Simultaneous Preparation for Law Entrance Exams-CLAT, AILET, LSAT & SLAT 2023

simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams: Is law school a dream you have been starry-eyed about for a while? Are you planning to get into one of the prestigious National Law Universities (NLUs)? Are you employing all your time and resources into the dream? Congratulations! You’re one of the serious candidates for 2023. 

Although, there are strong chances that you’re putting all eggs in one basket. We understand that you’d want to be focused. However, it is only wise to prepare for all the exams which are at the same level. The four top ones are CLAT (Common Law Admission Test), AILET (All India Law Entrance Test), LSAT (Law School Admission Test), and finally SLAT (Symbiosis Entrance Test).

Let’s check which exams you are eligible to appear in. This blog will give you a detailed account of similarities and differences between the entrance test syllabus and help you curate a strategy for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.

Check your Eligibility 

Exam	College	Eligibility (Educational Qualification)
CLAT	22 NLUs (except NLU Delhi). Note – Some other colleges & universities like IPU, Private colleges like NMIMS, etc., might accept the CLAT Scores.	no upper age limit.As regards the minimum percentage of marks in the qualifying examination (i.e., 10+2 or an equivalent examination), the candidates must have secured:Forty-five percent (45%) marks or its equivalent grade in the case of candidates belonging to General / OBC / PWD / NRI / PIO / OCI categories,Forty Percent (40%) marks or equivalent in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST categories. For more, check this website.
AILET	NLU Delhi(Some other colleges might accept the score)	Senior Secondary School Examination (10+2 system) or an equivalent examination with 45% marks in the case of Gen category students.40% in case of SC/ST/Persons with Disabilities. For more, check this website.
LSAT	Jindal Global Law School, NMIMS, IFIM, etc.	10+2 or equivalent with a minimum of 45% marks (CBSE, ISC, state boards, IB, Cambridge, and other govt. recognized boards)
SLAT	Symbiosis Law School (Pune, Noida, Hyderabad)	The candidate should have passed XII (10+2) examination from any recognized Board with a minimum of 45% marks for general, and40% for S.C. /S.T. candidates).

Decoding the Syllabus

As we’ve already discussed in another blog, knowing the exams you want to appear for is of prime importance. In this section of the blog, we’ll decode the similarities and differences between the syllabus of each of the exams, namely – CLAT, AILET, SLAT, and LSAT. Let’s understand the breakup of marks for each section before understanding how to aim for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.

Exam	English Language	Quants	GK including Current Affairs	Legal Reasoning	Reasoning	(-)ve	FM
CLAT	28-32	13-17	35-39	35-39	28-32	0.25	150
AILET	50	0	50	0	50	0.25	150
SLAT	12	0	12	12	24	0	60
LSAT	24	0	0	0	68	0	480

Now let us go over the exam pattern section wise.

English Language or Reading Comprehension

This section is common to all four of the examinations we are dealing with. The idea to curate a study plan for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams should be prepared for the section keeping in mind the syllabus for all of them. This section of the tests assesses your capacity to read lengthy, intricate texts akin to those found in law schools with comprehension and insight.

Roughly, you’ll be required to –

• Based on what you learn in the materials, develop your own theories and deductions.
• Summarize the information that was read.
• Acquire a comprehension of the meanings of the sentences’ words and phrases.

The questions usually asked are fact based, main idea based, title based, inference based, tone based or context based questions.

Sources and Preparatory Materials

This section requires that you diversify your familiarity with topics because of the wide range of themes along which the comprehensions are based.

1. Newspapers like Indian Express, The Hindu, Business Times
2. Fictional books of 12th Standard like “Hounds of Baskerville” and “Anne Frank’s Diary. Reading authors like Dan Brown and Agatha Christie should also prove beneficial.
3. Non-fictions like Financial Magazines or Yojana and Kurukshetra.
4. You should also aim to diversify your vocabulary. An excellent source to do that is the “Word Power Made Easy” book by Norman Lewis.

For AILET & SLAT, you will also need to have some basic idea about the Rules of Grammar. You can use Wren and Martin (High School Grammmar) to finish your preparation for English section with style!

Preparation for Law Entrance Exams- Quantitative section

This section is limited to just CLAT. However, it is often the make or break section of the paper. For a detailed note on how to prepare for Quantitative techniques section of CLAT, refer this blog.

Preparation for Law Entrance Exams- Reasoning Section

Now this is a tricky section to deal with. It is the most significant section for all the 4 papers and hence the most important section to plan for while aiming for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams. For LSAT & SLAT, the majority of questions appear from here. However, the types of questions asked in the different tests vary. Let’s see how!

CLAT	AILET	LSAT	SLAT
Reasoning forms roughly 20% of the entire paper. The paper is supposed to embody all three types of reasoning, namely -I. AnalyticalII. Logical, andIII. Critical. However, recent years question papers have marked an absence of critical reasoning questions.	This section in AILET is a test designed to evaluate the candidate’s logical reasoning ability, critical thinking abilities, and decision-making abilities. This section makes up 75% of the entire paper. Note – Since, the AILET paper does not contain a separate section for Legal Reasoning, some questions in the logical reasoning section, might appear from legal reasoning.	Reasoning forms 75% of the entire paper. The two predominant categories are -I. Analytical, II. Logical	Two categories of reasoning comprise 40% of the paper – I. Analytical ReasoningII. Logical Reasoning
Pro Tip – If two or more candidates get the same marks at the All-India Law Entrance Test (AILET), their merit will be determined on the basis of higher marks in the section on Logical Reasoning in the AILET 2022. (The perfect motivation for that extra effort, isn’t it?)

