CLAT

The concept of a National Law School to act as a pace-setter and a testing ground for bold experiments in legal education came up before the Bar Council of India in the context of the Council’s statutory responsibility for maintaining standards in professional legal education under the Advocates Act, 1961.

The Bar Council of India, representing the organized legal profession at all India level, took initiative in establishing the first National Law School in Bangalore. The success of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, has inspired many States to set up similar institutions in their respective territories and at present, there are twelve National Law Schools in different parts of the country.

These institutions are national in the sense that substantial number of seats in all these institutions are filled up by students from all over India and the academic staff are also recruited on all India basis. Till 2007 each National Law School conducted admission test in different Centres spread all over the country and thousands of students after their ten plus two examinations took these multiple admission tests at considerable expense and inconvenience.



In order to avoid the hardship faced by the students in taking number of tests for admission to individual Universities and in view of the direction of the Supreme Court in the case of Varun Bharat v. Union of India, initiative was taken jointly by the University Grants Commission, Ministry of HRD and the National Law Universities for conducting a Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for admission to different National Law Universities in the country. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by seven National Law Universities. The experience in CLAT-2008 has been that a larger the catchment area, provides better quality of students. Therefore, in addition to the CLAT founder seven National Law Universities, the four other
National Law Universities have joined CLAT- 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 on the basis of seniority of the Member University. Accordingly, (CLAT)-2008 and CLAT-2009 were conducted by National Law School of India University, (NLSIU), Bangalore and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad respectively. At present following 11 National Law Universities are member of CLAT-2010.

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, Punjab
Chanakya National Law University, Patna.
National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi.