Pre-law student

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2017 yet again managed to probably get a whole bunch of questions wrong, with at least 13 allegedly confirmed errors, four questionable answers and 10 questions framed so badly that they would have been difficult or unfair to answer.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) prejudices non-elite and non-NLU graduates, two Delhi University (DU) students have complained.

With a final spurt of more than 3,000 LLB and LLM applicants registering for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), just a few hours after our report last week (on 31 March) and before the 1159pm deadline.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2017 has already seen a record-breaking all-time high in the number of applicants. Almost 50,000 candidates have already registered for the exam, with a few hours still to go before its application deadline closes tonight and final tallies are counted.

After having left students on tenterhooks and without information for 7 days after the Supreme Court had unequivocally stayed the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit on studying law, the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) convenor CNLU Patna finally issued a formal notification that, in line with the decision of the apex court and two high courts, students over the age of 20 would indeed be able to study law.

The Supreme Court has issued an ad interim stay of the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit today, and ordered the BCI that no age limit should apply to law aspirants seeking to study LLB.

The Supreme Court challenge of the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit to studying law has given the BCI until Friday (3 March) to figure out its position after the BCI asked for more time because its general council would discuss the matter tomorrow at a meeting.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) managed to avoid a serious challenge to the revival of its LLB age bar on 20 February in the Supreme Court, when its counsel admitted that it does not apply to a petitioner who challenged it.

Supreme Court Justice SA Bobde, presiding over a bench with Justice L Nageswara Rao, told the Bar Council of India (BCI) today that it should reconsider the undergraduate law degree age limit of 20 years that it had foisted unexpectedly on law aspirants late last year.

Scoop: The Allahabad high court has today ordered the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) convenor to allow around 70 aspirants older than 20 years to apply for the exam, despite the last minute rule change by the Bar Council of India (BCI), though the order is contingent on the pending Supreme Court challenge of the age limit, which we had first reported last week.

There have been numerous pending challenges and at least six high court judgments on the issue of whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) can impose a maximum age limit on law students (of which four judgments quashed the age limit and two upheld the BCI’s power to set one - see table above).

The 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) is not even in the pipeline almost nine months after the 9th AIBE, after the Bar Council of India (BCI) notified on the official AIBE website that it has not yet decided the exam date and that candidates should “kindly keep visiting” the AIBE website for further update.

A petition of 57 aspiring national law school students are set to get their first hearing before the Allahabad high court tomorrow (17 November), with advocate Sushmita Mukherjee challenging the Bar Council of India (BCI) and Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) age limit of 20 years.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has asked the Supreme Court, in an affidavit filed in the challenge to conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) that was filed by Shamnad Basheer and others, that it be allowed to conduct the CLAT in future.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) can be the first rung in a five year ladder to one of the highest paying graduate law jobs worldwide. An ideal CLAT-rank guarantees a place in the LLB courses of any of the older national law universities (NLU) – the NLUs which for at least the last five years have placed at least one graduate with a UK magic circle law firm.