Students' Speak: Law School Admission Test-India (LSAT) 2020

By: Teresa Dhar

There is no such definitive strategy for preparation for such competitive exams especially because the syllabus is indeed very vast and quite eclectic. Since most of it tests very basic skills and elementary knowledge, the strategy may vary from person to person.

Law School Admission Test-India (LSAT) 2020 is organized by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC). The application form has been released from 6th December 2019. This is a national-level law entrance test held every year and this year, the exam will be held on 1st May 2020. The exam will be conducted through offline mode. It will be a pen and paper-based examination.

The test will be of 2 hours and 20 minutes. For every section, 35 minutes will be provided. The questions in the paper will be of multiple-choice type. There will be around 92 to 100 questions in the paper. Candidates will get 1 mark for each right answer and no negative marking for incorrect answers.

The universities in India that accept LSAT scores for admission in their B.A. LL.B/ BBA LL.B course:- 

1. OP Jindal Global University - Sonepat, Haryana
2. Alliance School of Law, Alliance University - Bengaluru
3. College of Legal Studies (UPES) - Dehradun
4. KLE Society’s Law College - Bengaluru
5. School of Law, Ansal University - Gurgaon
6. VIT Law School - Chennai
7. Faculty of Law, ICFAI University, Jaipur,  Hyderabad and Sikkim 
8. Faculty of Law, SRM University - Sonepat, Haryana
9. Lovely Professional University - Phagwara, Punjab
10. CMR University, School of Legal Studies - Bengaluru
11. School of Law, Jagran Lakecity University - Bhopal
12. Asian Law College (ALC) - Noida, UP

LSAT 2020 Syllabus

• Analytical Reasoning: 25 marks

  For this section, questions will be asked on Selection, Comparison, Arrangement, Logical deductions, Intersection Type, Direction, Coding & Decoding, Family-Based Problems which will test the ability to understand a structure of relationships and to draw logical conclusions about that structure. The students will be asked to reason deductively from a set of rules & statements or that describes relationships among persons, events, etc.

• Logical Reasoning: 2 sections of 25 marks each

These sections test the ability of the students to analyse, complete arguments and critically judge. The students have to read and comprehend a short passage, then answer a question about it. Other than that questions on Cubes, Clock, Calendar, Binary Logic, Venn diagram, Logical Matching, Syllogism, Blood Relation, Seating Arrangements, Logical Connectives etc., might come.

• Reading Comprehension: 25 marks

In this section, there will be four sets of reading questions. Every section will consist of a selection of reading material, followed by four to nine questions that measure reading and reasoning abilities. Topics of reading comprehension could include Sociology, Technology, Law, Economics, Business, Psychology, Philosophy, Literature etc.

Some of the books that could be referred to by the students for preparation are:-

• Lucent, Universal’s And Pratiyogita Darpan, along with quality newspaper and apps like Hindu, Inshorts, Times of India.
• RS Agarwal And MK Pandey for logical reasoning
• Word Power Made Easy and books for English

LSAT 2020 Preparation Tips

There is no such definitive strategy for preparation for such competitive exams especially because the syllabus is indeed very vast and quite eclectic. Since most of it tests very basic skills and elementary knowledge, the strategy may vary from person to person, however, preparation can be broken into 2 categories:- 

1. For students who have ample time to prepare (say, a year or two), they can focus on the subjects mentioned above and take up chapters of each subject and prepare them thoroughly. They can go through the books and solve them. They can also enroll in an institution such as CLATAPULT, CAREER LAUNCHER, CLAT POSSIBLE etc., and go through their course. It will be easier to get a clear picture of the AILET format and clear their doubts, subject and topic wise. Also, they will get the facility of solving a lot of mock tests to estimate their position.
2.  For students who have a month or a few weeks to prepare can enroll in a crash course in the above-mentioned institutions and take plenty of mock tests. In case of doubts, they can consult their respective faculties. Go through the chapters where they are very weak. Few things that can’t be emphasized enough are:- 

• Read and be updated on the current affairs in India and around the world to the best of your ability. Especially if it is related to the Indian Constitution. For that, go through the newspaper daily and religiously. 
• Improve your reading and comprehension skills. You should train yourself enough to be able to read and understand a very complex passage in no more than 7 minutes (ideally). It all boils down to whether you have previous knowledge and understanding as to the format of the LSAT paper. In order to be well acquainted, you have to solve the past year papers and take as many mock tests as possible.
• Candidates must take care of their speed and accuracy levels. For every section in the examination, there will be only 35 minutes.
• Candidates can go through various reading comprehensions available online on a daily basis to improve their speed of reading. For this section, candidates should also focus on improving vocabulary.
• Candidates can prefer the test series available in the market and can go through them and analyse their performance for better results. Please solve as many mocks as possible and get your weakest concepts and doubts cleared before the exam. Keep a track of your scores and make sure they are improving with each mock. And then, you will be good to go.

About the Author:

Teresa Dhar is a third-year student pursuing BA LLB from Chanakya National Law University.