CLAT — Common Law Admission Test (UG)

Status checked: 15 Oct 2026. Official site: consortiumofnlus.ac.in

Quick Facts

CLAT 2027 — Official

Eligibility (UG)

• Class 12 (any stream) with at least 45% (40% for SC/ST).
• Students appearing in Class 12 in March/April 2027 are eligible.
• No upper age limit.

Exam Pattern

• Duration: 2 hours.
• Marking: +1 / −0.25.
• The Consortium has said there are no changes to the pattern for CLAT 2027. For reference, CLAT 2025 had English 24, Current Affairs/GK 28, Legal Reasoning 32, Logical Reasoning 24, Quantitative Techniques 12.
• Passage-based exam. Each section has 300–450-word passages followed by questions. It's a reading and comprehension test, not a memory test.

Syllabus — Topics

• English: passages from contemporary and historically significant fiction or non-fiction. Tests main idea, inference, tone, vocabulary in context, summarising.
• Current Affairs & GK: passages on news, journalism and non-fiction from about January to November of the exam year: national and international events, arts and culture, important legal and constitutional developments, and historical events of continuing significance.
• Legal Reasoning: passages on legal and ethical issues and recent judgments. You apply the given rule to facts. No prior legal knowledge is required, though awareness of current legal developments helps.
• Logical Reasoning: passages with arguments. Identify premises and conclusions, strengthen or weaken arguments, assumptions, inferences, analogies, and some critical reasoning puzzles.
• Quantitative Techniques: short sets of facts, graphs and tables, using Class 10 maths: ratios, percentages, averages, basic algebra, mensuration, statistics.

When to Start Preparing

Strategy tips

• Reading speed and comprehension are the main skills (about 120 questions on roughly 15,000 words in 120 minutes).
• Keep monthly current-affairs notes from January of the exam year.
• −0.25 negative marking means wild guesses cost marks. Educated guesses are fine.
• Top NLUs need about 95–105/120 for the general category (varies every year).

Recommended

• Daily: The Hindu / Indian Express editorials
• Legal Edge / LST / CLAT Possible monthly current-affairs compilations
• Official CLAT sample papers and past papers (2020–2026, new pattern)
• Analytical Reasoning by M.K. Pandey, Universal's Guide to CLAT