How to Start Preparation?

Common Law Admission Test(CLAT) is conducted every year for admission into prestigious National Law Universities of India. The pinnacle of achievement in CLAT is securing a rank good enough for NLSU Bangalore, the best law school in India. Now let us see this analytically.

Almost 60000 took CLAT in 2019, and only the top 60 or so rankers have a shot at NLU in Unreserved category(General+OBC). That is a rejection rate of 99.99%. You need to be one of those 0.01% to book a berth in NLS, Bangalore.

But why these 60? What did they do to get there? Can you replicate their success? These are very pertinent questions.

Having interacted with a few of them, I was in a position to observe a few things about them:-

  1. All of them were very clear in their head as to their future plans. They had no second thoughts about doing law. Law was not an option for them, but a choice.
  2. They did not leave any section of the paper on chance. They had practiced Reasoning, Legal, English and Maths consistently. And they revised their GK from their notes regularly.
  3. They had a clear strategy which they evolved and perfected during their preparation, by giving mocks, by analyzing past papers etc. At least 1–2 months before the paper, they knew how they would attempt the paper. And the strategy included plans for an easy paper as well as a tough paper.
  4. They successfully executed that strategy.

So there are really only 4 steps : make up your mind, get the basics right, make a viable plan and execute it.

CLAT is not a complicated exam, specially after what you have studied in 12th class. In this exam your intelligence, IQ, past achievements etc. don’t matter. What matters is how consistently you prepare for this exam and how efficiently you use your time during the exam.

So, if you want to secure a seat for Bangalore, you can follow their steps:-

  1. Make up your mind and don’t second guess yourself. Dive into preparation wholeheartedly.
  2. Do not leave any area of syllabus to chance. Practice and revise. Repeat.
  3. Make a plan based on your strengths and weaknesses. Try to complete the whole paper, if it is easy.

Books to Follow:-

There are 5 section in CLAT :-

Maths, Logical Reasoning, English, Legal Aptitude and General Knowledge & Current Affairs.

As the questions are repeated in CLAT sometimes, I would highly recommend to go through past 10 year questions carefully during your preparation. It would also give you an idea about which areas to focus on.

Standard books for CLAT exam:-

  1. Maths: Maths in CLAT is of 20 marks and is not tough. Still the most ignored section. One can easily prepare from R. S. Agarwal.
  2. Logical Reasoning : Has a total of 40 marks in CLAT. Any book is ok. R. S. Agarwal can be relied upon.
  3. English: Again 40 marks. For vocabulary, go through and solve Word Power Made Easy. Read newspaper editorials daily. You can get Bakshi for exercises on Grammar.
  4. Legal Aptitude: Total 50 marks. It looks tough, but is quite easy if you know how to solve. You can buy Bharadwaj for practice exercises. Also mandatorily go through past questions.
  5. General Knowledge and Current Affairs: Asked for 50 marks and maybe the most time consuming section. Your rank depends on it. Make notes from monthly magazines. Go through Lucent for static part.