A spin of roulette. Maybe Kaun Banega Crorepati. These are comparisons that come to my mind when I think of some of the law entrance test papers in the past few years..What am I getting at? The simple point I want to make here is that some of the entrance tests to India’s top law schools have been turned into a spin of roulettes. The reasons are unknown, and while we can speculate about them, we can certainly see who the biggest victims are: the students who prepare for these exams, investing money, time, effort and their future..Apart from the students, the rest of us also need to be concerned about how India’s top law schools select their students, because we want the most deserving to get into law schools – not the luckiest, if the expectations from the law schools and those who graduate out of these premier institutions have to be fulfilled. When I was asked to write about the All India Law Entrance Test held by NLU Delhi (AILET), I thought this is the point which deserves to be highlighted above all else..What should all of us suddenly be alarmed about this?.Enters Kaun Banega Law Schoolite.The trend was started by NALSAR in the 2009 CLAT paper. This paper had 200 marks, out of which 90 marks were allotted to “GK”. 45 marks were allotted to one’s knowledge of history, geography, politics, cinema, sports, socio-cultural issues important with respect to India and the entire world, United Nations, national and international personalities, economics and anything else one can think of..The seed of nonsense, however, was in the rest 45 marks of GK – it was a section called Legal Awareness. All the questions were about law and legal system. There were questions on law of torts, contracts, criminal law, constitution, even law of limitation. Questions were asked about landmark cases also – of which lawyers may keep track of – but Class XII students?.However, my biggest problem was not with the eccentricity of these questions, but with the relative importance given to GK in the whole paper. Half of a paper consisted of just GK questions. What are you testing people for – their ability to understand logic, or their ability to memorise trivia? Also, 90 GK questions could be solved in less than 20 minutes – people finished their papers way ahead of the 2 hours designated. The paper setters showed their great ignorance of a very important factor of competitive tests – time management. There was no correlation between the questions set and time allowed for the exam..The CLAT reforms by NUJS.The CLAT paper made by NALSAR faced some criticism, but NLIU Bhopal continued in that track anyway in 2010. Then it was the turn of NUJS, my alma mater, to organize CLAT. NUJS tried to change the previous trend. Questions were raised by faculty members as to why someone has to know law before they even go to a law school. The CLAT Committee decided that it is important to test people based on their logical aptitude, and not ability to mug up information – and announced some major reforms..It was decided that general static GK questions will not be asked any more – but they will test students on their knowledge of current affairs – the events that took place in the last one year before the exam. They also completely scrapped legal GK, replacing that question with legal reasoning questions. On paper these moves sounded great – but when it came to execution, they messed it up big time..CLAT 2011: A well-intentioned debacle.CLAT 2011 asked way too many questions for the 2 hours that have been provided to solve them. The paper was highly criticized for the following reasons:.CLAT has no negative marking – that means that if there is not enough time to attempt, say, 50 questions – it makes sense to mark those answers randomly hoping to get some of them right. And as luck will have it, some people amongst the thousands of people will by chance get a majority of those questions right – and hence do well in the paper, selected by randomness. This is why almost all competitive exams which provide more questions than what can be solved in the time provided always have an element of negative marking, to penalize people for selecting answers randomly. The paper was so lengthy in CLAT 2011, most people could not attempt up to 60-70 questions, but marked an answer for each question anyway. The selection procedure became a spin of the roulette..NLUD joins the band .NLU Delhi has been constantly refusing to participate in the CLAT – citing reasons of quality of the test and their autonomy of selecting the best suited students for their college, despite a Supreme Court order that mandates national law schools to have a single admission test. They have been setting reasonably good question papers until now – papers that were always heavy on reasoning and comprehension skills. I am sure that one of the reasons of the early success that the institution has been experiencing was influenced by its excellent entrance exam..But well, this didn’t