As you must be aware, the final dates for the Common Law Admission Test 2020 (CLAT) has been changed yet again from 7th September 2020 to 28th September 2020. But, along with the final dates, the CLAT Consortium of NLUs has also changed the exam pattern. Now, as per the new exam pattern of CLAT 2020, this law entrance test will be conducted in online mode, and new test centres will be issued to the candidates.
Basically a centralized national level entrance exam for the National Law Universities (NLUs) and other undergraduate and postgraduate law programmes in India, CLAT is essentially an aptitude-based exam where the intent is to test the student’s interest towards law and not their knowledge of law. As we all know, a degree in law has got huge popularity since several decades, and the one important reason which makes it a favorable choice for students is primarily that the course is neutral to all the streams whether commerce or engineering. Besides, it has huge scope in terms of career and respect in the society.
In view of this prestigious status of the subject of law, the CLAT Consortium has come up with a new pattern wherein they also plan to extensively test the student’s reading and comprehending skills as they feel that these skills are imperative for a law aspirants. So, the approach that was best suited for old pattern of CLAT, may not be the same for CLAT 2020.
As a premier law entrance test in India, CLAT comprises of 5 broad sections – namely, English Language, Current Affairs, including General Knowledge, Legal Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Techniques – with each section requiring a different approach. Nonetheless, one thing that stays uniform throughout the five sections is your Reading and Comprehension skills.
Understanding The Section-wise Strategy
Generally speaking, it is strongly recommended that one should develop a good reading habit. It is advised that a law aspirant should read editorials and newspapers daily and focus more on burning Socio Legal issues among other things from reputed media houses. If that is something that they have not been doing already, it is recommended that they should create a depository of the important editorial articles from the last one year and go through them thoroughly. It will definitely help them at this stage.
They should go through the sample papers and analyze the type of questions that are asked in these exams. Also, they should not forget to go through the previous year papers. Though there is a new pattern this year, the previous year’s question papers will help them to understand the basic concepts and the approach to such an exam. This has also been reiterated by the CLAT Consortium in their notifications/tweets.
General Awareness & Current Affairs: This year, it is expected that the exam will have questions which will require more reading and will test student’s deeper understating of ongoing important news/events. The questions on current affairs will be asked in passage format. There will be series of questions based on Arts & Culture, International Affairs, and Current Affairs. The only success mantra here is to be regular with the current affairs.
Experts suggest that the one best place to study current affairs is the ‘Newspaper’ as the kind of questions coming up in CLAT are using certain newspaper articles as well as their ‘Editorials’. The pattern that has been released by the CLAT Consortium has proven one thing for sure that most parts of the question paper would be interpretative in nature. Thus, to increase your speed, you need to practice as many mock tests you can get your hands on so that you have the practice of keeping your concentration for 2 hours completely where you need to interpret on the way while you are reading.
Legal Aptitude: The Legal Aptitude section happens to be the most important section of the question paper. Here, the total number of questions will be 50 and each question will carry 1 mark. It will be divided into two sections –Legal Knowledge & Legal Reasoning.
a) The candidates must first understand the meaning of the questions asked before attempting them.
b) To ace the Legal Knowledge section, the candidates must master the common Legal Terminologies.
c) The candidates must have a fair idea regarding the recent happenings in the Legal world.
Elementary Mathematics: We all know that a lot of students are scared of mathematics. But, if a student is regularly practicing the basic concepts, it is sure that he/she can solve most of the questions from this section.
a) Reading-based questions in Math will make the level slightly more difficult and hence our faculty has already started giving its flavor. With focus on preparing students for Mathematics section with aplomb, inculcating the need to practice number of quantitative aptitude questions is necessary.
b) The section will include short sets of facts, graphs or other diagrammatic representations, along with Data Interpretation including topics from Ratio Proportion, Average, Percentage, Profit & Loss, and Mixture Allegations.
c) Thorough understanding of the concept is important and hence students should solve at least 20-25 questions on daily basis.
Logical Reasoning: This section is one of the most unpredictable sections. It contains around 9-10 passages with a total of 30 questions from it. While preparing for this section, you only have to worry about Critical Reasoning & Complex Arrangement a.k.a. Puzzles. Critical reasoning in itself is a vast topic. It demands a good comprehension ability and critical thinking ability. Questions like assumptions, strengthening & weakening arguments, conclusions, etc. will be covered in this topic.
English Language: This section mostly comprises of questions that will test your reading skills. A lot of students tend to leave ‘Reading Comprehension’ because they lack aptitude for reading. The reasons to leave ‘Reading Comprehension’ are that it consumes time and also, the accuracy level is low. As per the sample paper released by CLAT Consortium, there will be 29-30 questions in this section. There will be 6 passages (with 4-5 multiple choice questions) that will test your comprehension ability. Therefore, you need to work on your reading speed and grammar to excel in this section. You must practice as many RC passages as you can. Moreover, you must work on your vocabulary to get a good command on RC. Any book with ample number of RCs will do the trick for you.
To conclude, it is suggested that a sincere law aspirant must identify their grey areas as soon as possible. They must identify their strong and weak subjects. They shouldn’t categorize a subject as their strong or weak subject based just on how much they enjoy studying it, but on the basis of how much they score in them. The sample test size should be good to determine this and should not be based on just a mock or two tests. Once identified, an aspirant should allocate more time to their weak areas without totally avoiding their strong sections.
If an aspirant follows the above mentioned tips and stays positive, there is every chance that they will come out with flying colours at this CLAT 2020 Exam.
Wish you all the best!
