CLAT Exam Syllabus
If you are planning to appear for CLAT, the syllabus is the first thing you need to sit down with, not textbooks, not coaching brochures. Every hour you spend studying without knowing the syllabus is potentially wasted effort directed at the wrong things.
This guide breaks down the complete CLAT exam syllabus for both UG (BA LLB) and PG (LLM) programmes, directly sourced from the official Consortium of NLUs document, with section-wise weightage, topic lists, question distribution, what the Consortium actually tests, and a preparation strategy for each section that goes beyond generic advice.
What is the CLAT Exam?
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is a national-level entrance examination conducted by the Consortium of National Law Universities. It is the single gateway to undergraduate and postgraduate law programmes at 25 National Law Universities across India, including NLSIU Bangalore, NALSAR Hyderabad, NUJS Kolkata, NLU Delhi, and NLU Jodhpur.
CLAT is conducted once a year, typically in December. The most recent edition, CLAT 2026, was held on December 7, 2025.
Key exam highlights:
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Exam Name | Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) |
| Conducting Body | Consortium of National Law Universities |
| Mode | Offline (pen and paper) |
| Duration | 120 minutes (2 hours) |
| Total Questions | 120 MCQs |
| Total Marks | 120 marks |
| Marking Scheme | +1 for correct, -0.25 for incorrect |
| Unattempted Questions | No penalty |
| Programmes | UG (5-year BA LLB) and PG (1-year LLM) |
CLAT Exam Syllabus 2026 (UG): Overview
The UG-CLAT is for students who have completed Class 12 and want to pursue the 5-year integrated BA LLB programme. The Consortium designs it specifically as an aptitude test, not a knowledge test. The official syllabus document says this plainly: the exam is built to evaluate “comprehension and reasoning skills and abilities,” not prior knowledge.
This distinction matters a great deal for how you prepare.
The UG-CLAT covers five sections:
- English Language
- Current Affairs including General Knowledge
- Legal Reasoning
- Logical Reasoning
- Quantitative Techniques
Section-Wise Weightage and Question Distribution
| Section | No. of Questions | Weightage |
|---|---|---|
| English Language | 22-26 | 20% |
| Current Affairs including GK | 28-32 | 25% |
| Legal Reasoning | 28-32 | 25% |
| Logical Reasoning | 22-26 | 20% |
| Quantitative Techniques | 10-14 | 10% |
| Total | 120 | 100% |
Current Affairs and Legal Reasoning each carry 25% of the paper. Together they account for half the exam. Any preparation strategy that does not reflect this reality will hold you back.
Section 1: English Language (20% | 22-26 Questions)
What the Consortium Tests
The English section gives you passages of approximately 450 words drawn from contemporary or historically significant fiction and non-fiction writing. The level is appropriate for a Class 12 student and each passage should take around 5 to 7 minutes to read.
After each passage, the questions test your ability to:
- Identify and understand the main point of the passage
- Draw inferences and conclusions from what is written
- Summarise the passage accurately
- Compare and contrast different arguments or viewpoints presented
- Understand what specific words and phrases mean in context
What This Section Is Really Testing
The English section is not a grammar test. There are no fill-in-the-blank questions, no sentence correction, and no vocabulary lists to memorise. Every single question is tied to a passage.
What it actually tests is reading speed combined with comprehension accuracy. You need to process a 450-word passage, understand its core argument, and answer 5 to 7 questions accurately, all within a tight time budget.
The passages are often dense. They come from sources like newspaper editorials, academic essays, literary fiction, and policy documents. Students who read only textbooks throughout school struggle with this section not because they lack English skills but because they are unused to analytical reading.
Key Topics for English Language
- Reading comprehension (main idea, tone, purpose)
- Drawing inferences (what can be concluded, what cannot)
- Summarisation (picking the best summary from options)
- Argument analysis (identifying the author’s position)
- Contextual vocabulary (what a word means in a specific sentence)
- Passage structure and organisation
Preparation Strategy for English
Read one editorial or opinion piece every single day. The Hindu, Indian Express, and The Wire are standard recommendations. Do not just read, analyse. After finishing a piece, ask yourself: what is the main argument? What assumptions does the author make? What would weaken this argument?
