In this guide
Six months before CLAT is not late. It is, however, too short to do everything at a leisurely pace. The plan has to be selective: build the skills that move the most marks, catch up on current affairs without drowning in it, and get to full mocks early enough to learn from them.
This plan assumes you start around June for an early-December exam and can give about three hours a day, six days a week. That is 18 hours a week, or roughly 18 × 26 ≈ 470 hours in total. If you are in Class 12, the evenings and weekends will carry most of it.
What to prioritise, and why
Not every hour is worth the same.
| Section | Share of paper (approx.) | How fast it improves | Priority in six months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal Reasoning | about 25% | Quickly with practice | High |
| Current Affairs and GK | about 25% | Steadily; needs coverage | High |
| English Language | about 20% | Slowly; depends on reading | Daily, from day one |
| Logical Reasoning | about 20% | Moderately with practice | Medium to high |
| Quantitative Techniques | about 10% | Quickly for most | Medium |
Legal and current affairs together are about half the paper, so they get the largest blocks. English improves slowly, so it gets a small daily slot from the first day rather than a big push later.
Month by month
| Month | Focus | Targets by month-end |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (June) | Reading habit; legal basics; start current-affairs catch-up | Read daily; legal concepts in contract, tort, crimes and Constitution; 3 back months of current affairs covered |
| 2 (July) | Legal and logical passages; English daily; finish catch-up | 40+ legal and 30+ logical passages; backlog of current affairs cleared |
| 3 (August) | Quant revision and data sets; sectional tests | One sectional test per section each week; quant formulas revised |
| 4 (September) | Full mocks weekly; analysis; monthly current-affairs revision | 4 mocks with full analysis; an error log started |
| 5 (October) | Two mocks a week; repair weak sections | 8 more mocks; weakest section up by a clear margin |
| 6 (November–early December) | Mocks, revision of current affairs and legal principles | 8–10 more mocks; full current-affairs revision done twice |
That is roughly 20 to 22 full mocks, which is enough if each one is analysed properly.
Catching up on current affairs
There is no official date range for the current-affairs section. Most candidates prepare roughly the twelve months before the exam, with the most recent months weighted most heavily.
Starting in June, that means a backlog of about six months (December to May) plus the new months as they happen.
A worked example. Six back months over the first 60 days is one monthly compilation every 10 days. Spend about 45 minutes a day on the backlog and 30 minutes on today's news. By the start of August the backlog is cleared, and from then on you only need the daily news plus a monthly revision. The monthly notes method shows how to keep it all revisable.
The daily routine (three hours)
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 30 minutes | Today's news and notes |
| 60 minutes | Legal or logical passages, alternating days |
| 45 minutes | English passages, or current-affairs backlog in Months 1–2 |
| 30 minutes | Quant or data sets |
| 15 minutes | Review of the day's mistakes |
On the seventh day, rest or do only light revision. Fatigue in November costs more than one extra day of study in July.
Legal and logical practice
Legal: in Month 1, learn the basic concepts so passages feel familiar. From Month 2, solve passages daily. After each passage, check whether every wrong answer came from misreading the principle, misreading the facts, or answering from your own sense of fairness. The last one is the most common trap.
Logical: learn one question type at a time for the first three weeks (conclusion, assumption, strengthen and weaken, inference, flaw), then switch to mixed sets.
When a section lags
After the first four mocks, one section usually stands out as weakest. Give it an extra 30 minutes a day for three weeks, then reassess.
Why this works. Suppose your sectional scores out of the section's questions are English 15/24, GK 16/30, Legal 21/30, Logical 16/24 and Quant 5/12. GK is at about 53% (16 ÷ 30) while Legal is at 70% (21 ÷ 30). Lifting GK from 16 to 22 adds 6 marks. Lifting Legal from 21 to 27 would also add 6, but pushing an already good section that far is much harder. Moving a weak section from poor to average usually buys marks more cheaply.
Mocks
Start full mocks in Month 4 at the latest. Sit them under exam conditions: two hours, on paper, with an OMR sheet, at the same time of day as the exam. Analysis is where improvement comes from; the method is in mock tests and analysis for CLAT.
The last three weeks
- Keep taking two or three mocks a week, but do not start any new material.
- Revise current-affairs notes for the whole year, then the last four months again.
- Revise the legal principles and maxims from your practice passages.
- Sleep at regular hours and match your mock timing to the exam slot.
The guide to the last month before CLAT covers this stretch day by day.
Self-check at the end of each month
- Did I hit the month's targets in the table above? If not, which one slipped and why?
- Is my current-affairs backlog shrinking on schedule?
- Which section lost the most marks this month?
- Am I analysing every mock, or only taking them?
What to do next
- Count the weeks from today to the exam date and adjust the months in the table.
- Pick one current-affairs source and one monthly compilation, and stick with them.
- Plan the date of your first full mock.
- Put the three-hour routine into your timetable for the next seven days.
A note on dates and numbers. Exam patterns, vacancies and schedules change from year to year. Always confirm the current details in the latest notification on the Consortium of National Law Universities website .
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