last. In 2012, the bug seems to have bitten NLU Delhi as well. The entrance test which was held last Sunday had been heavily criticized for replacing legal reasoning questions with legal GK, and for having terrible selection of GK questions that raised the old ghosts of having to mug up GK digests. Again, it has been predicted, that luck will be the most important factor – selection will depend on how many of your randomly selected answers come through..What is the point of holding a law entrance test?.Why do top law schools in the country hold their admission tests? Why not just select students based on their scores in board exams, like so many traditional colleges do?.Well, one big reason is the money that law schools make from these tests. 14,000 students who wrote the AILET paid Rs.3000 each to NLU Delhi. Deduct the cost of holding the examination in 10 centres – and you would be left with profits that run into crores. Law schools need money, they cannot be blamed for profiteering from admission tests, but it is indeed a barrier for the economically weak students who want to take the test. However, that’s not the point I am making here – just consider that the students have paid well to take the test – should they not expect that the test will be reasonable, will be managed in a professional way, and will not be turned into a test of luck?.The other reason that law schools hold their admission tests is because Class XII / Higher Secondary marks are not a very good indicator of who will make a better lawyer at all. Your performance in History, Calculus, Physical Education or Book Keeping has nothing to do with how good a lawyer you could be. So the law schools test you on English comprehension skills, knowledge of grammar, analytical logic, your ability to evaluate arguments, ability to apply principles, basic quantitative aptitude and general awareness. See how nicely that general awareness fits in there..How general is general enough.When I was writing my law school tests, I was excellent at GK and relied a lot on it. I might be a little biased, but I always thought that a good lawyer should have a propensity for what is happening outside his immediate world – in the society, in the economy, in politics, culture and sports. I remember arguing for hours with Professor Shamnad Basheer on this point once, who very validly argued that such general awareness is easy for the privileged to pick up, and it is nothing that cannot be developed in a law school, and that great knowledge of trivia is not indicative of a great lawyer in the making..Still, some general awareness can be expected from an educated person who completed 12 years of schooling, and it is a very defendable proposition that law entrances should have some reasonable number of questions based on the same..The promise of CLAT 2012.The syllabus and exam description for CLAT 2012 has not changed at all from CLAT 2011. However, it is hoped that the mistakes of CLAT 2011 will not be repeated again. The best thing about CLAT 2011 was the standard of questions that tested aptitude as opposed to knowledge which is supposed to hold true for CLAT 2012 as well, going by the CLAT website. However, if there is a failure on this count, the worst sufferers will be the students..The purpose of declaring a syllabus, an exam pattern is to give the test takers a reasonable opportunity to prepare. If the test makers fail to stick to that declaration, students are misled and it generally compromises the sanctity of the whole system..The CLAT 2012 wishlist.Now we are all waiting to see how NLU Jodhpur, which is coordinating the CLAT this time, goes about selecting the future law graduates for the top law schools in India. If it goes wrong, the poor students will bear the initial brunt, but perhaps we will not escape the butterfly effect totally. What do I hope to see? Yes, there is a wish list:.1. A paper which tests reasoning skills, of a length which allows a good student to attempt all questions but keeps some time pressure. Questions should also be of a standard that ensures that not all people score similar marks..2. The entire paper should not be easy – there should be enough difficult questions to differentiate and rank students..3. The CLAT Committee has provided a description of the paper. I hope they do not deviate from it as NLU Delhi did this year. Changing pattern of the paper without prior notification to students is totally unacceptable..Let’s see what the CLAT paper has in store! For the time being we can cheer the CLAT aspirants on the eve of their big exam, which will decide their lawyerly future to some extent: Good luck, go get them!.Ramanuj Mukherjee is an NUJS alumni, founder of CLAThacker.com and an expert CLAT coach. He was one of the toppers of 2006 NUJS entrance tests. He conceptualised IMS CLAT preparation course and BarHacker, a course for the All India Bar Exam, while he was studying at NUJS. Ramanuj currently works at Trilegal.
