Law Entrance Part 6: CLAT PG — The Objective Plus Essay Hour, Exam-Ready Notes

Category: Law · Series: CLAT & Law Entrance · Read time: ~8 minutes

CLAT PG is the LLM entrance to the NLUs: an objective section built on passage-based constitutional and legal knowledge plus two descriptive essays. This note covers the pattern, the subject-weight map, and the answer-writing method.

Table of Contents

1. The Pattern Card
2. The Objective Section: What Gets Tested
3. The Subject-Weight Map
4. The Descriptive Essays: The Method
5. The Preparation Stack
6. How Exams Probe This Topic
7. Quick Revision: One-Glance Facts

1. The Pattern Card

• The format.**CLAT PG: 120 questions’ worth in 2 hours — the current structure: ~100-120 objective questions (passage-based, +1/−0.25) plus two essay questions (25 marks each in the 120-mark scheme — the exact split varies by year; verify the current notification)** covering constitutional law and jurisprudence/current legal topics.
• The purpose. LLM admission to the NLUs (and the PSUs that recruit through CLAT PG scores — the ONGC-type recruitment makes it a job exam too, a fact many aspirants miss).
• The eligibility. An LLB (3-year or 5-year) with 50% (45% for reserved categories).

2. The Objective Section: What Gets Tested

• The format. Passages drawn from judgments (heavily), legal provisions, and commentary — questions test close reading of the extract plus the surrounding doctrine: what the case held, which article/statute applies, the precedent line.
• The demand. Unlike UG, prior legal knowledge is assumed — the passages reward candidates who already know the landmark cases and can locate a passage within its doctrinal context in seconds.

3. The Subject-Weight Map

The recurring weight order to plan revision around:

1. Constitutional Law (~30-40%) — the doctrine-of-basic-structure line, fundamental rights’ case-law, federalism, the collegium, the recent verdicts (electoral bonds, Article 370, sub-classification — each year’s headline cases flow in).
2. Law of Torts and Contracts (~15-20%) — the classic cases’ facts-and-holdings one-liners.
3. Criminal Law (~10-15%) — the IPC’s landmark doctrines (now mapped onto the BNS 2023’s equivalent provisions — the transition itself is examinable).
4. Jurisprudence (~10%) — the schools and thinkers (Austin, Hart, Fuller, Rawls — the Part 2-of-Ethics toolkit overlaps).
5. Public International Law and IPR (~10%) — treaties, ICJ basics, the TRIPS-patent line.
6. The recent-acts layer — the new criminal codes, the DPDP Act 2023 — the current-affairs-of-law set.

4. The Descriptive Essays: The Method

• The questions. Typically one constitutional-law essay and one jurisprudence-or-current topic (“Judicial review and basic structure: doctrinal development”; “Data protection and the right to privacy”).
• The structure (the four-paragraph frame). (1) Introduction with the doctrinal anchor (a case name and a one-line thesis); (2) the body — two paragraphs of authority: leading cases with one-line holdings, statutory provisions, committee reports; (3) the counter-current (criticism, dissenting views); (4) conclusion with your position in one sentence.
• The writing discipline. ~400-500 words per essay in ~25 minutes; legible structure with headings or clear paragraphing; authority density is the scoring differentiator — every paragraph should carry a case name or provision.

5. The Preparation Stack

• The core artefact: the case-bank. A structured file of ~150-200 landmark judgments — name, area, one-line holding, the precedent it followed or overruled — built from your LLB notes and the year’s verdicts; revise it four times before the exam.
• The bare-acts fluency. The Constitution (Parts III, IV, V), the contract-tort-criminal core, and the new codes’ mapping tables.
• The past papers. Consortium’s CLAT PG papers (2020-2025) — the passage style calibrates exactly; the PSU-recruitment previous papers add volume.
• Essay practice. Six to eight timed essays before the exam, evaluated against the four-paragraph frame.

6. How Exams Probe This Topic

• The dual-track awareness: LLM admission vs PSU recruitment — different cut-off dynamics (the PSUs’ interview-plus-score weights); check the recruiting PSUs’ years’ lists.
• The AILET PG divergence: NLU Delhi’s LLM entrance is more static-recall with its own essay pattern — the case-bank serves both.

7. Quick Revision: One-Glance Facts

• Card. Objective (~100-120 passage Qs) + two essays; 2 hours; +1/−0.25; LLB-50% eligibility; the PSU-recruitment side-door.
• Weights. Constitution first (~30-40%), torts-contracts, crime, jurisprudence, PIL-IPR, the recent acts.
• Artefacts. The 150-200-case bank; bare-acts fluency; 6-8 timed essays; consortium past papers.
• Essay frame. Anchor → authority → counter → position.

Conclusion. CLAT PG rewards accumulated legal structure: the case-bank as the single high-ROI artefact, the constitutional-heavy weight map for revision ordering, and the four-paragraph authority-dense essay frame. Build those three and the objective passages become recognition tests and the essays become assembly work.

Practice Corner: Five PG Checks (with Answers)

1. CLAT PG’s two components? — Passage-based objective questions plus two descriptive essays.
2. The heaviest subject weight? — Constitutional law (~30-40%).
3. The single highest-ROI preparation artefact? — The 150-200 case bank.
4. Who else recruits through the score? — Several PSUs (check the year’s list).
5. The essay frame? — Anchor → authority → counter → position.

The Case-Bank Entry Format (One Card, Full Marks’ Worth)

Case: Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala. Bench/year: 13 judges, 1973. One-line holding: Parliament’s amendment power cannot destroy the Constitution’s basic structure. Precedent line: overruled the narrow view of Shankari Prasad-Golak Nath era; applied in Minerva Mills, IR Coelho. Exam-ready pairing: basic structure ↔ electoral bonds-era ” unconstitutional amendment” hypothetics; or federalism ↔ the reorganisation questions. Five lines. Build one card per landmark — the DoCTRINE cases (Maneka, Bommai, Puttaswamy, Vishaka, Indra Sawhney, Olga Tellis), the recent headliners, and the subject classics in torts-contracts-crime — and the objective section’s passages become recognition tests while the essays gain the authority density that separates the converts from the near-misses. One card a day across the preparation year is the entire PG strategy in miniature.