Students prepare for law school entrance test

15,000 students to vie for 1,100 seats through CLAT exam on May 17

Author : Prachi Nayak/DNA

Aspiring law students from all around India are set to take the CLAT-09 (Common Law Admission Test) to get into undergraduate and post graduate courses at 11 top national law schools. Post CLAT depending on their scores, class XII (50% and above) students from science, commerce and arts streams will get into institutes and pursue a five year integrated BA.LLB, BSc.LLB, BCom.LLB or BBA.LLB.
The best law schools offering the above are NLSIU (Bangalore), NALSAR (Hyderabad), NLIU (Bhopal), WBNUJS, (Kolkata), NLU (Jodhpur). Students who pursue BA.LLB can specialise in human rights, women's laws, trade laws; while BSc.LLB will be able to get into cyber law, infotech law, mining law, IPR law.
This year the competition will be tough and only those prepared appropriately will succeed. "This year the number of applicants has jumped to 15,000 from 12,000 applicants last year. With just 1100 seats available, even one mark lesser can mean an admission in the eighth best institute over the third best one, "said Sagar Joshi, director of clatprep.com.
Therefore, attempting the CLAT rightly is vital. There are 200 multiple choice questions to be answered in two hours under English, Math, general knowledge, logical reasoning and legal aptitude sections. Joshi said, "There is no negative marking; so attempting all the questions is essential. Scanning the entire paper for the easiest questions is also important"
This year the CLAT will see changes in the English section which will contain only comprehension and general English questions. There will be 45 questions on legal aptitude instead of legal reasoning this year. "Students will be tested on their knowledge of current events in the legal world, important court rulings and judgments," said Joshi. He shared, "This section is most likely to have 50% repeated questions."
According to experts, even Math questions asked are usually of the class IX level and are the easy to tackle. Experts suggest that students who have referred to the right study materials needn't worry. "As for the general knowledge section, students who have read newspapers and maintained a timeline of last two years' important global and Indian political events will be successful," informed Joshi.
n_prachi@dnaindia.net