Speed is built through practice, not through shortcuts. Take timed reading tests. If you cannot read a 450-word passage, understand it, and answer questions about it in 7 to 8 minutes, you are not ready for exam conditions.
Section 2: Current Affairs Including General Knowledge (25% | 28-32 Questions)
What the Consortium Tests
This is the highest-weightage section alongside Legal Reasoning. The Consortium gives you passages of up to 450 words drawn from news articles, journalistic sources, and other non-fiction writing. The questions examine your awareness of:
- Contemporary events of significance from India and the world
- Arts and culture
- International affairs
- Historical events of continuing significance
The official CLAT exam syllabus notes that questions may include legal information discussed in or related to the passage, but you are not expected to bring in legal knowledge from outside the passage.
What This Section Is Really Testing
This is the one section where background knowledge directly helps you. If you already know the context of what a passage is discussing, you read it faster and with better comprehension. A student who has been reading the news for six months will find the passage about the G20 summit or India’s space programme far easier than one who encounters the topic cold.
The GK component covers two broad areas:
Static GK (historical and established knowledge):
- Indian history and freedom movement
- Indian Constitution and political system
- Geography of India and the world
- Economic concepts and India’s economy
- Science and technology fundamentals
- Awards, honours, and important institutions
Dynamic GK / Current Affairs (recent and ongoing events):
- National politics and government policy
- International relations and bilateral agreements
- Economic developments, budgets, and indices
- Sports events and championships
- Environmental issues and climate developments
- Legal developments, important judgments, and new laws
- Science, space, and technology milestones
Preparation Strategy for Current Affairs
The biggest mistake students make here is treating current affairs as something they can cram in the last two months. The best students track news throughout the year and build a reference base that makes the passages immediately familiar.
Build a habit of reading one national newspaper daily from the start of your preparation. Supplement with a quality monthly GK magazine or CLATapult’s current affairs resources. Focus especially on legal developments, constitutional amendments, landmark Supreme Court and High Court judgments, and government schemes, since these appear often and overlap with Legal Reasoning passages.
Make brief notes on each significant event. After six months of this, you will walk into the exam recognising most passage topics, which is a significant advantage.
Section 3: Legal Reasoning (25% | 28-32 Questions)
What the Consortium Tests
Legal Reasoning carries the same 25% weightage as Current Affairs and is where most CLAT aspirants either gain or lose their rank. The Consortium gives passages of around 450 words relating to fact situations or scenarios involving legal matters, public policy questions, or moral philosophical enquiries.
The key clarification in the official syllabus: you do not need prior knowledge of law to attempt this section. What you need is the ability to:
- Identify and infer rules and principles set out in the passage
- Apply those rules and principles to various fact situations
- Understand how changes to the rules or principles may alter their application
What This Section Is Really Testing
Legal Reasoning is an application test. The passage gives you a rule or principle (for example, “a contract requires offer, acceptance, and consideration to be valid”). The questions then present you with different scenarios and ask whether the rule applies.
Students who try to answer Legal Reasoning questions from their general legal knowledge rather than from the passage consistently get these wrong. The passage is the law. Whatever it says overrides what you think you know.
The skill being tested is the same one practised by lawyers every day: reading a legal provision, understanding what it means, and applying it to a new set of facts.
Key Concepts That Appear Frequently
While the exam does not require prior legal knowledge, familiarity with these areas improves your ability to engage with the passages:
- Law of Contract (offer, acceptance, consideration, breach)
- Law of Torts (negligence, liability, damages)
- Constitutional Law (fundamental rights, directive principles, separation of powers)
- Criminal Law (intention, offence, punishment, defences)
- Family Law (marriage, divorce, inheritance)
- Property Law (ownership, possession, transfer)
- Public Policy and Moral Philosophy (used in newer passage types)
Preparation Strategy for Legal Reasoning
Practice applying rules to facts mechanically and trust the passage over your instincts. Work through legal reasoning exercises systematically. CLATapult’s Legal Reasoning module is built around the passage-application method that the Consortium actually uses.