Sources & Preparatory material

The idea in this section is to gauge your thinking abilities. Hence, you can depend on books like 

• ethics in the real world
• eighty-two brief essays on things that matter by Peter Singer

as well as articles and editorials like 

• “Reverse Gear” taken from The Economist,
• “History for Health” published by the Telegraph and “Where I am”, an editorial published in the Indian Express.

The questions following the old format, like Clocks, direction sense, etc, can be practiced from a number of sources (pick one or maximum two per topic, out of the listed) –

1. Analytical Reasoning (English) by MK Pandey.
2. A Modern Approach to Logical Reasoning by RS Aggarwal.
3. Arihant’s A New Approach to Verbal and Analytical Reasoning.

A strategy that combines both types of sources should suffice for this section for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.

Legal Reasoning

This section is common to just CLAT and SLAT. While LSAT does not house this section altogether, questions based on legal reasoning appear in the logical reasoning section itself of the AILET paper. However, a strong foundation and understanding of this section can help ease your journey in the first semester of your law school. Hence, Oliveboard will strongly urge you to do better in the legal reasoning section.

In this section, two main kinds of questions asked are –

1. Principle-Fact Questions – For CLAT, principle and facts will not be supplied separately to you – as such, the first thing you should do is read through the passage carefully, and identify the principles set out in it. For SLAT, the difficulty isn’t that high. You may be provided with principle and facts separately.
2. Legal general knowledge questions: These questions are very factual in nature and appear in SLAT mostly. However, you may find them as a question within a set of passage in the CLAT paper as well. To prepare well for such questions, read a newspaper regularly, like The Hindu or The Indian Express.

Note – Remember that this section is not oriented to testing your knowledge of the Law! Under no circumstances are you supposed to apply any pre-existing knowledge of laws that you may have to the questions in this section, except for questions specifically asking about a certain law – very often, the question setters will tweak a principle of law here and there, with the result that the outcome may be very different from what you may know about some actual law in the ‘real’ world.

Sources & Preparatory Materials

1. Previous year question papers for both CLAT and SLAT – the previous year question appers can help you get familiar with the standard and type of questions asked in the section.
2. Mock tests – Mock tests will be especially beneficial in ensuring that your “application” of abilities is on point!
3. Keep a tab on news by browsing feed of –
   1. Livelaw, and
   2. Bar and Bench.
4. Books like –
   1. Legal Reasoning by AP Bhardawaj
   2. Pearson’s Legal Reasoning

General Knowledge and Current Affairs

This section is common to all exams except LSAT. However, the papers differ on how the questions are asked and what should our focus be on. For example, in CLAT, the questions intend to test depth of understanding of issues and events of significance,rather than mere fact- or trivia-based superficial knowledge. Whereas SLAT might focus on your factual knowledge of events. Hence, you should be able to incorporate a strategy for handling all kinds of question while aiming for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.

Moreover, while the focus is on more recent and current events, questions may test you on historical information related to such events and significance, in order to better gauge your understanding of the causes of such current events. Questions may also relate to matters associated with the events mentioned in the passage – for a passage about a natural calamity for example, you may face questions not only about that natural calamity, but similar events in other parts of the world.

Hence, the best idea for this section would be to understand the differences between each of the papers by practicing from previous years question papers.

Sources and Preparatory Materials 

The the best strategy here can be to go through the –

• Editorials & Opinions section of the leading dailys like The Hindu, Indian Express, Financial Times, etc.
• Explained section of Indian Express.

You should also apply your curiosity behind the daily happenings for find out the “Why”s and “How’s. Also, focus on the keywords. For ex, Indian missiles are majorly named after core elements of nature such as Prithvi or Agni. This should help you in eliminating other options.

For factual knowledge for SLAT, you can depend on any monthly or yearly fact compendiums for Current Affairs. You can also depend on sources like Panorama or India Year Book.

Curate a Study Plan for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams

You are now fully aware of the similarities and differences between each of the papers and also the best resources for each of the sections. Let’s dive into curating a study plan for simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.

But first, a NOTE – The Consortium has already announced that CLAT 2023 shall be held on 18th December 2022. This gives you a gap of at least 6 months between CLAT and other exams – AILET, LSAT, and SLAT.

Here are some tips to help you create your own study plan –

• According to the weightage of each section in each of the papers, rank the subjects from most essential to least significant. Club your preparation for sections that appear common in the 4 examinations. Clubbing shall be the key to simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams.
• Make sure you cover all selected sections for all examinations in your daily schedule. 
• Divide your weekdays (Monday to Friday) into three parts (the following points are indicatory, customise according to your needs) – 
  • First ⅓ can go to your CLAT & AILET, where you take care of exam-oriented preparation requiring heavy devotion to comprehension based questions for all section, etc.
  • Second ⅓ can go to your prep for SLAT and LSAT, where you read the newspaper, build vocabulary, work on quantitative and reasoning abilities, These exams will consist of factual questions.
  • Third ⅓ should ideally be devoted to strengthening your mind. Revise the material you read throughout the day. Attempt sectional mocks.
• Weekends are the most fun part of the preparation schedule.
  • First, have fun. Remember that “all work and no play”, makes you a dull person.
  • Attempt full-length mock tests for one chosen exam.
  • Revise the entire week’s work.
• ALWAYS make sure you leave enough time at the end of the day for revision.
• When preparing legal issues, be sure to spend additional time mapping out pertinent case laws.
• Don’t start with a difficult or time-consuming subject. Take up your favourite subject or topic first, and then go on to other things.

And more tips…

Stay Hydrated! 

Don’t stress yourself out. 

Make a plan and stick to it. 

This was all about simultaneous preparation for law entrance exams. Stay tuned to Oliveboard for more tips. Ciao!