According to the Advocates Act, a license from the Bar Council is mandatory for anyone who wishes to practices as a lawyer in any Indian court. This license is given only to those who have obtained an LLB degree (Bachelor of Law)  from any recognized law college in India.

However, this should not discourage the multitude of persons working in other sectors of the industry from taking up law in one way or the other. Training as a paralegal is a fine solution for anyone who wants to participate in India’s booming Legal Process Outsourcing Industry (LPO), or take advantage of the growing demand for in-house legal talent in the country’s leading corporate houses.

Legal Process Outsourcing is a sunrise sector in India. It involves off shoring of legal work, such as contract drafting, document reviewing, legal research and a plethora of work for foreign lawyers, law firms and companies. With the increasing popularity of law as a subject, the quantity of legal talent in the country is growing, presenting greater growth opportunities for India in this field. According to figures obtained from LPOs and consultants, Indian lawyers’ billings to US firms for in-house work ranged from US$5 million to US$15 million in 2004. In fact, according to The Management Accountant, it is estimated that by 2015, the global market for Legal Process Outsourcing will be around $3 billion, with India taking a huge 60% share of the business.

The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University (NALSAR) in Hyderabad, ranked 2nd  Law University in India by India Today, provides paralegal training through the NALSAR Pro Program. The objective of this program is to provide legal knowledge to various professionals apart from Lawyers. The Post Graduate Diploma programs have been designed to meet the requirements of professionals in the field of science, technology, media and human rights.

In order to accommodate the time constraints and working needs of professionals, course content is provided in a CD and contact programs are conducted at regular intervals. Various other national law universities such as NLSIU Bangalore too offer similar courses aimed at introducing the non-legal minds to law.

Therefore, training as a paralegal is strongly recommended for any professional or employee who would wish to gain practical legal knowledge, and at the same time, avoid the rigors of the 3 or 5 year classroom programs of LLB courses. Though training as a paralegal won’t be adequate for a license to practice, it offers wide prospects in the Legal Process Outsourcing industry, as well as job prospects in in-house legal departments of corporate and as specialized consultants in law firms. In fact it is worth noting that barely 15% of LLB graduates from the premier National Law Schools join the bar and take up court practice. While IT and BPO sectors have topped career choices in the past, saturation in these sectors has ensured that LPO will be the way for the future. And training as a paralegal seems to be the apt way for professionals in IT, medicine, engineering, media and virtually every other industry sector to gain a secure footing in this flourishing area.

Aditya Singh,
Knowledge Manager – Law,
GSG

After we had a overwhelming response for the CLAT preparation post now this year we want to give you more inputs and help you in a better way. As a part of that we will publish questions from current affairs, GK etc that will help you a lot for your CLAT 2010 preparation. These Questions are compiled by Aditya Singh who is CLAT 2008 All India Rank 76 holder

Here is this week’s GK and Current Affairs 2 Quiz  with 5 questions.

We will keep posting more questions every week.  Keep visiting. Happy Quizzing!

FAQs for CLAT 2010

Q1: Please recommend me some good books for CLAT preparation?

Some Useful Books Are:

Universal’s Guide to LLB Entrance Exam (For your General Preparation) Merriam Webster’s Vocabulary Builder (For increasing your Word Power) Manorama or Penguin or CSR Yearbooks (For your General Knowledge) RS Aggarwals Guide to Logical Reasoning (For your Logical Reasoning)

January, February, March, April and May editions of Civil Services entrance magazines like:

• Civil Services Chronicle
• Competition Refresher
• Pratiyogita Darpan
• Competition Wizard – These magazines will revise your essential GK in a nutshell through small modules.
• MBA Entrance Magazines like: Chandresh Agarwals MBA Today (FOr WOrd meanings and tests)

VERY IMPORTANT:
Previous Years Papers of NALSAR and the paper of CLAT-2008.

Q2. I was basically preparing for JEE this year. I just have a few days left to prepare for CLAT. How can I make best use of this limited time period?

I appreciate your efforts towards JEE-The Lord of all Exams. Indeed, science does build up your analytical ability. Why not use it in CLAT?
You have limited time and have to get the maximum returns.
Therefore, if you have a guide book, you could cover theory in brief and jump directly to model papers.
THEREFORE,

Tip #1: Practice Papers heavily- both previous years and/or model papers.
Get your hands on CLAT-2008 model paper.

