CLAT stands for Common Law Admission Test and is a national-level entrance exam conducted for enrolling the students into undergraduate and postgraduate law programs in National Law Universities of India.
The CLAT exam consists of 5 segments, namely are English, Current Affairs, including General Knowledge, Legal Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Techniques. While other subjects are quite common and appear in many exams, CLAT Legal Reasoning or CLAT Legal Aptitude is one such subject which is exclusive to CLAT. This subject deals explicitly with laws and legalities and is often viewed as a hard nut to crack in the CLAT exam. This section tests your reasoning for the laws rather than your knowledge for it. This segment comprises current events, legal facts, and principles of law. The motive of the section is to judge a candidate’s legal aptitude, problem-solving ability, and research aptitude.
In this article, we will discuss some tips and tricks to ace the Legal Aptitude Section of the CLAT 2021 exam.
Before beginning with the tips, you must know about the syllabus of the Legal Aptitude section. The syllabus stated on the official website of the Consortium of NLUs is given below:
Legal Reasoning Syllabus
In this section, you will be expected to read passages of around 450 words each. The passages may relate to fact situations or scenarios involving legal matters, public policy questions or moral philosophical enquiries. You will not require any prior knowledge of the law. You will benefit from a general awareness of contemporary legal and moral issues to better apply general principles or propositions to the given fact scenarios.
Each passage would be followed by a series of questions that will require you to:
- Identify and infer the rules and principles set out in the passage;
- Apply such rules and principles to various fact situations; and
- Understand how changes to the rules or principles may alter their application to various fact situations.
Tips and Tricks
Work on your Legal Vocabulary and Legal Jargon
Staying updated with your legal jargons, legal terms, foreign phrases, and maxims will help you in attempting the Legal Aptitude Section better. It will help you improve the expression of your answer and allow you to elaborate on what you want to convey.
Focus on Legal Issues of Last 10-12 months
Focussing on Legal Issues from last 10-12 months can be very beneficial as they can help you in tacking the Legal Aptitude questions of the CLAT exam. For this, you must read the newspaper daily or stay updated with the headlines from any source of your choice.
Read about new amendments and enactments
Reading about new amendments will help you answer the questions better. The more knowledge you have regarding the recent amendments and enactments, the more precise and accurate your answers will be.
Read about static and current legal issues
Doing so will help you in understanding and comprehending the passage easily and at a much faster pace during your CLAT exam. It will also help you correlate and will help to decide the case applying the legal knowledge provided to them in the passage.
Do not miss any Mock Tests
Practising mock tests will give you an idea regarding the paper. It will tell you about what type of questions can be framed in the examination and help you with identifying your strengths and weaknesses.
Work on your reading skills.
In the CLAT exam, every second count. Therefore, you cannot lose your precious time in reading the question paper again and again. You must comprehend and understand what is written in the paper at once, and for that, your reading skills must be solid.
Recommended Books for Legal Aptitude
- Universal’s CLAT Guide
- Legal Awareness and Legal Aptitude by AP Bhardwaj
- LexisNexis Butterworths
- Bare Acts of Indian Constitution
Important topics for Legal aptitude
| Subject | Topic |
| Constitution | History of Indian constitution Important acts and amendments |
| Law | Important laws like IPC, CrPC, law of torts, etc Prepositions and facts Important events related to legal and constitutional developments |
| Policy | Rights and Duties Judiciary – Supreme Court and High Court Parliament – Executive, Legislature, President |
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