By Tanuj Kalia

The way to prepare for surprises in a match is to have the surprise elements during practice.

And that’s the way you prepare for surprises for CLAT too.

Here are some ideas:

1. Read judgments my renowned jurists.

www.indiankanoon.org is your best bet here.

Make a list of some prominent judges and read their judgments.

It’s alright if you don’t understand them. But make a sincere ‘try’ to understand.

With this you’ll develop a good reading comprehension muscle.

Warning: Do NOT let any legal knowledge you gather in the process to affect your legal reasoning.

Remember, unless otherwise stated, legal reasoning in CLAT exam does NOT assume any prior legal knowledge.

2. Read LSAT books/test papers

LSAT (not the Indian version) is a tough test.

The logic reasoning and the english language components are specially tough.

Try solving them and no question in CLAT should give you a surprise.

3. Solve question papers of NLSIU, NALSAR, CNLU, NLUD

NLSIU and NALSAR, because these colleges had great question papers before CLAT came into being.

CNLU, because it’s the college which is setting the question paper this time around.

And AILET because it’s a pretty well organized exam.

This will give you a sense of the range of questions that can be asked.

It will also prepare you for a wide variety of questions.

4. Watch ‘Justice’ by Michael Sandel

Here’s the link for your reference.

It will inform and inspire you in a different way.

I promise it will take your legal reasoning to a different level.

5. Solve ‘different’ logic reasoning problems

Take a good logical reasoning book, say, an RS Agarwal for example.

Now, am sure you are familiar with the ‘type’ of logic reasoning questions that are asked in the CLAT exam.

Now, go ahead and solve the type of questions that are NOT asked in the CLAT exam.

Again, it’s a way to challenge, test and improve upon your logical reasoning skills.

6. Take out your ‘mental mathematics’ books of the 6th/7th class and give it a shot.

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IMPORTANT: Do NOT make this the core of your CLAT preparations.

The core of your CLAT preparations should be based on a careful study of the past year papers and on the ‘usual’ questions that are asked in the CLAT exam.

However, you can spare 10% of your time in preparing for these surprises and you can use some of the ways I’ve mentioned here.

The idea is to break from the monotony, have fun in learning and at the same time preparing well for any surprise that the CLAT authorities might throw at you. Clat crash course will also prepare you the best.