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CLAT Must Test Comprehension Over Speed, Says Co-Founder Anupama Joshi
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) has long been the gateway to India's prestigious
, but a growing chorus of voices is questioning whether the exam truly identifies the skills essential for legal education. In a provocative opinion piece, Anupama Joshi, co-founder and academic head of
, argues that CLAT's current design prioritises speed and recall over the deeper cognitive abilities that law school demands. She calls for a fundamental reorientation of the entrance test—one that begins not with the question paper, but with a clear-eyed answer to:
"What should a student entering the first year of law school be able to do?"
Rethinking the Purpose of CLAT
Joshi, a graduate of
and a postgraduate from
, brings nearly two decades of experience mentoring law aspirants. She contends that the conversation around CLAT reform has been too narrowly focused on sectional distribution, question counts, and format changes. Instead, she urges stakeholders to step back and define the intellectual foundations a future law student should possess.
"The purpose of CLAT cannot merely be to rank students efficiently,"
she writes.
"It should, as far as possible, identify candidates who possess the intellectual foundations required to study law."
This distinction, she argues, is critical because the academic experience in law school bears little resemblance to the high-pressure, predictable format of a typical entrance exam. Once enrolled, students are expected to read lengthy judgments, identify core disputes, separate relevant facts from noise, understand competing arguments, and follow the reasoning that connects them. They must interpret statutes, challenge assumptions, defend positions, and sometimes argue the exact opposite of what they personally believe. These tasks demand patience, comprehension, and disciplined reasoning—qualities that cannot be reliably measured by a test that rewards rapid skimming and pattern recognition.
Comprehension Over Speed: A Fundamental Shift
One of Joshi's central contentions is that CLAT's emphasis on speed may be counterproductive.
"A student who reads a passage in thirty seconds is not necessarily better equipped for legal education than a student who takes longer but understands its implications more accurately,"
she notes. She acknowledges that CLAT is right to place reading at the centre of the examination, but insists that the kind of reading being rewarded matters profoundly. A well-designed question, she argues, should require a student to identify the author's argument, distinguish a premise from a conclusion, spot an assumption, understand tone, recognise a contradiction, or draw an inference genuinely supported by the text. That is much closer to the reading law students eventually do.
What should matter less, she contends, is the ability to skim for a phrase, match familiar wording, and move on.
"When an examination rewards comprehension, students learn to read with attention. When it rewards extraction, they learn to hunt for answers."
This distinction, though subtle, fundamentally alters the nature of preparation and could reshape the entire coaching ecosystem.
Legal Reasoning: Testing Adaptability, Not Knowledge
Joshi is particularly emphatic about the legal reasoning section. She argues that students entering law school should not be expected to possess prior legal knowledge. An entrance exam, she says, is not meant to test who has memorised the most legal terminology beforehand. Instead, it should assess whether a student can understand a principle provided in the question, apply it to unfamiliar facts, remain logically consistent, and work with different kinds of information—whether the passage deals with public policy, economics, technology, or social issues.
"The real test should be whether the student can work intelligently with information placed before them,"
she writes.
She further emphasises the value of intellectual adaptability.
"Law constantly places students in unfamiliar territory. The examination should do the same."
This vision would shift the focus from rote preparation to genuine reasoning, rewarding those who can navigate novel scenarios rather than those who have drilled specific question types.
The Role of Language and Equity
The role of language in CLAT also comes under scrutiny. Joshi acknowledges that law depends heavily on words—a small change in phrasing can alter the meaning of a provision, an argument, or even a judgment. Therefore, CLAT should test whether students can read precisely, understand context, and distinguish between statements that appear similar but are not logically equivalent. However, she cautions against conflating linguistic complexity with intellectual complexity.
"A difficult idea can be expressed in clear language. An entrance exam should not reward a student merely because they have had greater exposure to sophisticated English, elite schooling, or a particular vocabulary."
The purpose, she insists, should be to test the quality of understanding, not the social or educational background through which that understanding was acquired. This equity-focused perspective could have significant implications for how the exam is designed and which students it ultimately selects.
Time Pressure and Its Consequences
Joshi also weighs in on the controversial issue of extreme time pressure. While she acknowledges that time management is a legitimate part of competitive testing, she warns that when students are consistently forced to abandon reasoning and rely almost entirely on elimination techniques, the examination begins to reward survival strategies rather than intellectual ability. "That should concern us," she writes. The current structure, she implies, may be inadvertently selecting for test-taking savviness rather than the analytical patience that legal education requires.
Similarly, she addresses the general awareness section. While knowledge of current affairs has relevance—law is connected to politics, economics, institutions, and society—she distinguishes between understanding current affairs and remembering isolated information.
"Knowledge should ideally provide the context for reasoning. It should not dominate the examination simply because one candidate happened to remember a fact another candidate did not."
This nuanced view suggests that general awareness questions should be integrated into passages that require application, rather than standing alone as a trivia-based section.
A Blueprint for CLAT 2028 and Beyond
Joshi proposes a radical, yet sensible, method for reforming CLAT from 2028 onwards: reverse the order of thinking. Instead of first deciding how many sections the examination should have, she urges examiners to define the abilities a first-year law student should possess. These include reading carefully, understanding complex material, interpreting language, recognising flawed reasoning, applying principles to unfamiliar facts, separating relevant information from distraction, and forming conclusions that can actually be defended.
"Once those abilities are clearly defined, the question paper can be built around them. The format should follow the purpose. Not the other way around."
This approach, she argues, does not require making CLAT harder—it requires making it better. No entrance examination can perfectly predict who will become a successful lawyer, and a two-hour test should not carry that burden. But CLAT can do a better job of identifying students who have the foundations required to engage seriously with legal education.
"That means rewarding comprehension over recall, reasoning over pattern recognition, and adaptability over familiarity."
Conclusion
Joshi’s critique arrives at a time when CLAT is under increasing scrutiny from students, educators, and legal professionals alike. Her call for a purpose-driven redesign resonates with a broader shift in legal education towards skills-based learning and holistic assessment. For law schools, the implications are clear: an exam that selects for the right abilities will produce cohorts better prepared for the rigours of legal study. For aspirants, it would mean a more level playing field where genuine intellectual curiosity and analytical ability are valued over speed and prior exposure.
As the
considers future changes, Joshi’s article offers a thoughtful blueprint—one that starts with the law student, not the question paper. The ultimate measure of CLAT's success, she concludes, should not be how difficult students found the paper, but whether it selected for the abilities that law school will demand from them the very next year.
"That is a much harder standard. But it is also the one that matters."
