CLAT 2027 applications close on Saturday, 31 October 2026, and the exam is on Sunday, 6 December, from 2 pm to 4 pm. Those dates come from the Consortium of National Law Universities' own press release of 22 July 2026. If you have not submitted yet, do it this week, not on the last evening when the portal is slowest. Below is a short pre-submission checklist, the paper pattern, and a five-week plan from 1 November to exam day.
Before you submit: a ten-minute checklist
Go through these with your form open. The fee and document details are from Careers360's registration guide; confirm anything unclear on the official portal.
Fee: ₹4,000 for General, OBC, PwD, NRI, PIO and OCI candidates; ₹3,500 for SC, ST and BPL candidates. Payment is online by UPI, card or net banking.
Photo and signature: photo under 500 KB and signature under 100 KB, in JPG, JPEG or PNG. A photo with a plain background avoids rejections.
Category certificate: if you are applying under SC, ST, OBC or EWS, keep the certificate ready. PwD and BPL certificates too, if they apply to you.
Marksheets: Class 10 now; Class 12 if you have it.
Eligibility: for the UG programme, you need Class 12 or equivalent with at least 45% marks, or 40% for SC and ST candidates. Students appearing for Class 12 can apply, with admission provisional until they meet the requirement. There is no upper age limit.
Name and details: check spelling against your Class 10 certificate. Small mismatches cause big headaches at counselling.
Once paid, download and save the confirmation page in two places. You will want it later.
The paper in one look
According to iQuanta's CLAT 2027 overview, the UG paper has 120 multiple-choice questions in two hours, with five sections:
English Language
Current Affairs, including General Knowledge
Legal Reasoning
Logical Reasoning
Quantitative Techniques
Each correct answer earns 1 mark and each wrong answer costs 0.25. Unanswered questions score zero.
Two hours for 120 questions is one minute per question, including reading time. Speed with accuracy is the skill you are training, more than memorising facts.
A quick word on guessing
With negative marking of 0.25, a blind guess is risky. But if you can confidently eliminate two options and pick between the remaining two, your expected score on that question is positive: half the time you gain 1, half the time you lose 0.25. Practise elimination in mocks so it becomes a habit, not a gamble.
A five-week plan to 6 December
This assumes you have done some preparation already and have about three to four hours a day. Adjust the hours, keep the sequence.
Week 1 (1 to 7 November): find out where you stand
Take one full-length mock under exam conditions: two hours, no breaks, phone in another room.
Score each section separately. Note where you ran out of time.
Start a daily 30-minute habit of reading one opinion piece and one news report, and writing two lines on each.
Week 2 (8 to 14 November): legal reasoning and current affairs
Practise legal reasoning questions daily. Focus on applying the principle the question gives you, rather than outside legal knowledge.
Revise current affairs from roughly the last 12 months in themes: courts, economy, international, environment.
Diwali falls on 8 November. Plan lighter days around it rather than pretending you will study ten hours. Guilt is a poor study method.
Week 3 (15 to 21 November): logical reasoning and quant
Logical reasoning: practise identifying assumptions, and strengthening and weakening arguments.
Quantitative Techniques: revise percentages, ratios and averages, and practise reading data from tables and charts.
One full mock at the end of the week.
Week 4 (22 to 28 November): mocks and review
Three full mocks this week, at 2 pm on the days you can manage it, to match the real slot.
Spend as long reviewing each mock as you spent taking it. Sort every mistake into "did not know", "misread" or "ran out of time". Each needs a different fix.
Week 5 (29 November to 5 December): sharpen, do not cram
Two mocks early in the week, then stop taking full tests by Thursday.
Revise your own error notes and current affairs summaries.
Download the admit card as soon as it is released, check the centre address and plan the route.
Sleep at a normal time. The exam is in the afternoon, so a late night before is not the end of the world, but it does not help either.
If you only have two hours a day
School, college or work may leave you far less time. Keep the same sequence and shrink each block: one sectional test a day instead of two, one full mock a week instead of three, and review every mock fully before taking the next. Fewer mocks reviewed well beat many mocks taken and forgotten.
Exam-day checklist
Printed admit card and a valid photo ID, packed the night before.
Reach the centre early. Check the reporting time on your admit card, not the exam start time.
Follow the admit card's list of what you may carry. Leave everything else at home.
Eat a proper lunch. A 2 pm paper on an empty stomach is a self-inflicted handicap.
A realistic word
CLAT is competitive, and no plan guarantees a seat at a particular NLU. What a plan does give you is a fair shot at your best score. Five focused weeks with honest mock reviews will move your score more than five weeks of collecting new study material.
First things first, though: submit the form before 31 October, and check the official CLAT portal for any notice about corrections or admit cards.