Read newspaper columns on legal issues, Supreme Court judgments summaries, and policy editorials. This builds familiarity with legal language so that when you see a passage about vicarious liability or promissory estoppel, you are not decoding the terminology from scratch.
Section 4: Logical Reasoning (20% | 22-26 Questions)
What the Consortium Tests
The Logical Reasoning section uses short passages of about 450 words, each followed by one or more questions. The Consortium asks you to:
- Recognise an argument, its premises, and its conclusions
- Read and identify the arguments set out in the passage
- Critically analyse patterns of reasoning and assess how conclusions depend on premises
- Evaluate how conclusions may be strengthened or weakened by changes in premises
- Infer what follows from the passage and apply those inferences to new situations
- Draw relationships and analogies, identify contradictions and equivalence, and assess the effectiveness of arguments
What This Section Is Really Testing
This section tests structured thinking. Every question is designed around an argument. You must be able to pull apart what someone is claiming (conclusion), what they are using to support the claim (premises), what they are assuming without saying (assumptions), and what would make the claim stronger or weaker.
Common question types you will encounter:
- Strengthen the argument – which answer choice makes the author’s conclusion more likely to be true?
- Weaken the argument – which answer choice makes the author’s conclusion less likely to be true?
- Identify the assumption – what unstated premise is the argument relying on?
- Draw an inference – what must be true based on what the passage says?
- Identify the conclusion – what is the author ultimately claiming?
- Parallel reasoning – which other argument uses the same logical structure?
- Flaw in the argument – what error in reasoning does the author make?
Preparation Strategy for Logical Reasoning
Logical Reasoning is learnable with structured practice. Many students find this section confusing early in their preparation because they try to answer from common sense rather than from the argument structure.
The correct approach is to first identify the conclusion, then identify the premises, and then answer the question. This three-step process sounds slow but with practice becomes very fast.
Work through at least 10 to 15 logical reasoning passages per day during your preparation. CLATapult’s sectional mock tests are particularly useful here because you can track which question types you consistently get wrong and target those specifically.
Section 5: Quantitative Techniques (10% | 10-14 Questions)
What the Consortium Tests
The Quantitative Techniques section presents short sets of facts, propositions, or other textual representations of numerical information, followed by questions. You need to:
- Derive, infer, and manipulate numerical information from these passages
- Apply Class 10 level mathematical operations to the information
The mathematical areas covered:
- Ratios and proportions
- Basic algebra
- Mensuration
- Statistical estimation (averages, mean, median, mode)
- Percentages
- Profit and loss
- Data interpretation from tables, charts, and graphs
What This Section Is Really Testing
This is the only section not built around a 450-word prose passage. Instead, you get numerical data, sometimes in text, sometimes in tables or graphs, and you apply basic maths to answer questions.
The Consortium is very clear that this is Class 10 level maths. There is no calculus, no trigonometry, and no advanced algebra. If you are comfortable with school-level arithmetic and data interpretation, you can score well here.
The trick is that the data presentation can be deliberately confusing. The maths is simple but the questions are designed to test whether you read the data carefully.
Preparation Strategy for Quantitative Techniques
This section carries only 10% of the paper. Do not over-invest here at the expense of Current Affairs and Legal Reasoning. A reasonable target is to attempt all 10 to 14 questions and get 8 to 10 correct.
Revise Class 10 maths concepts if you have not studied maths since then. Practice data interpretation questions specifically, since the data-in-text format is unusual if you are used to traditional maths problems. Time yourself while solving, since students often spend disproportionate time on this section during exams.
