Preparation Tips and Strategies for CLAT 2026- Expert Tips

By Vivek Subramanian

Get CLAT 2026 preparation tips from Vivek Subramanian as he talks about the best strategies that can be adopted for exam preparation.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is expected to be conducted in first week of December 2025. The Consortium of NLUs will announce the CLAT 2026 Dates in CLAT Notification. However, all those candidates who have been looking forward to appearing in CLAT 2026 must start preparing now. From our experience, at this time students broadly fall into two buckets – those who have been preparing for several months for CLAT; and secondly, those who have finished their Board exams and thereafter started CLAT preparation. We have seen students from both groups succeed in equal proportions and the difference between succeeding in CLAT and not making it comes down to what you will do in the few days left before CLAT. CLAT Exam 2026 will be conducted in pen-and-paper mode. 

Also Read: Idioms and Proverbs for CLAT 2026 With Meaning

The standing assumption going into this is that you would be able to give 8 to 10 hours of dedicated time for studying every day. This is pretty much a mandatory amount of time because whichever bucket you fall into, there is a lot of CLAT syllabus to cover and you would need all the time available in a day to cover it.

At this stage, succeeding without the help of coaching is also very difficult, as an instructor can save you a lot of time by guiding your preparation in the right direction. Coaching can tell you what to study and, more importantly, what not to. Crash courses for CLAT 2026 Exam abound, and you should be able to find one in most major cities in India. You can also consider signing up for an online course, as that would have the added benefit of saving your commute time and giving you the flexibility of studying anytime as per your schedule.

Also Read:

• Important CLAT Exam Dates
• CLAT Exam Pattern

Since there is limited time remaining, you should plan your attack on the syllabus carefully. Not all parts of the syllabus are equal. Some parts are easier than others, and yet more questions are asked of them, increasing your chances of scoring higher marks. A few examples of such topics are:

• UN Bodies (GK)
• Important Awards (Current Affairs)
• Legal Maxims (Legal Aptitude)
• Criminal Law questions (Legal Aptitude)
• Direction Problems (Logical Reasoning)
• Blood Relations (Logical Reasoning)
• Ratio and Proportion (Mathematics)
• Percentages (Mathematics)
• Cloze Test (English)
• Idioms and Phrases (English)

These are topics where you can score marks easily in CLAT 2026 without putting in too much effort. By no means should you limit your study to them! For the remaining syllabus, here are some strategies you can use to prepare most effectively:

• GK and Current Affairs – This is an ocean, and there is no limit to the amount you can study here. We have seen several students making the mistake of studying from UPSC-level books or going through all the NCERT textbooks of Class VI to X. Neither of these is necessary, nor is it practical in the remaining time to go through such a vast volume of material. Again, it would be much better to sign up for a good coaching programme and study along with what is taught in the classes there. Remember, even the best student would not be able to correctly answer more than 70-80% of the GK / Current Affairs portion, simply because it is so large and undefined.

Also Read: Preparing Current Affairs & GK section for CLAT 2026: Syllabus, Important Topics, Books, Tips

• Logical Reasoning (LR) – If you are finding a certain topic hard to study or understand, it might be better to skip it. There are a few easy and high-scoring topics in LR that we have found most students understand easily. You should definitely score well on these topics. We have outlined them in the list above. In a given topic, remember to practice all the different variants of questions that have been asked in the exam. 
• Mathematics – CLAT has shown a trend of giving increasingly difficult questions in Mathematics, even introducing a couple of new topics in the previous years' papers, such as Permutations & Combinations and Probability. Our advice at this late juncture to students would be to not get worried by this – such questions will not be more than 3-5 in the entire paper. Instead, focus on the traditional favorites such as Time, Speed & Distance, Time & Work, Ratio & proportion etc. These are sure to come and are not very difficult to master. Each of them has only one basic formula, and all questions that are asked can be solved using that formula. 
• English – Reading Comprehension is going to form the bulk of the marks in this section, but do not neglect the easy marks that can be scored in Idioms & Phrases. Many students, even those with poor vocabulary, find this topic easy because several times the idioms are self-explanatory. 

In the remaining days of the exam, every minute is precious – so remember to devote as much time as you can in a day to hard work and efficient studies. We wish you all the best! 

About the Author: Vivek Subramanian has a BTech from IIT Bombay and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. He has worked internationally in New York and Hong Kong in investment banking and management consulting, before deciding to return to India to pursue his love for teaching. He is the co-founder and Chief Instructor at ExamVictor.