CLAT 2023 Syllabus: Undergraduate and Postgraduate

CLAT 2023, Common Law Admission Test, will be held on 18th December 2022. The courses offered through CLAT 2023 are BA LLB, BBA LLB, B.Com LLB, and B.Sc. LLB, B.Tech LLB and LLM. 22 National Law Universities accept the CLAT score for undergraduate programmes and 19 NLUs for LLM courses. The National Law University, Delhi, is the only NLU that does not accept CLAT scores for admission. It conducts its entrance exam, named AILET. 

Therefore, CLAT is an important exam for aspirants willing to build a career in the field of legal studies. Since the exam has been preponed for almost 5 months, the candidates must start their preparations. The candidate must start by gathering all the important details about the exam. It is really important to know the exam syllabus well. CLAT 2023 syllabus will provide aspirants with topics and areas of focus that will help to get a good score in CLAT 2023. Even though the Consortium of NLUs has not recommended a specific syllabus for CLAT 2023, looking at the previous years’ papers, important topics under each section can be laid out. This collection of important topics and needed skills account for CLAT 2023 syllabus.

The syllabus for CLAT 2023 UG and CLAT 2023 PG are different from each other. We shall discuss that through this article.

CLAT 2023 Exam highlights

CLAT 2023 is conducted on a national level. It provides admission to undergraduate and postgraduate courses across 22 NLUs and 52 private universities and colleges. However, the Consortium of National Law Universities conducts the exam.

Important details about CLAT 2023 UG

• The exam is conducted once a year.
• It provides admission to undergraduate programmes of legal studies.
• The exam is conducted in pen and paper mode.
• The questions are MCQ type.
• The total number of questions is 150.
• The duration of the exam is 2 hours.

Important details about CLAT 2023 PG

• The exam is conducted once a year.
• It provides admission to postgraduate programmes of legal studies.
• It is conducted in offline mode, i.e. pen and paper mode.
• The questions are MCQ type.
• The total number of questions is 120.
• The duration of the exam is 2 hours.

Both the exams have the same marking scheme with negative marking. The correct responses are given 1 mark, and incorrect responses lead to a deduction of 0.25 marks. However, the unattempted questions are given 0 marks.

Once the aspirant knows these details well, they must look at the CLAT 2023 syllabus before making a study plan for the exam.

CLAT 2023 Syllabus

The CLAT 2023 syllabus has two components to it. The first is the CLAT UG syllabus, and the second one is the CLAT PG syllabus. We will look at both the syllabus separately.

CLAT 2023 Syllabus: Undergraduate

The syllabus is presented section-wise. The important topics under each section have been listed below.

Section I- English Language

This section intends to check the comprehension abilities and the candidate’s command of the English language. So the candidates must focus on the following aspects:

1. Comprehension and Language Skills
2. Making inferences and conclusions.
3. Summarisation
4. Identification of varied arguments and perspectives.
5. Meaning-making.

Section II- General Knowledge and Current Affairs

This section intends to check candidates’ general knowledge of the following themes:

1. Important and recent events (Indian and Global)
2. Arts and Culture
3. International affairs
4. Historical happenings are still relevant and significant.

Section III- Legal Reasoning

This section will check the candidates for their legal aptitude. The focus areas of the legal reasoning section are:

1. General knowledge about current legal and moral issues.
2. Identification and inferring of rules and principles given in the passages.
3. Understanding the impact of changing rules and principles on various fact situations.
4. Application of rules and principles to real-life situations.

Some important topics under this section include: 

• Indian Constitution – Fundamental Rights, Duties, Judiciary, Parliament, Directive Principles of State Policy, Local governments
• Important amendments and provisions
• Important judgments
• Current legal affairs

Section IV- Logical Reasoning

Under the logical reasoning section, the following abilities are assessed:

1. Identification of arguments and their premises.
2. Concluding.
3. Draw similarities and differences
4. Critical analysis of patterns of reasoning.
5. Assessing situation-specific conclusions.
6. Determine arguments’ validity by identifying similar grounds and differences amongst arguments.

Some important topics under this section are:

• Analogies
• Series
• Seating arrangement
• Syllogisms
• Blood relations
• Logical sequences and matching
• Calendars and clocks

Section V- Quantitative Techniques

This section requires the candidate to:

1. Work with numerical information provided or stated in the given passages. It includes deriving, making inferences and manipulating numbers.
2. Application of elementary mathematical concepts and operations.

Some of the important topics of this section include:

• Ratios and proportions,
• Basic algebra,
• Mensuration
• Statistical estimation
• Algebra

CLAT 2023 Syllabus: Postgraduate 

There is no specific syllabus for the CLAT exam. However, some important topics/subjects have been identified that the aspirants must put their focus on while preparing for the entrance exam. 

Judicial process

• Nature of judicial process
• Constitutional amendments
• The judicial process in India
• Special dimensions

Constitutionalism

• Principles of constitutionalism
• New challenges to constitutionalism
• Federalism as an aspect of constitutionalism
• Justice delivery system in India

Legal research and methodology

• Precepts
• Techniques and methodology
• Hypothesis and research work
• Conduct of research

Law and social transformation in India

• Law and social change
• Women and the law
• Community and the law
• Children and the law
• Religion

Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

• Protection and enforcement of human rights in India
• Human rights and jurisprudence
• International human rights law
• Human rights education

Alternative Dispute Resolution

• Arbitration law in India
• Evolution and concept of ADR
• International commercial arbitration
• Practical training in ADR
• Mediation, Conciliation and negotiation

Intellectual Property Rights

• Historical background
• Copyright law & neighbouring law
• Patents law
• Law relating to designs and geographical indications
• Law relating trademarks
• Nature, emergence and development of IPRs

International Trade Law

• Regulation of IT in India
• WTO and International trade law
• International sale & carriage of goods
• Settlement of IT disputes
• International commercial arbitration
• International investment laws

Corporate Law

• Consumer protection laws
• Law of corporate management & governance
• Law of corporate finance & securities regulations
• Corporate taxation
• Regulation of capital markets & foreign investment
• Banking & insurance laws

This list of important topics will help the aspirants to make an effective study plan. Therefore increasing the chances of getting a good CLAT score and securing admission through CLAT 2023.