CLAT PG Syllabus 2026 (for LLM Admission)
The PG-CLAT is for law graduates who want to pursue the 1-year LLM programme at NLUs. The exam structure is the same in terms of format: 120 objective-type questions in 120 minutes, with the same +1/-0.25 marking scheme.
The difference is in content. The PG-CLAT is based on the mandatory subjects of the 5-year undergraduate law programme.
Official Subject List for PG-CLAT
| Subject Area |
|---|
| Constitutional Law |
| Jurisprudence |
| Administrative Law |
| Law of Contract |
| Law of Torts |
| Family Law |
| Criminal Law |
| Property Law |
| Company Law |
| Public International Law |
| Tax Law |
| Environmental Law |
| Labour and Industrial Law |
Question Format for PG-CLAT
The PG paper gives you extracts from primary legal materials: important court decisions, statutes, or regulations. Each passage is followed by questions that test your:
- Ability to read and comprehend issues, arguments, and viewpoints in the passage
- Awareness of legal issues and facts related to and arising from the passage and the judgment or statute it is drawn from
- Ability to summarise the passage
- Ability to apply your knowledge of the relevant fields of law
How PG-CLAT Differs from UG-CLAT
The UG exam is primarily an aptitude test. The PG exam requires actual legal knowledge. You cannot bluff your way through PG-CLAT by reading the passage carefully if you do not understand what promissory estoppel or judicial review means. Prior knowledge is expected and necessary.
The passages are drawn from actual court decisions and statutes, and the questions test whether you recognise the legal significance of what you are reading.
How to Prepare for PG-CLAT
- Revise your LLB notes for all 13 subject areas systematically
- Read important Supreme Court judgments from the past 2 to 3 years, focusing on constitutional law and criminal law
- Follow a structured subject-by-subject revision plan across 4 to 5 months
- Practise with previous year PG-CLAT papers, since the question style is distinct from the UG exam
- Pay special attention to Constitutional Law, since it carries the highest weightage and overlaps with many other subjects
CLAT Exam Syllabus: What Changed Over the Years
Understanding how the syllabus evolved helps you avoid outdated advice from older prep resources.
Before 2020: CLAT had 200 questions across 5 sections. Legal Aptitude included direct questions on legal principles. The GK section tested static factual knowledge without passage dependency.
2020 onwards: The Consortium overhauled the entire exam format. Questions dropped to 150 and then to 120 (from CLAT 2024 onwards). Every section became passage-based. The philosophy shifted from knowledge testing to aptitude and comprehension testing. Legal Aptitude became Legal Reasoning.
Current format (CLAT 2025 and 2026): 120 questions, 120 minutes, all passage-based except the data component of Quantitative Techniques. No direct factual recall questions.
This shift is important. If you are using prep material from 2018 or 2019, the question types may be irrelevant to the current exam.
Eligibility Criteria for CLAT 2026
For UG (BA LLB)
| Criterion | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Qualifying Exam | Class 12 or equivalent from a recognised board |
| Minimum Marks (General/OBC/PwD/NRI/OCI/PIO) | 45% |
| Minimum Marks (SC/ST) | 40% |
| Age Limit | No upper age limit |
| Appearing Candidates | Class 12 students appearing in 2026 can also apply |
For PG (LLM)
| Criterion | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Qualifying Exam | LL.B. (3-year or 5-year) from a recognised university |
| Minimum Marks (General/OBC/PwD) | 50% |
| Minimum Marks (SC/ST) | 45% |
| Appearing Candidates | Final-year LLB students can apply provisionally |
CLAT 2027 Exam: What to Expect
CLAT 2027 is expected to follow the same format as CLAT 2026. The exam is anticipated to be held in December 2026, with applications opening around August 2026. No changes to the syllabus or exam pattern have been announced by the Consortium for 2027.
Until the official notification is released, prepare on the basis of the current 120-question, passage-based format.
Commonly Asked Questions About CLAT Exam Syllabus
Is there a change in the CLAT Exam syllabus every year?
