CLAT 2020: Dates, Syllabus, Registration and All You Need To Know
About CLAT
The Common Law Admission Test or CLAT is a centralised test for admission into the 21 National Law Schools of the country.
The test enables students to get admission into five-year integrated law undergraduate courses and one year master of laws courses. CLAT 2020 will be held on May 10.
CLAT 2020: Eligibility for UG
- There will be no upper age limit for UG Programme in CLAT 2020.
- As regards the minimum percentage of marks in the qualifying examination (i.e., 10+2 or an equivalent examination), the candidates must have secured:
- Forty-five percent (45%) marks or its equivalent grade in case of candidates belonging to General/OBC/PWD/NRI/PIO/OCIcategories
- Forty Percent (40%) marks or equivalent in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST categories.
- Candidates who are appearing in the qualifying examination in March/April 2020 are also eligible to appear in CLAT-2020 examination. However, they shall be required to produce evidence of their passing the qualifying examination at the time of admission, failing which they shall lose their right to be considered for admission.
CLAT 2020: Eligibility for PG
- An LL.B Degree or an equivalent examination with a minimum of Fifty-five percent (55%) of marks or its equivalent grade in case of candidates belonging to General/OBC/PWD/NRI/PIO/OCI categories and Fifty percent (50%) of marks or its equivalent grade in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST categories.
- Candidates appearing in the qualifying examination in April/May 2020 are also eligible to apply.
- No upper age limit is prescribed for appearing in CLAT-2020.
The eligibility criteria have been taken from the CLAT 2020 website.
CLAT 2020: Registration Fee
The registration fee is Rs 4000 for general category and for SC/ ST/ BPL category, the application fee is Rs 3500.
CLAT 2020: Registration Details
Online application opens on: 1st January 2020
Log on to the official CLAT website for the online application on the above-given date.
CLAT 2020: How is it different?
CLAT 2020 will be held on May 10, 2020. In light of the recent press release and news, the complete pattern of the exam has gone through a makeover.
The changes include the elimination of subjects, decrease in questions, format change of paper and many more.
Press release that announced changes in CLAT 2020
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) – 2020 will be held on May 10, 2020 (Sunday). The notification for CLAT – 2020 will be released in the last week of December, 2019 and the online application form would be available from January 1, 2020.
This decision was taken by the Consortium of NLUs in its meeting held today, at the Consortium‘s Permanent Secretariat in Bangalore. The meeting was chaired by the President of the Consortium, Prof. Faizan Mustafa, Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and all the Vice-Chancellors of member NLUs of the Consortium attended the meeting.
The CLAT – 2020 will also have a change in the pattern of the questions for the UG. Comprehension based questions would be asked from Quantitative Techniques, English, Current Affairs, Deductive Reasoning and Logical Reasoning.
It was also resolved to reduce the number of questions from 200 to 120-150 questions. Prof. Mustafa said that asking students to answer 200 questions in 120 minutes is not right as it puts students under lot of mental stress.
The exam will remain off line and the duration will be two hours. He told that the idea is to get better students to National Law Universities who have competence in reading texts and demonstrate skills in inferential reasoning. Similarly, the PG admission test will also have comprehension based questions.
The descriptive portion will remain same as last year. The Consortium has authorised the Executive Council of CLAT–2020 to study the possibility of introducing cut off marks for the LL.M. The details of CLAT-2020 will be notified by the EC.
The Consortium also resolved to undertake several Faculty Development Programmes in various member NLUs and launch a scheme of Scholarship / Fee Concessions for the students of NLUs. The Consortium would also assist the member NLUs in upgrading their library, IT facilities and other infrastructure.
At the end of the meeting, Prof. V. Vijayakumar, Vice-Chancellor, NLIU, Bhopal was elected as the new President and Prof. Paramjit S. Jaswal, Vice-Chancellor, RGNUL, Punjab was elected as the Vice-President. Prof. Balraj Chouhan, Vice-Chancellor, Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur was elected as CLAT–2020 Convenor. Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, Vice-Chancellor, NLUO was elected as Member of the Executive Council for CLAT – 2020. Prof. V. Kesava Rao, Vice-Chancellor, NUSRL, Ranchi will attend the meetings of the Executive Council as Special Invitee for the purposes of conduct of CLAT – 2020.
The outgoing President expressed his satisfaction on the formation and registration of Consortium of NLUs and expressed the hope that under the dynamic leadership of Prof. V. Vijayakumar, the Consortium will make meaningful contribution to the legal education in 2019 – 2020.
He thanked all the members of the Executive Council and the members of the General Council for their co-operation and support in discharging the duties of President in the first year of the formation of the Consortium of NLUs. Number of changes were made in CLAT – 2019, i.e., the test was made off line from online and in PG paper descriptive portion was included.
Further, for the first time carbonised copy of the OMR sheet was provided to the candidates. A Grievance Redressal Committee was also constituted for CLAT – 2019 under the Chairmanship of Hon’ble Sri Justice S. Rajendra Babu, Former Chief Justice of India.
Prof. V. Vijayakumar, after taking over as new President of the Consortium of NLUs thanked the outgoing President for his contribution in the registration of the Consortium and drafting of its MoA and assured that CLAT Consortium will now do more meaningful contribution in terms of Faculty Development of member NLUs.
Change in CLAT consortium and committee office bearers
Prof. Balraj Chauhan
The following are the newly elected members of the CLAT Consortium
- Prof. V. Vijayakumar, Vice-Chancellor, NLIU, Bhopal was elected as the new President of the Consortium.
