An Intro to Legal Aptitude

Most of all eagerly looked forward to what was there to do for the Legal Aptitude part of the entrance papers. It is perceived by most aspirants to be what law is. Now the question of what law is has been asked by a lot of those old bearded bald men over the centuries and they have come out with different answers – each one more complex and perplexing than the earlier one. The one quote that I like best is the one by Charles Dickens: “Law is an ass”.

Well, not exactly. But well, law really is an interesting creature (I don’t know if asses are interesting though and I am only talking of the animal, right).

Delving straight into the thick of things your Legal Aptitude section in CLAT or any law entrance exam is the most important. It is the one which ideally aims at deciding whether you have the acumen in you or not to be a lawyer. LA basically constitutes of Legal Reasoning and Legal Knowledge. Now the trend has changed over the last two years and the emphasis over the Knowledge quotient has n’t been stressed upon and it is fairly expected that this time around that law school in Raipur will set a question paper more based on legal reasoning. However, we will be providing you enough material and in such a way that it covers both the reasoning as well as knowledge quotient of it.

In legal knowledge basically you need to have a very good knowledge about various things ranging from very basics of Tort Law, criminal law, etc. to legal maxims. You will need to have a clear idea of the Constitution, some very important landmark cases, certain Acts, their social relevance, basic concepts like the hierarchy of judiciary, jurisdictions, etc. Let me assure you it is only bare minimum which you might already have learnt in your civics portions. What is important is to channelize this information in the right direction towards solving a CLAT paper within the time constraints.

In legal reasoning you will be presented with a legal principle and asked to apply that to a given set of facts. This is surely more fun (I used to feel like a judge myself while doing such questions). So the basic idea is to know these principles before hand and practise such cases for which you will have to learn fundamentals of the aforementioned law topics, so that you know almost all the riders to a problem and the varied ramifications therein.

We will go through each topic, provide you with practice exercises and see to it that you sail through the exams and land up at the hallowed portals of a law school in India.

Well you could attend a coaching centre but don’t worry if you can’t or you don’t. This is where we come in. We will provide open source materials that are free to download, edit and distribute but only for preparatory and non profit purposes. You don’t want to be sued even before you know the law, right?

Alright materials other than CLATGyan.com

Well there is no one stop solution to cracking the legal section. You could solve Universal’s guide and the one published by Lexis Nexis. In addition if you do take a coaching you will have those materials. More importantly read a newspaper daily, preferably the Hindu. Keep tab of the latest goings on in the legal arena and be up to date. Read a good magazine like India Today or Outlook. Also a year book is of great help. Some people also have been highly profited by reading general studies GK manuals like Pearson’s though we feel they are not exactly necessary.

We will start off with basic concepts of Reasoning as well as Knowledge and do a back and forth so that you retain the interest and yet do the mugging up as well. Don’t worry it is fun and just remember the end result that you can achieve. I am sure it will spur you on to greater heights.

Next in this series : An Introduction to Legal Reasoning