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CLAT needs to go
Second is the structure of the exam.
--GK - They ask the most random stuff. Does it really help me as a lawyer to know which Indian city won the 'Cleanest city Award' consecutively for 3 years? Might as well do a coin toss.
--Legal Aptitude - So I need to know the law before doing law. What is even the point of doing this?
-- Maths - When was the last time you needed your maths skill as a lawyer? Even our courts have a hard time when it comes to maths (scroll.in/article/726894/how-the-numbers-dont-add-up-in-the-jayalalithaa-case-did-the-karnataka-high-court-get-its-maths-wrong)
And, then there is the terrible administration of the exam, year after year. We understand that all of these NLUs want the money pot, but can't they just make one permanent CLAT body for the exam which does it year after year instead of the current torture that is meted out now.
On second thoughts, LSAT India, on its merits is actually a better exam to judge the candidature of potential law students. Anyone with the right mindset can crack it without having to go for expensive coaching. The only part that is problematic is the English portion as it tends to be much more difficult than CLAT and as a result, will disproportionately impact students from not so affluent background.
In its current online edition, of course, it is inaccessible to a large no of candidates but since any change is unlikely to happen this year, and hopefully by the time Covid gets over and these exams can take place in physical spaces again, someone here with clout can see this and do something about it.
AILET also suffers from the same issue as CLAT. I haven't given SLAT so can't comment on it. Cannot think of any other major law entrance exam.
2. Agree with the GK issue. Legal reasoning isn't that necessary as logical reasoning is at entry level. Maths unfortunately is needed, at least the basic maths that CLAT tests. As a transactional lawyer, I've found that my numerical aptitude has kept me ahead of at least a part of my colleagues. Even studying Economics and Corp Finance in law school becomes easier.
3. As for coaching for CLAT and LSAT, I had given both without coaching and cleared both. It is possible. I won't deny that I had certain privileges like English medium education, computer training, good reading habit etc.
The current crop of NLU students have really weak English skills because they have not attended schools where English is taught well. Not being elitist here, it's a fact and even NLUs themselves admit it and have set up mentoring. The early crop of NLU students were mostly alumni of elite schools in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata Hyderabad, Pune etc, plus elite residential schools. These days you can count on one hand how many students are from the top 10 cities, leave alone elite schools.
CLAT on the other hand hardly has any standard. In 2011, when NUJS conducted the exam, it had such long comprehension, given the time constraint, it was almost impossible to go through the entire thing in one go. In between, it had paper leaked, questions out of prescribed syllabus, wrong answers used in the answer key, terrible UX and what not. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong and yet you call it a better exam. On what parameter its better is all I want to know.
Don't say more folks give CLAT, because if NLUs shift to LSAT, more folks would be giving LSAT (infact LSAT is likely to become much cheaper and if not cheaper, NLUs still can make a boatload of money by cutting deal with Pearson) and also move away from facing the indignity of not being able to manage an exam which is not given by even 100,000 students, and yes that is a trivial number compared to the scale at which competitive exams take place in India.
It's basically like American exams like SAT and GRE.
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