The Common Law Admission Test or CLAT 2020 is a centralised test for admission into the 21 National Law Schools of the country.
CLAT 2020
The test enables students to get admission into five-year integrated law undergraduate courses and one year master of laws courses.
CLAT 2020 Exam Date
CLAT 2020 will be held on 10th May 2020.
CLAT 2020 Registration
The online registration for CLAT 2020 will begin on 1st January 2020.
CLAT 2020 Eligibility
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.
The result of the qualifying examination (i.e., 10+2) shall be submitted by the candidate at the time of admission failing which the candidate shall be ineligible for admission to the Course.
In case of equal marks, the break of tie shall be by the following procedure and order as under:
Higher marks in the component /section on legal aptitude in the CLAT-2020 exam;
Higher age;
Computerised draw of lots.
Which NLU will hold CLAT 2020?
In the old days, CLAT was organised by a single NLU on a rotation basis. Every year the baton would be passed from one to another.
Now, after the CLAT Consortium made, the exam is conducted by this body itself. The logistics are handled by a single NLU though.
This year the convenor of CLAT 2020 is Prof. Balraj Chauhan. He is the first Vice-Chancellor of Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur. Before joining Dharamshastra National Law University Prof Chauhan has served as Director, Amity Law School, Lucknow, Vice-Chancellor of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Lucknow and NLIU, Bhopal.
Prof. Balraj Chauhan
As Prof. Chauhan is the convenor, the logistics will be dealt with by DNLU, Jabalpur.
CLAT 2020 Syllabus
Logical Reasoning: There is no news whatsoever about any change in the logical reasoning section per se. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the old syllabus for this section is intact.
Current Affairs: It has already been declared that Static G.K will not be asked, however, there were questions from current affairs in the past. Current affairs have turned into a full section.
English: The section has slightly been altered, the rest remains the same. All questions will be comprehension based. So they can still ask you the meaning of a certain word as long as they mention it in a passage above the question.
What has changed?
Legal Aptitude: The nomenclature of this section has changed to Deductive Reasoning. It has also been revealed that there will be no requirement of legal knowledge to attempt the questions in this section. So, safe to say that this section has gone complete changes.
Maths: The smallest section of the exam has now become Quantitative Techniques. It is still unclear what the pattern of questions will be in this section. If we go with the pattern of other entrances that have Quantitative Aptitude, the syllabus might be similar to that of Maths but the type of questions will be completely different.
Books for CLAT 2020
Logical Reasoning: To get a complete hold of LR, one can solve the book by S.Chand. It has questions from various competitive examinations and difficulty levels.
English:
Solve the past year papers of LSAT and GMAT (Comprehension section only).
A good resource will be the LSAT and GMAT guides.
Objective English by R.S Aggarwal has a good collection of English Comprehension questions.
Current Affairs:
A thorough reading of a good national daily is highly advised and that notes be maintained for each day.
While reading, special attention to the editorial sections since they are based on the current affairs and polish vocabulary of the candidate.
One good magazine like Competition in Focus or Outlook can be referred on a monthly basis, to sum up, the affairs of the month.
Watching an hour of news daily to know about the daily events of the world is advised. Please do not waste time over prime time debates, instead, go for Doordarshan news or All India Radio News
Quantitative and Deductive Reasoning
The final and accurate call can be taken once the Consortium comes up with an official sample paper/syllabus etc for these two sections.
Until then, on the basis of other competitive examinations and law entrances, these are the suggested sources.
A good resource will be the LSAT and GMAT guides.
Past year questions of Analytical section from LSAT Paper.
Past year questions from CAT and GMAT paper on Quantitative & Deductive.
CLAT 2020 Sample Paper
“The CLAT Consortium will come up with sample papers, model papers and other resources”, said Prof. Faizan Mustafa in his Youtube video.
Nobody is certain about a particular format of questions, if anybody claims so, well you are future lawyers so I’ll let you take your call.
However, the subjects have been named and on the basis of that, we are suggesting the below for law aspirants
LSAT past year paper for their reading comprehension and analytical reasoning section.
GMAT/CAT past year paper for their quantitative/deductive reasoning as well as reading comprehension.
These are the basic questions asked from quantitative/deductive reasoning
Comprehending the basic structure of a set of relationships by determining a complete solution to the problem posed (for example, an acceptable seating arrangement of all six diplomats around a table)
Reasoning with conditional (“if-then”) statements
Inferring what could be true or must be true from given facts and rules
Inferring what could be true or must be true from given facts and rules together with new information presented in hypotheticals
Recognizing when two statements are logically equivalent in the context.