Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) : Way to Legal Education
The concept of National Law Universities to act as a pace-setter and testing ground for bold experiments in legal education came up because the pattern of legal education at traditional Universities was not found to be satisfactory. In course of time, fourteen National Law Universities were established to achieve excellence in legal education. These Universities are national in the sense that substantial number of seats in all these
Universities are filled-up by students from all over India and the academic staffs are also recruited on all India basis. Till 2007 each National Law University conducted tests separately in different Centers spread all over the country and thousands of students after their 10+2 examinations took those multiple admission tests at considerable expense and with lots of inconvenience. In order to avoid the hardship faced by the candidates in appearing in a number of tests for admission to different individual Universities initiative was taken for conducting a Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for admission to different National Law Universities. However, only eleven out of the fourteen National Law Universities are part of CLAT.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by seven National Law Universities. The experience in CLAT-2008 has been that larger catchment area provides better quality of students. Therefore, in addition to the CLAT founder seven National Law Universities, the four other National Law Universities joined CLAT in the year 2009. It was agreed by the Committee consisting of all the Vice-Chancellors that the test would be conducted by the National Law Universities by rotation.
Accordingly, (CLAT)-2008 and CLAT- 2009 were conducted by National Law School of India University, (NLSIU), Bangalore and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad respectively. Following are the major National Law Universities are member of CLAT :
National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad
National Law Institute University, Bhopal.
West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
National Law University, Jodhpur.
Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur.
Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar.
Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow.
Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala.
Chanakya National Law University, Patna.
National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi.