The CLAT Consortium has released a press release today. It brings in some major changes to the pattern of the CLAT due to the ‘mental stress’ that law school aspirants from past editions of CLAT had to undergo.
The first change is in the number of questions, which will now be between 120 to 150, instead of the usual 200. However, the duration of the examination remains the same i.e. 120 minutes (2 hours). For those of you who found the clock to be your worst enemy, this would be a pleasant surprise and now, you would be able to manage your time in a better manner. The offline format continues to be followed as well.
However, the question paper intends to be comprehension-based. This implies that the CLAT does not expect you to have any prior knowledge in specialized sections. In other words, you will be required to answer questions according to what appears in the paper and application of prior facts/knowledge might lead you to the wrong answer. The end-goal is to gauge how competent an aspirant would be in reading texts and comprehending them.
Additionally, the paper will also intend to focus on logical reasoning and quantitative techniques with the aim of letting aspirants demonstrate their inferential reasoning skills.
Although the press release does not clarify the situation of Legal Aptitude section, we have been told by our sources at the NLUs that is has not been entirely discarded. CLAT 2020 will have pure application-based legal reasoning questions where an aspirant will have to simply apply the principle given to the factual situation without any prior conceptual legal knowledge. This new approach to attempting questions would work in favour of those who found understanding legal concepts, prior to law school, a Herculean task. The core legal knowledge, however, will be reserved solely to be taught in the law schools.
While there might be no changes expected in the sections pertaining to English and Mathematics, the General Knowledge section is bound to be more awareness-based rather than a trivia quiz. Greater focus on current affairs will be made to test you on the conceptual understanding of the news.
The official notification for CLAT 2020 is scheduled to be released in the last week of December 2019 and the online application process will start from January 1st, 2020.
We, at CLATGyan, would stress on how important it is for you to continue your preparation in a timely fashion with greater focus on comprehension than simple rote learning. Keep the panic away, and let these changes inspire you!
All the very best! 🙂
Zainab.
Thank you
Good to know that timings will remain the same and we just need to enhance our reading skills now. This change should be taken in a positive way. Thank you.
Thankyou ❤
Hi! How should one change one’s preparation for current affairs in light of this pattern change? Would your daily briefs sufficient, or one should get more into details of the stories in your daily briefs? As you said, the current affairs section will now be based less on trivia, how do you suppose that will be?
Again, thanks, as always, for helping CLAT aspirants!
This means that my prior knowledge on gk section is completely useless? now i have to only read newspaper and no necessary to keep notes on it? what is this quantitative aplitude[comphrrensive].?
” Due To Mental Stress ” , yeah it is commendable but what about us(dropper students and the other who are preparing for time) ? We had a advantage of legal section.
Now a maths student will score more marks than us.
Thank you. Hope you’re right about the legal reasoning section.