Tip #2: For Legal GK: get a book devoted to General Knowledge. I know of Manish Arora’s Book on legal General Knowledge. Get your hands on it.
Tip #3: For General Awareness or GK: Get your hands on:
The current and the last 3 month volumes of Civil Services Chronicle, Pratiyogita Darpan, Competition Refresher OR ANY DECENT MAGAZINE FOR PREPARATION FOR CIVIL SERVICES EXAMINATIONS.
These magazines will cover in brief all events of the past one year and carry special sections on Indian Economy, Governance etc. In short, at the news stand, look for magazines having such data and buy them.
Purchase the CSR 2009 yearbook. Its GK section will help you.
Tip #4: Logical Reasoning: Buy a dedicated book for logical reasoning. It should be comprehensive. Practise a reasonable number of questions from each section and cover all required sections. Make sure it contains many ‘passage reasoning’ questions.
Tip #5: Mathematics: Get a decent CLAT guidebook (eg. Universal’s guide). Practice a decent number of problems from it. Maths should not be a problem for you as you are a JEE preparer.
Tip #6: For English:
Reading Comprehension: Use a CLAT Guide
Word Meanings: Try using MBA entrance guide magazines. they have words filled in them, with meanings given.
Grammar: Use a decent grammar book. Since these books are filled with matter, go to sections in them where the CORRECT USAGE of words is given. Be very thorough with correct usage of words. It is the essence of grammar. Look at lists of correct usage sentences (these are also contrasted with incorrect usages) and get an idea of where in the sentence to use a particular word.
Tip #7: Time management:
You have approx.9 days left.
Practice all subjects and chapters on a uniform basis. Practice 2 to 3 test papers a day. these will give you a good idea of the paper.
ALSO, get hold of the CLAT-2008 paper IMMEADIATELY.
It will help you a lot, especially with regard to the syllabus.
Also, get hold of a good CLAT guide. Practice less from the questions behind the chapter and more from the model papers. Also, practice each paper in a proper exam pattern. STUDY FROM THOSE SOURCES AND MATERIAL WHICH GIVE ALL THE REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE IN A NUTSHELL- IN A PRECISE AND CONCISE MANNER. Get a hold of the topic by practicing a few questions after each chapter.
Do not lose hope if you only have 9 days left. I know a person who basically prepared for around a week and got into RMLNLU Lucknow. STUDY FOR AT LEAST 10 HOURS A DAY.
All the Best!

Q. which subjects should I take in my 11th for a simultaneous smooth prep for CLAT?? Does the choice of subject really matters???
anyways I am planning to take commerce with maths…will it be fine???

Choice of Subject for 11^th and 12^th is relatively immaterial for CLAT.

Commerce with Maths is fine for CLAT.

Even Science and Medical preparation can be done alongside CLAT preparation.

Therefore, choose the subjects you like to most. All you need to give CLAT is 50 per cent marks in the 12^th Board Exam. Which subjects you study will in no way affect your preparation. CLAT preparation can take place alongside any other exam preparation. It is subject-independent preparation.

Q. I find Mathematics difficult for CLAT. Please give me suggestions on strengthening my Maths for the CLAT.

Nothing is difficult. It is only a state of mind.
Mathematics, if difficult, can be mastered through daily practise. Any doubts, try solving them first. Be careful with guides. They can be very addictive. Practise on a daily basis, not less than 40 problems a day. Any doubts, think over each for 15 to 20 minutes. If unsuccessful, take help. Then solve at least 15 problems of that doubtful type and become thorough with it.

Q. What should be strategy of solving the paper , which section should be first and how much time to be allotted to each section ?

You must attempt all questions, starting with your strongest subject. I started with General Awareness as it was my strongest. You must be very fast. If you are unsure of an answer, go by intuition or mark the option which first came to your mind. Remember, you will have little or no time to return to a doubtful question and think about it. Solve all that you know first. Once you have completed solving, then return to doubtful questions (if you get the time. you will have to be rocket fast in solving then). If you don’t get any answer, then mark all doubtful unmarked questions with any random option (eg. aaaaaaa or bbbbbbb etc.). BUT DO NOT LEAVE ANY QUESTION UNMARKED.You can get at least some marks going by the rules of probability this way. While solving do not stop to think on a doubtful question. All doubtful question should have an option marked. You might return later and change the option, but you may not get the time.

Check out CLAT 2010 Quiz

By Aditya Singh

Knowledge Manager Legal GSG

Law Student at Nalsar

All India Rank Holder 76

Author: Aditya Singh,
CLAT 2008 All India Rank 76

CLAT 2009, the second Common Law Admission Test being conducted for entry into the country’s premier national law schools is a fortnight away from testing your sincerity, focus, hard work and above all, your determination to soar as a legal eagle. Being a matter of 15 days it’s high time that the law aspirant get into launch mode now, similar to the mood in a space center during countdown time. Being tested in English, Mathematics, Logical Reasoning, Legal Reasoning and General Awareness, he should be studying in a streamlined, focused and tight manner. He ought to have finished learning the theory and must be practicing to be perfect. Here are some humble suggestions for our budding lawyers regarding preparation for and answering the different parts of the paper.

GENERAL AWARENESS: Being of vital importance in any field, the Common Law Admission Test requires thoroughness in current affairs, something achieved over a lengthy period of time. Reading the newspaper comprehensively on a daily basis is the optimum way to achieve this. However, the short span of a fortnight requires preparation on a war footing. Newspapers make for leisure while Competition Magazines do so for quick grasp. Indeed Competition Magazines are the best way to tighten your grasp on current affairs. Preparation for a law entrance examination shouldn’t stop you from venturing into the realm of the CAT and the IAS. Go to your nearest News Stall and scoop up all the IAS Competition Magazines with your wallet. Do the same for those MBA Entrance Ones! Upon doing so, open them up in the cosy confines of your study room-Your Mission Headquarters for the CLAT. Turn the cover page of your IAS refresher, chronicle, times etc. Etc. And go straight to the general awareness section. One must take note of the fact that the IAS Prelims are around a month away. To cater to the demands of last minute preparers who need loads of facts and figures, events and happenings in a 20-30 page module, magazine publishers have dedicated sections for general awareness and current affairs compressing all the relevant events of the past one year into 10 or 15 pages. In addition special articles are devoted to cover the Indian Constitution, Government and the Economy. These sections convey in a nutshell what encyclopaedias do in volumes.

ENGLISH

Words, their meanings and their usages too occupy a respectable place in the CLAT marking. To ease the onerous task of memorisation a number of tests are required which can help you refresh after each round of memorisation. For this the Merriam Webster Vocabulary Builder is recommended. The book has an extremely concise format which covers the words, their meanings and their usage. This sort of approach kills two birds with one stone as you learn the meanings as well as their usage in real sentences. The Merriam Webster book is divided into 20 or 25 sections with each section comprising 40 to 60 words, their meanings and their usages. There is a memory test every 10 words which tests the candidate’s ability to recall the meanings as well use the words in the correct sentences (given in ‘fill in the blanks’ format). Thus the student learns not only the meaning of the word but also when and where to use it. The importance of MBA entrance magazines too cannot be neglected in this regard. These magazines almost convert themselves into dictionaries, having hundreds of word meaning and usage tests. These are great for practise purposes.

MATHEMATICS

Mathematics, thankfully, is limited to Class 10 having the nightmarish calculus and logarithms chucked out of the window. The test is beautifully arithmetical comprising simple problems of time, distance, speed, profit and loss, discount, simple interest and area and volume, which surely makes it a piece of cake for the arts student also. The theory can be done from any basic school text book and the rest is all but practice. Practice makes a man perfect, doesn’t it! Cracking the CLAT too requires you to be faithful to this time honoured rule. Solving 50 to100 practice problems per chapter should get you soundly prepared. Don’t balk at the humongous three digits figure…it’s all about reading and ticking options- a very basic task indeed! In a nutshell, practice what you study. Study of each chapter should have the solving of at least 200 to 400 questions accompanying it. Do multi-chapter practise on a daily basis given the limited time. Solve around 15 to 20 questions from each chapter. This way, adjusting the number of practised questions with the amount of time you have, tried covering all mathematics chapters in the limited time that you have.

Legal General Knowledge: In legal GK you may be asked questions regarding: Indian Constitution, various commissions, general information on the Indian judiciary and the law commission. As regards the Constitution, you may be asked questions on its article, especially those Articles pertaining to the Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties, Directive Principles of State Policy, and some other articles covering the central government and the state government. Cover in brief the Articles governing Supreme Court and High Court. However it should not be in depth. If you have a ‘bare act’ of Constitution of India, you can see the opening pages which have a list of all articles (1 to 395) along with a one line description of each. It will help you. Moreover Universal’s book might have some good legal GK.

