CLAT Exam Reform: 3-section paper; scrap GK, current affairs; outsource but not to NTA, suggests NLU panel

An expert committee tasked with reforming the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) has suggested adding subjective questions to the exam to test the law aspirants’ ability to structure and express arguments. While the panel advocated introducing these questions right away to the post-graduation (CLAT PG) test, it recommended deferring them at the undergraduate level (CLAT UG) for a few years to address the logistical challenges in evaluating these questions.

The five-member panel, formed by the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) last year, also recommends doing away with the Current Affairs and General Knowledge (GK) section in the undergraduate CLAT question paper and having significantly fewer questions that would test the “depth” of the candidates’ understanding, rather than “breadth” of their knowledge.

The expert committee also suggests replacing the Consortium of NLUs’ current model of rotational leadership with initially outsourcing the paper setting to an external agency, and later hiring internal experts, in order to maintain a consistent quality in the tests. The panel, however, advised against handing over this responsibility to the National Testing Agency (NTA), owing to its poor record in conducting the pan-India exams.

With multiple petitions flagging erroneous questions and answers in CLAT answer keys, the Consortium’s Advisory Board formed the expert panel, consisting of NLU alumni working at top international and Indian universities.

The report was released for public feedback this week. CLAT 2027 will be held on December 6 with no change in syllabus or paper pattern.

The Consortium of NLUs said that the office of the Chief Justice of India will form another committee for further consideration of the recommendations of the report. “The Governing Body of the Consortium of NLUs shall, in coordination with the committee, engage with the recommendations of the report and public feedback in preparation for CLAT 2028,” says a press release from the organisation.

CLAT tests ‘factual recall’: NLU Consortium expert committee report

The committee, in its report, noted that, despite its stated objective of testing the aspirants’ aptitude and skills for legal education rather than prior knowledge, the CLAT UG has been reduced to an examination of “trivial factual recall”, “textual matching” and “disguised comprehension”. The panel found that the questions were often riddled with ambiguous and awkward phrasing, poor syntax and multiple plausible answers, while the comprehension passages were reported to suffer from inconsistent tone and quality and to be ill-suited for reasoning activities.

Describing questions in the GK section, the report said, “Some items simply restate information provided in the passage, rewarding attention rather than knowledge. Others rely on obscure facts — such as minor historical details or ephemeral contemporary data — that privilege rote learning over analytical understanding of major national and global events.”

While the report flagged similar issues in the CLAT PG exam, the biggest problem, according to the committee, is that the test prioritises assessing the breadth of the candidates’ rote knowledge, instead of requiring any interpretation or synthesis of legal principles. This approach promotes expensive exam coaching and is misaligned with the PG education pursued by the candidates, concludes the report.

“LLMs [Master of Law] are often offered as specialised courses focusing on certain areas within the law (like Intellectual Property Laws, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Laws, Criminal Law, Public Law and Legal Theory). However, the syllabus as mentioned above covers a wide gamut of topics, most of which do not form the content of subsequent postgraduate study by candidates,” reads the report.

CLAT Syllabus: 5 sections to 3 at UG

The committee recommends replacing the current five sections of UG exam – English Language, General Knowledge and Current Affairs, Legal Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Technique -- with three sections.

The English language is proposed to be subsumed in a ‘Language and Comprehension’ component that prioritises the students’ capacity to make meaning and reason with text, rather than vocabulary, grammar, or acquired linguistic polish. The Legal Reasoning and Logical Reasoning would be clubbed into a single ‘Logical Reasoning and Legal Aptitude’ section with strictly hypothetical questions that discourage reliance on prior legal knowledge. It advocates retaining the Quantitative Techniques, while removing the GK questions altogether.

As for CLAT PG, which at present isn’t divided into sections, the committee recommends retaining the three components of the UG paper, along with a fourth section on legal knowledge – with emphasis on legal principles, doctrine and their application – rather than legal trivia such as the names of committees or judges, or dates of specific cases.

CLAT Question Paper Pattern: 10-15 questions

For both the exams, the committee recommends that each section of the two-hour paper should only have 10-15 questions, down from the current 120 multiple-choice questions (MCQs). “The goal should be to test for thoughtfulness, rather than speed.” it said.

The panel considered adding a subjective or ‘constructed-response’ question in both UG and PG papers. While the former would require the candidates to write an ‘essay’, the latter would have the candidates solve a legal problem with a choice of three questions.

However, the committee decided against recommending the subjective component’s immediate inclusion in the UG paper after being informed that the NLUs lack the assessment infrastructure at the moment to evaluate the total volume of essays that would be written. The committee also weighed in on the challenge of objective and fair assessment of the essays. It suggested reconsidering the proposal after three years of experience in assessing the descriptive answers in PG exams.

In order to feasibly assess the subjective questions, the committee proposed a staggered selection process, where the candidates are first shortlisted based on their MCQ scores. The individual NLUs would then evaluate the essays of only those candidates who indicated the respective institutes as their preferred choice, gradually moving to those who put the particular law schools down the preference order.

Consortium of NLUs’ leadership model must change

The panel blamed the current model of rotational leadership in the Consortium, where NLUs take turns to head the body, for inconsistency in the paper setting process. It suggested that the body could either hire external examination agencies through a tendering process for a limited period or develop internal capacity by hiring experts. It also recommended developing an NLU examination board reviewing and vetting the papers, and offering feedback to the paper setters.

“It is this variable quality and unpredictability which further highlights the need to design a systematic approach to quality control, one that is conducive to institutional memory and learning over time,” reads the report.

The committee, however, advised against roping in NTA for this purpose, due to its recent and past troubles. “The NTA’s performance in the last year has not inspired much confidence… of the 14 competitive examinations conducted by the NTA, at least five faced major issues,” it quoted the parliamentary committee on education as saying.

The CLAT is conducted for admission to the premier law colleges, the National Law Universities (NLUs).