In this Legal Reasoning or Legal Aptitude, we will discuss the legal reasoning you require for acing the legal aptitude section of all the CLAT and other LAW entrance exams in India. This article deals specifically with the legal reasoning and the strategy to master it.
Let's start- there are various law entrance exams which you can appear in to start your career in law in the reputed colleges but the most sought after law exam is CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) which is conducted for 21+ National Law Schools. Other than CLAT, there are other important exams conducted like AILET i.e. All India Law Entrance Test conducted by National Law University, Delhi. Apart from these other exams could be LSAT- (it is conducted by Jindal Global Law School) and SET (which is conducted by Symbiosis Law School). These are the exams apart from CLAT and traditional 3 year Exams after graduation for example D.U.L.L.B which you can appear for to start your career in law.
There are various essentials in the various sections of CLAT which you need to keep track of to build a strong base for scoring well in all these exams. Firstly, previous years question papers of CLAT and AILET exams could help you to acquaint yourself with the pattern and the nature of questions being asked.
The other thing you can do is to take a mock test which will help you to have extensive practice and self-testing for time management and better accuracy of your answers.
Lastly, you must start reading newspapers and magazines so that you have regular update on the legal arena, for example, related to the current affairs in the legal field. So you must start reading newspapers and magazine regularly to keep yourself updated for the CLAT exam.
Legal Aptitude Marks In CLAT Exam: you get 50/200 Questions for legal aptitude section, each question worth 1 mark. The Section comprises of Questions based on Legal Reasoning, Legal Maxims, Legal G.K Static, Legal G.K current and Important Case Laws relevant for CLAT. Overall, It is a very high scoring section and you can easily fetch marks in this section.
Important Information: Legal Aptitude section of CLAT is quite important for an additional reason as it's a tiebreaker section. By tiebreaker section of CLAT we mean that you get a better ranking with the help of the scores you make in the legal aptitude section because if there are various students on a similar score having total score same as yours but you got more marks in legal aptitude section as compared to other students then you will have better ranking in total because this section is used to break the tie between the students who have similar total score. So, this section is reasonably given more importance since it's a law entrance exam, so legal aptitude section is the most important section which is used as a tiebreaker section.
Negative Marking: Last thing which you need to keep note of is that CLAT gives you a negative marking of 0.25 marks for every wrong question. So you must ensure that you are confident on the question which you are attempting so that you don't get most of the questions wrong and negative marking as a result of the wrong questions.
Types of Questions asked in CLAT (Common LAW EntranceTest):
Now the type of questions asked in the law interest exams broadly are of two categories: legal reasoning and legal knowledge.
In Legal Reasoning of CLAT you get:
Single Principal Questions which means you will get a single principal and one or more questions based on that principle to be solved. For example, you get a principle on cheating like we will discuss further in this article and you get one or more questions based on the similar principle.
Multiple principle questions there could be two principles given and based on those two principles you might have to solve one question or multiple questions on the base of those principles.
Cluster questions there could be one principle given and four to five questions related to that principle or it could be multiple principles and multiple questions given for solving legal reasoning section of CLAT.
In Legal Knowledge section of CLAT you get:
Static Legal Knowledge which means that there is no legal reasoning involved and you have to have a pre-hand knowledge of certain principle and concepts or basic terminology related to law to solve this section. This also covers knowledge of Legal Maxims, Legal words which are important for a Lawyer to use in the Courtroom or in Practice.
Legal Knowledge Current Affairs which means like you have knowledge of recent popular judgments and name of say law minister & Chief Justice of India. These are the things which you can get in the current affairs section related to legal knowledge.
Without Principle Reasoning Question It's a bit tricky section.Here, you can be given all questions without principles and you will have to solve these questions based on the knowledge you have and if you have knowledge that the particular principle could be used in the question then you will be able to solve the question because it requires pre-hand legal knowledge and you will not be given any legal principle or hint of the law related to the question.Simply putting,you would not be given any hint that which principle would be applied on this question.