BASICALLY you must know which article contains what. There is no need to go deep into it and try to interpret it using case laws or read up intensively on it. You may also be asked on legal history, such as the legal developments in India before and after independence. For example, establishing of Supreme Court and High Courts and some basic but important information on them, such as the number of judges, types of cases decided and Also keep abreast of the latest in legal current affairs. You may search for “law” , or ‘law commission’ or ‘commissions’ or ‘constitution’ in the Times of India website.

45 marks of Legal GK is a lot. There I would advise you to study this from a source which can give it to you in a concise and compressed format. Thus try out Manish Arora’s book on Legal General Knowledge titled ‘Legal General Knowledge On Law’. You may also get information on the Indian Constitution from the Manorama, CSR or Penguin yearbooks.

LOGICAL REASONING (LR): Comprising tests like Assertion and Reason, Passage Reasoning and Statements and Contradictions, the LR section tests the ability of the candidate to understand paragraphs and logically connect them. Fifteen days permits one to buy a specialised book on logical reasoning and practise its questions. 300 to 400 questions can be very easily practised in 10 days. For that purpose, RS Agarwal’s book on Logical Reasoning is recommended. However look for other books because its passage reasoning questions weren’t sufficient for practise purposes.

Last but definitely not the Least, Practising Previous Years Question Papers is by far the best way to get you in tune for the examination. For that purpose the candidate should practise one question paper in during the time from 3pm to 5pm- the time period during which the CLAT will be conducted. This will help one get accustomed to giving the test in Exam-Like Conditions. Get hold of a question paper of CLAT-2008 and practise it out a timeframe of two hours. Be ruthless with yourself. An ambiguous answer deserves a zero. Tabulating your score at the end of the session will show your current preparation status. Target a minimum percentage score of 70 per cent marks. In CLAT ’08 the corresponding rank at this score (140 out of 200 =70 %) was 76. Target a double digit rank. It is sure to get you a college with guaranteed placement.

Analyse your performance after each test. Check your sectional performance from your marks in the five sections. Locate mistakes and see which chapter they concern. Get the correct answer from the solution papers (they come along with the test paper). Having done that, pick up that guide book of yours and practise 30-50 questions of that type of problem to seal its fate.

Practise one question paper daily. In addition also practise a model paper from a good guide book. While buying a guide book make sure that it has plenty of ‘passage reasoning’ questions. These questions occupy 10 or 20 marks of the paper and can seal your fate if you don’t get it right. Solve the previous question paper and the model paper at different times of the day so that you can work on the preparation defects you encountered in each paper, fine tuning yourself for the next test paper in the process.

Which test papers to buy? Considering that CLAT is just a year old and one question paper definitely is not enough for mastering the test, it would be advisable to purchase the last 16 years question papers of National Law School India University, Bangalore. These question papers come in a module and can be ordered from the University itself. NALSAR, which is conducting the CLAT this year, too is selling its own question papers. The question paper of CLAT 2008 can be purchased from there but the previous papers of NALSAR’s own entrance examination differ significantly from the CLAT pattern. The NALSAR paper does not have a Mathematics section and there is a long essay question which accounts for 25 to 30 marks. However the standard of legal and logical reasoning is very high as well as that of reading comprehension. Therefore, buy both if your wallet permits but given the paucity of time, buy NALSAR’s because it is setting the CLAT paper. Good Maths practise can be obtained from any decent guide book.

Wait! I completely FORGOT to mention a few tips on ANSWERING THE PAPER. This is the most important of them all, as how you carry yourself during those two hours of writing the paper will decide whether what you’ve being doing over the past one-two months was in vain or not. Remember; start with what you are familiar with. Start with your strengths. If your GK is strong, solve it first. If it’s Maths, solve it first. But remember to give the correct answer in the first shot. If unsure, just mark the correct choice by intuition. DO NOT spend time thinking over a doubtful question. You may or may not win the right answer but you will definitely end up losing time. Remember one thing for sure: You will NEVER get time to come back and answer the unanswered questions after completing the paper. You will probably still be marking answers when your answer sheet will be snatched by that merciless invigilator.

Having said this much, I am quite sure that many of our budding lawyers may still have doubts persisting. Worry not, for I am there to guide you. Don’t hesitate to write to me. Any questions, please check here below in the comments or check in our FAQ for CLAT.

Wishing you all the Very Best!

Email this to friend CLAT Statistics for 2008

Check out CLAT 2010 Quiz

Author: Aditya Singh
Knowledge Manager – Legal
GSG Team

Aditya Singh wrote the Common Law Admission Test in 2008. He scored an All India Rank of 76. He is currently pursuing BALLB Hons. at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

You can reach him at aditya@getsetgrow.org