A spin of roulette. Maybe Kaun Banega Crorepati. These are comparisons that come to my mind when I think of some of the law entrance test papers in the past few years..What am I getting at? The simple point I want to make here is that some of the entrance tests to India’s top law schools have been turned into a spin of roulettes. The reasons are unknown, and while we can speculate about them, we can certainly see who the biggest victims are: the students who prepare for these exams, investing money, time, effort and their future..Apart from the students, the rest of us also need to be concerned about how India’s top law schools select their students, because we want the most deserving to get into law schools – not the luckiest, if the expectations from the law schools and those who graduate out of these premier institutions have to be fulfilled. When I was asked to write about the All India Law Entrance Test held by NLU Delhi (AILET), I thought this is the point which deserves to be highlighted above all else..What should all of us suddenly be alarmed about this?.Enters Kaun Banega Law Schoolite.The trend was started by NALSAR in the 2009 CLAT paper. This paper had 200 marks, out of which 90 marks were allotted to “GK”. 45 marks were allotted to one’s knowledge of history, geography, politics, cinema, sports, socio-cultural issues important with respect to India and the entire world, United Nations, national and international personalities, economics and anything else one can think of..The seed of nonsense, however, was in the rest 45 marks of GK – it was a section called Legal Awareness. All the questions were about law and legal system. There were questions on law of torts, contracts, criminal law, constitution, even law of limitation. Questions were asked about landmark cases also – of which lawyers may keep track of – but Class XII students?.However, my biggest problem was not with the eccentricity of these questions, but with the relative importance given to GK in the whole paper. Half of a paper consisted of just GK questions. What are you testing people for – their ability to understand logic, or their ability to memorise trivia? Also, 90 GK questions could be solved in less than 20 minutes – people finished their papers way ahead of the 2 hours designated. The paper setters showed their great ignorance of a very important factor of competitive tests – time management. There was no correlation between the questions set and time allowed for the exam..The CLAT reforms by NUJS.The CLAT paper made by NALSAR faced some criticism, but NLIU Bhopal continued in that track anyway in 2010. Then it was the turn of NUJS, my alma mater, to organize CLAT. NUJS tried to change the previous trend. Questions were raised by faculty members as to why someone has to know law before they even go to a law school. The CLAT Committee decided that it is important to test people based on their logical aptitude, and not ability to mug up information – and announced some major reforms..It was decided that general static GK questions will not be asked any more – but they will test students on their knowledge of current affairs – the events that took place in the last one year before the exam. They also completely scrapped legal GK, replacing that question with legal reasoning questions. On paper these moves sounded great – but when it came to execution, they messed it up big time..CLAT 2011: A well-intentioned debacle.CLAT 2011 asked way too many questions for the 2 hours that have been provided to solve them. The paper was highly criticized for the following reasons:.CLAT has no negative marking – that means that if there is not enough time to attempt, say, 50 questions – it makes sense to mark those answers randomly hoping to get some of them right. And as luck will have it, some people amongst the thousands of people will by chance get a majority of those questions right – and hence do well in the paper, selected by randomness. This is why almost all competitive exams which provide more questions than what can be solved in the time provided always have an element of negative marking, to penalize people for selecting answers randomly. The paper was so lengthy in CLAT 2011, most people could not attempt up to 60-70 questions, but marked an answer for each question anyway. The selection procedure became a spin of the roulette..NLUD joins the band .NLU Delhi has been constantly refusing to participate in the CLAT – citing reasons of quality of the test and their autonomy of selecting the best suited students for their college, despite a Supreme Court order that mandates national law schools to have a single admission test. They have been setting reasonably good question papers until now – papers that were always heavy on reasoning and comprehension skills. I am sure that one of the reasons of the early success that the institution has been experiencing was influenced by its excellent entrance exam..But well, this didn’t