Preparing for CLAT 2026: Some Strategies to Crack the Exam

 

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) India’s most competitive law entrance exams with a pan- India reach.

It is written by a lac plus students vying for 3500 odd seats. The statistics speak for themselves. 

CLAT obviously requires lot of commitment and discipline. Not just that but it also has to be planned and systematic.  As of this blog publication, there are almost 6 months to get- set- go for CLAT exam as it takes place in December first week. 

Ample time? Yes- if you are planning to study full time from a coaching centre. 

No- if you are a plus two student. Then, it should be preferably April beginning. 

CLAT Exam Pattern and Syllabus: 

There are 120 questions distributed among five sections: 

•  English Comprehension – 24 Q’s 

• Current Affairs including General Knowledge – 28 Q’s

•  Legal Reasoning – 32Q’s 

• Logical / critical reasoning – 24 Q’s 

•  Quantitative Techniques – 10 Q’s 

Please note that this is as per latest CLAT 2025 exam. There is a mild chance that number of questions in each section may change slightly but not in a major way.  For example, English comprehension can become 26 questions and accordingly 2 questions will be reduced in Logical or legal reasoning. 

Build a Strategic Study Plan

• Start Early: It is best to begin preparation at least 8-9 months (for plus two students) before December 2026 to cover the syllabus thoroughly and to understand the CLAT answering nuances. 

• Daily Time Allocation: Divide your daily study hours among the five sections, apportioning more time to your weaker sections. 

• Weekly Goals: Set weekly targets for the different sections. Mocks are an important barometer for this. Change track where and when required as per mock scores. 

• Set a target score: Ideally by mid-November you should be aiming for a score of 88 to 90 bare minimum whenever doing a complete mock. This ensures that you are in safe zone.    

• Revision: 100 % revision is not completely feasible in CLAT but towards end practice with easy passages in English, legal and logical to feel confident. 

Section-Wise Preparation Tips 

English Comprehension 

• Read editorials of The Hindu or Indian Express on regular basis with focus on observation, memory sharpening, reading between the lines etc. It improves GK also. 

• Practice 2 to 3 reading comprehension passages daily, and start getting at ease with inferences, tone identification, implicit aspects etc. 

• Get into steady vocabulary improvement by learning new words daily and its contextual usage. Helps for logical also. 

• Content analysis should be a comfort factor with 3 months. That ideally is a good timeline target. 

Current Affairs and General Knowledge 

• Day to day updating is a MUST and it is non-negotiable. There may be many suggestions on how to do last minute catching up but that is high risk.  

• Read daily newspapers, editorials, all major and minor national plus international developments. Nothing can be left to chance. 

• Focus on legal and constitutional Current affairs. Example – CAA, WAQF, Centre-state issues, important bills passage and due process etc.  

• Summarize weekly and monthly important events, defence deals, joint defence exercises, new projects launched, announced etc. 

• Rankings, awards, special schemes, global and national summits and related static GK 

• No shortcuts in this section! 

Legal Reasoning

• Understand fundamental legal principles, maxims, legal principles applied, and most importantly latest supreme court judgments

• Daily or regularly read good law journals like Live law, bar and bench etc. 

• Go through most of CLAT previous years’ legal reasoning questions to get the feel of legal passage analysis. 

• Focus on reasoning rather than pure rote learning. You should learn the knack of applying laws to facts logically.

• Remember CLAT does not expect the candidate to be from a legal background. It just tests from a layman angle. So, prepare from that style.  

Logical Reasoning

• Practice of English comprehension is automatic practice of logical / critical reasoning and vice-versa. 

• The only difference is your assumptive thinking in this should be higher 

• Develop slowly and steadily the skill of answering – What if this had happened? What if that is possible? Etc.  

• If CLAT 2025 is any indication, then start practising to a certain extent on - coding-decoding, seating arrangement, syllogisms etc. 

Quantitative Techniques

• Go through basic arithmetic concepts like ratios, profit and loss, time and distance, percentage etc. 

• Not a very difficult section. Only 10 to 12 questions. Unexpected easy one’s are always there. 

• Focus on accuracy and speed to deflect negative marking.

• Practice on CLAT previous years’ quantitative questions and some similar models. 

Some additional Tips: 

• Develop a good reading habit which is not just restricted to newspaper. Let it be fiction, books, blogs, essays Indian and foreign journals etc. 

• Give prime importance to current affairs, news watching, reading, discussing with like minded people. 

• A consistent and disciplined study routine till December 2025. 

• Equally important is a healthy lifestyle with adequate rest, exercise and plenty of sleep. 

CLAT coaching at JobSecura: 

JobSecura 18 years of expertise, we are Kerala’s oldest premier law entrance specialist coachers in CLAT, KLEE, CUSAT. 

Many of our CLAT students have secured seats in NLU’s. This consistency is visible every year. 

Specially curated course material for all the sections with more than 1200 passage based practice questions. 

Constant mock tests – sectional and complete to improve speed and accuracy. 

Offline, online and weekend classes for plus 2 and plus completed students.