- Prof. Paramjit S. Jaswal, Vice-Chancellor, RGNUL, Punjab was elected as the Vice-President of the Consortium
- Prof. Balraj Chouhan, Vice-Chancellor, Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur was elected as CLAT–2020 Convenor
- Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, Vice-Chancellor, NLUO was elected as Member of the Executive Council for CLAT – 2020
- Prof. V. Kesava Rao, Vice-Chancellor, NUSRL, Ranchi will attend the meetings of the Executive Council as Special Invitee for the purposes of the conduct of CLAT – 2020.
CLAT 2020: Changes in Syllabus
- The number of questions has been reduced from 200 to 120-150.
- All questions will be comprehension based.
- Questions from Quantitative Techniques, English, Current Affairs, Deductive Reasoning and Logical Reasoning will be asked.
- The paper will test the aptitude of the candidate and not the memory.
- Maths is now Quantitative Aptitude, the students can expect questions based on graphs, pie charts and tables.
- Logical Reasoning has not been changed and it is still the same logical reasoning.
Confused on Quantitative and Deductive?
Let’s understand deductive reasoning through a step by step break up and comparison.
Here are some examples to help you understand what they mean.
Quantitative Techniques
Quantitative techniques are used by people in a leadership role to consider all variables and make a decision objectively and efficiently.
Example:
Ten years ago, Shweta`s mother Seema was 4 times older than her daughter. After 10 years, the mother will be twice older than the daughter. What is the present age of Seema?
Ten years ago, Shweta`s mother Seema was 4 times older than her daughter. After 10 years, the mother will be twice older than the daughter. What is the present age of Seema?
a) 40 years b) 50 years c) 30 years d) 45 years
[Question from here]
[Question from here]
Deductive Reasoning
In deductive reasoning questions, you must draw conclusions based on only the information given in the question and not your own knowledge.
If the conclusion cannot be drawn from the information given, then the conclusion does not follow. There are several types of questions that evaluate deductive reasoning ability.
The most common types of deductive reasoning questions are syllogisms. A syllogism is a type of logical argument in which a pair of sentences serve as the rules/premises and a third sentence serves as the conclusion.
Example:
All crows are black. All black birds are loud. All crows are birds.
Statement: All crows are loud.
All crows are black. All black birds are loud. All crows are birds.
Statement: All crows are loud.
A: True
B: False
C: Insufficient information
B: False
C: Insufficient information
The correct answer is “true.”
CLAT 2020: Reasoning syllabus explained
The subjects tell you that there will be a lot of reasoning involved in the preparation and in the examination if you want to make it to a good NLU. Till date, CLAT used to have almost 1/4th part reasoning but with the notification about the new exam pattern of CLAT, it seems that ratio will go up.
Also, with the increase in the marks of reasoning, we can expect a few surprises in the type of questions. It is therefore strongly advised that CLAT aspirants refer LSAT and GMAT reasoning papers to practice.
It will not only provide a wide variety of questions but the difficulty is also a notch up, this will help eliminate the risk of being surprised by any question that may come in CLAT 2020.
Aspirants can refer to GMAT guide and LSAT guide.
CLAT 2020: Prof Faizan Mustafa’s take
CLAT Consortium Ex-President and NALSAR VC, Prof. Faizan Mustafa spoke about the new exam pattern of CLAT 2020. He explained the changes and the results they hope for in his youtube video.
Here’s what we can take away from the above video.
CLAT 2020: Prof Faizan Mustafa’s advice
- Read good books
- Read newspapers, especially the editorial section
- Focus on recent legal issues
- Be stress-free
- Law needs wisdom and not extraordinary memory.
CLAT 2020: Clatalogue’s advice
- Since comprehension and reasoning seems to have gained more importance ‘reading’ tough texts becomes crucial.
- Reading the newspaper, making general knowledge notes from them, noting down new words, and making a summary in your own words will improve your grammar, vocab, COMPREHENSION, REASONING, and general knowledge.
- If you don’t understand a thing, that’s good. Read it again. If you feel a bit of brain fog reading tough texts, trust me it’s good. It means your brain is working, your synapses are making new connections, and basically you are learning new things.
- Read, read, read. In a good law course, whether UG, or PG you’ll have to read a lot. As a good lawyer too, you’ll have to read a lot.
- Read things which pull you out of the comfort zone. Read the business section if that’s not your cup of tea. Read some key historical, political, and philosophical texts.
CLAT 2020: Resources for preparation
- Lawctopus/CLATalogue: Quality content to suit the needs of the law aspirant will always be uploaded on our platform. Browse through different sections, visit the websites frequently and subscribe to the emails for quick updates on posts.
- Clatapult: Okay! It is our sister concern which is run by NUJS grads and provides classroom and distance courses for CLAT UG/PG preparation. Visit the website to get free access to a treasure of detailed articles on each subject and free mocks.
- Youtube Channels: Your seniors from 10 years ago did not have this opportunity and even those 5 years senior had serious bandwidth and data limitations but you don’t. Access youtube channels like the ones given below for an audiovisual preparation boost. Just do a quick youtube search with CLAT 2020.
- Books/Newspapers: Reading and practising will never let you down. The two thingswhich should be followed religiously to crack CLAT 2020 is a habit of reading the editorial section of news and quality books on economics, history, polity etc. This will not only increase your reading speed but also make you aware of these concepts. Since CLAT 2020 will be completely comprehension based, you can expect them to be from one of the above subjects. When you read, avoid fake news.
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Aditya Anand
Contributing author
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