last. In 2012, the bug seems to have bitten NLU Delhi as well. The entrance test which was held last Sunday had been heavily criticized for replacing legal reasoning questions with legal GK, and for having terrible selection of GK questions that raised the old ghosts of having to mug up GK digests. Again, it has been predicted, that luck will be the most important factor – selection will depend on how many of your randomly selected answers come through..What is the point of holding a law entrance test?.Why do top law schools in the country hold their admission tests? Why not just select students based on their scores in board exams, like so many traditional colleges do?.Well, one big reason is the money that law schools make from these tests. 14,000 students who wrote the AILET paid Rs.3000 each to NLU Delhi. Deduct the cost of holding the examination in 10 centres – and you would be left with profits that run into crores. Law schools need money, they cannot be blamed for profiteering from admission tests, but it is indeed a barrier for the economically weak students who want to take the test. However, that’s not the point I am making here – just consider that the students have paid well to take the test – should they not expect that the test will be reasonable, will be managed in a professional way, and will not be turned into a test of luck?.The other reason that law schools hold their admission tests is because Class XII / Higher Secondary marks are not a very good indicator of who will make a better lawyer at all. Your performance in History, Calculus, Physical Education or Book Keeping has nothing to do with how good a lawyer you could be. So the law schools test you on English comprehension skills, knowledge of grammar, analytical logic, your ability to evaluate arguments, ability to apply principles, basic quantitative aptitude and general awareness. See how nicely that general awareness fits in there..How general is general enough.When I was writing my law school tests, I was excellent at GK and relied a lot on it. I might be a little biased, but I always thought that a good lawyer should have a propensity for what is happening outside his immediate world – in the society, in the economy, in politics, culture and sports. I remember arguing for hours with Professor Shamnad Basheer on this point once, who very validly argued that such general awareness is easy for the privileged to pick up, and it is nothing that cannot be developed in a law school, and that great knowledge of trivia is not indicative of a great lawyer in the making..Still, some general awareness can be expected from an educated person who completed 12 years of schooling, and it is a very defendable proposition that law entrances should have some reasonable number of questions based on the same..The promise of CLAT 2012.The syllabus and exam description for CLAT 2012 has not changed at all from CLAT 2011. However, it is hoped that the mistakes of CLAT 2011 will not be repeated again. The best thing about CLAT 2011 was the standard of questions that tested aptitude as opposed to knowledge which is supposed to hold true for CLAT 2012 as well, going by the CLAT website. However, if there is a failure on this count, the worst sufferers will be the students..The purpose of declaring a syllabus, an exam pattern is to give the test takers a reasonable opportunity to prepare. If the test makers fail to stick to that declaration, students are misled and it generally compromises the sanctity of the whole system..The CLAT 2012 wishlist.Now we are all waiting to see how NLU Jodhpur, which is coordinating the CLAT this time, goes about selecting the future law graduates for the top law schools in India. If it goes wrong, the poor students will bear the initial brunt, but perhaps we will not escape the butterfly effect totally. What do I hope to see? Yes, there is a wish list:.1. A paper which tests reasoning skills, of a length which allows a good student to attempt all questions but keeps some time pressure. Questions should also be of a standard that ensures that not all people score similar marks..2. The entire paper should not be easy – there should be enough difficult questions to differentiate and rank students..3. The CLAT Committee has provided a description of the paper. I hope they do not deviate from it as NLU Delhi did this year. Changing pattern of the paper without prior notification to students is totally unacceptable..Let’s see what the CLAT paper has in store! For the time being we can cheer the CLAT aspirants on the eve of their big exam, which will decide their lawyerly future to some extent: Good luck, go get them!.Ramanuj Mukherjee is an NUJS alumni, founder of CLAThacker.com and an expert CLAT coach. He was one of the toppers of 2006 NUJS entrance tests. He conceptualised IMS CLAT preparation course and BarHacker, a course for the All India Bar Exam, while he was studying at NUJS. Ramanuj currently works at Trilegal.