The broad syllabus structure has been stable since 2020. The five sections and their weightages remain consistent. What changes is the specific passage content used in the exam, not the skills being tested.
Can I crack CLAT without studying law in advance?
For UG-CLAT, yes. The Consortium explicitly says you do not need prior legal knowledge for Legal Reasoning. Current Affairs requires general awareness, not law. For PG-CLAT, no. Prior legal knowledge is essential.
Which section should I prioritise?
Current Affairs and Legal Reasoning together carry 50% of the paper. These two sections deserve the most preparation time. English and Logical Reasoning at 20% each come next. Quantitative Techniques at 10% should not be neglected but also should not be over-prioritised.
How many questions appear from each section?
The exact split varies slightly year to year within the declared range. In CLAT 2025, the distribution was approximately 22-24 questions in English, 30 in Current Affairs, 30 in Legal Reasoning, 22-24 in Logical Reasoning, and 10-12 in Quantitative Techniques.
Is CLAT Exam Syllabus harder than other law entrance exams?
CLAT is considered one of the most competitive law entrance exams in India purely because of the number of applicants (over 1 lakh per year) relative to the number of seats at top NLUs. The difficulty level of the paper is moderate, but the competition means even small score differences translate into significant rank differences.
Is there sectional cut-off in CLAT?
No. CLAT does not have sectional cut-offs. Your total score determines your rank and allotment. However, this does not mean you can ignore any section entirely, since even 2 to 3 questions in Quantitative Techniques can change your rank significantly at the competitive range.
What is the CLAT application fee?
For CLAT 2026, the application fee was Rs. 4,000 for General/OBC/PwD/NRI/PIO/OCI candidates and Rs. 3,500 for SC/ST and BPL candidates.
Where is CLAT conducted?
CLAT is conducted across 130 plus centres across India in pen-and-paper (offline) mode.
How CLATapult Covers the Full CLAT Exam Syllabus
At CLATapult, every section of the CLAT syllabus is covered through structured courses built around how the exam actually tests you, not how it used to test you five years ago.
For English, you get daily reading exercises built around CLAT-style passages and timed comprehension tests. For Current Affairs, CLATapult provides monthly magazines and daily news digests tailored specifically to CLAT patterns. For Legal Reasoning, the entire course is built around the passage-application method the Consortium uses, not rote knowledge of legal principles. For Logical Reasoning, structured argument-mapping practice covers every question type. For Quantitative Techniques, focused data interpretation exercises ensure you can score full marks without over-investing time.
The combination of subject depth, regular mock tests, and performance analysis lets you track exactly where you are losing marks and fix it before exam day.
A Note on Preparation Timeline
Most serious CLAT aspirants begin preparation 8 to 12 months before the exam. This is the recommended timeline for a first attempt. However, students who start with only 3 to 4 months have also cracked CLAT at top ranks with focused, structured preparation.
What matters is not how long you prepare but how aligned your preparation is with the actual syllabus and exam format.
Build your study plan around the five sections in proportion to their weightage. Test yourself regularly with full-length mocks under actual exam conditions. Track your accuracy, not just your scores. A student attempting 80 questions with 85% accuracy will outperform one attempting 110 questions with 60% accuracy every single time.
Final Thoughts
The CLAT exam syllabus is not complex. Five sections, a clear format, and a well-defined question style. What makes CLAT hard is the volume of competition and the fact that the passage-based format rewards students who have genuinely built reading and reasoning skills over months, not students who crammed in the final week.
Start early. Stay consistent with current affairs. Practice Legal Reasoning passage application every day. Build your reading speed. And use your Quantitative Techniques time efficiently without over-preparing that section at the cost of the others.
If you want section-specific resources, practice passages, monthly current affairs modules, and full-length CLAT mock tests, CLATapult has everything structured to match the official syllabus and the current exam pattern.
Contact us to explore courses, enroll in the CLATapult Probe test series, or get admissions guidance.