marksheet by the date the university sets.
• Age: there is no upper age limit.

The application is an online form on the Consortium of NLUs website. Everything below is done in one sitting or saved and returned to; nothing is done on paper.

Apply only through the official portal. No agent can register you, and nobody can change a score once it is declared.

The undergraduate paper is comprehension-based end to end. Every section gives you a passage and asks questions from it — including the legal section, which does not assume you have studied law.

• Sections cover English Language, Current Affairs including General Knowledge, Legal Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Techniques.
• Legal Reasoning supplies the principle in the passage. The task is to apply it as given, even where it differs from the law as you know it.
• There is negative marking, at a quarter of a mark for each wrong answer.
• A merit list is published, and seats across the participating NLUs are allotted through the Consortium’s centralised counselling against the rank and the preferences filled at the time of counselling.

• Reading speed is the whole exam. The paper is long and comprehension-based; candidates rarely fail on knowledge, they fail on not reaching the last section.
• Current affairs is a habit, not a topic. A daily newspaper over a year beats a compendium in the last month, because the questions come with passages that assume familiarity rather than recall.
• Quantitative Techniques is elementary mathematics on a data passage — percentages, ratios, averages. It is not a place to spend months.