Previous year papers · What still counts
Most CLAT past papers are for an exam that no longer exists
Every site on this search sells you the same bundle: CLAT papers from 2008 to
2026, nineteen of them, free PDF, one click. What none of them mentions is that CLAT
changed format twice in that window — in 2020 and again in 2024.
Of those nineteen papers, three match the paper you will actually sit in
December 2026. Twelve of them test memorised legal knowledge and static general knowledge,
neither of which has appeared in CLAT since 2019.
- 19papers in the bundle
- 3on your pattern
- 12a different exam
This page is not another download list. We do not host CLAT papers — they are the
copyright of the Consortium of National Law Universities, and the official ones sit behind a
login on the Consortium’s own site. What follows is the thing the download pages leave out:
which years are worth your time, what changed, and how to actually use a past paper once you
have one.
Want the current-pattern paper instead of a 2011 one?
Leave a number and Priyanka will send you a full 120-question paper built on the 2024–27 format, plus the year-by-year breakdown below as a single sheet you can keep. She teaches the current affairs and GK module here, so she has watched candidates lose marks practising the wrong papers.
One message from Priyanka, not a sequence. We do not pass your number on.
The three eras of CLAT, and which one you are sitting
CLAT has had three distinct formats since it began in 2008. Read these before you download
anything.
Mostly standalone questions, not passage-based. Legal Aptitude carried 50 questions and acted as the tie-breaker, split roughly 70% reasoning and 30% memorised legal knowledge. A descriptive section was tried in 2014 and 2015, then dropped.
The first big reform. Comprehension passages introduced across most sections. Static GK removed and legal knowledge questions removed — Legal Aptitude became Legal Reasoning, testing whether you can apply a principle you are handed rather than one you memorised.
Second reform, resolved by the Consortium’s Governing Body on 20 May 2023. Every section is passage-based except the data component of Quantitative Techniques. Passages run to about 450 words.
The short version. If you are preparing for CLAT 2027, papers from
2024, 2025 and 2026 are the real thing. Papers from 2020 to 2023
are useful practice with a caveat: they are 150 questions in the same two hours, so the time
pressure is harsher than yours will be, and the sectional counts are different. Papers from
2008 to 2019 should be left alone unless you are specifically hunting for
reading practice, because a third of that paper tests things the exam no longer asks.
What actually changed, and why it matters more than it sounds
Two of the changes are easy to see: 200 questions became 150 in 2020, then 120 in 2024, with
the clock staying at two hours throughout. That is a real shift — you now get roughly
60 seconds a question where a 2015 candidate got 36. Practising on a 200-question
paper trains a pace you do not need and a panic you will not face.
The change that matters more is quieter. Until 2019 the paper had a section called
Legal Aptitude, worth 50 questions and used as the tie-breaker, and roughly 30%
of it tested legal knowledge you were expected to have memorised. In 2020 that section became
Legal Reasoning, and the memorised component was removed entirely. You are now
handed a principle inside the passage and marked on whether you apply it correctly.
Static general knowledge went the same way. Before 2020 you could be asked who wrote a
particular book or which river runs through which state. From 2020, the section tests current
affairs only, delivered through a passage.
So a candidate grinding through the 2016 paper is spending a meaningful share of their time on
two things that cannot appear on their exam. Worse, they are practising a style of question —
short, standalone, factual recall — that is the opposite of the 450-word comprehension
passages they will actually face.
Which CLAT previous year question papers to solve, year by year
| Years | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|
| 2024, 2025, 2026 | Everything. Full-length timing, sectional strategy, question style, difficulty calibration. | Nothing — these are your papers. Save at least one to sit under real conditions close to the exam. |
| 2020 – 2023 | Question style and passage practice. The comprehension format is the same as yours. | Timing practice or score benchmarking. 150 questions in 120 minutes is a different race, and your score will not compare. |
| 2008 – 2019 | Reading volume, and only if you have exhausted better material. The English passages still work. | Legal Aptitude, GK, and any sense of your real score. A third of the legal section tests knowledge the exam dropped. |
Get a paper built for the format you are actually sitting
Rather than working backwards from a 2016 paper, practise on the real thing. Send a number and we will WhatsApp you a full-length 120-question paper on the 2024–27 pattern with worked solutions.
One message from Priyanka, not a sequence. We do not pass your number on.
Where to get official CLAT question papers
The Consortium publishes sample papers with answer keys to registered candidates through the
official
CLAT website, using your registration login. That is the only source we would call
authoritative. Registration for CLAT 2027 is open from 3 August to 31 October 2026, and the
exam is on Sunday 6 December 2026, 2:00 to 4:00 pm.
The third-party PDF collections are widely circulated and easy to find. We are not going to
pretend otherwise, and we are not going to host them. What we would say is that their year labels
are the whole problem: a file named CLAT 2013 tells you nothing about whether it is worth
two hours of your evening. Now you know that it is not.
How to use a CLAT previous year paper properly
Most candidates do this badly, and it is the single cheapest thing to fix. The usual routine is
to sit a paper, score it, feel briefly good or bad about the number, and move to the next one.
That is collecting papers, not learning from them.
The review is where the marks are. A paper you have spent two hours dissecting is worth more
than three you scored and filed. For every question you got wrong, the useful question is not
“what was the right answer” but which of these four things happened:
- You misread the passage. A comprehension problem. It will repeat across every
section, including Legal Reasoning, and it is the most common cause of a plateau. - You read it correctly but applied the principle wrongly. A reasoning problem,
and the one worth the most marks to fix, because Legal and Logical Reasoning are half your paper. - You did not know a fact. Only current affairs and GK work this way now. Add it
to a running list; do not treat it as a reasoning failure. - You ran out of time and guessed. A strategy problem, not a knowledge one. With
0.25 deducted per wrong answer, four blind guesses cancel a correct answer.
Tag every wrong answer with one of those four. After two papers the pattern is usually obvious,
and it tells you what to work on far better than a raw score does.
Not ready to sit a full paper? Our
free 30-question CLAT mock test runs in the browser, takes
about half an hour, is marked on the real scheme, and shows a worked solution for every question.
No signup. It is the fastest way to find out which of those four problems you have.
One thing worth knowing before you build a plan around past papers
In 2026 the Consortium published the report of an expert committee on CLAT reform. It
recommends collapsing the five sections into three — language and comprehension, a merged
logical and legal reasoning section, and quantitative techniques as a standalone — along with
scrapping general knowledge and changing who sets the paper.
None of this affects CLAT 2027. The Consortium has confirmed the pattern and
syllabus are unchanged for this cycle, and major changes are deferred to CLAT 2028,
with the recommendations to be considered further by a committee constituted by the office of the
Chief Justice of India. Public feedback was open until 31 August 2026.
If you are sitting 2027, prepare for the 120-question paper and ignore the noise. If you are in
Class 11 and looking at 2028, understand that today’s past papers may age the same way the 2019
ones did.
Common questions
How many CLAT past papers are actually useful?
Three are on your
exact format: 2024, 2025 and 2026. Four more — 2020 to 2023 — share the comprehension
style but are 150 questions rather than 120, so use them for question practice and not for timing
or scores. The twelve papers from 2008 to 2019 are a different exam.
Why can’t I download the papers here?
CLAT question papers are the
copyright of the Consortium of National Law Universities. The official sample papers with answer
keys are released to registered candidates through the CLAT website using your login. We would
rather tell you which years matter than host files we have no right to.
Should I solve papers from 2008 to 2019 at all?
Only for reading
volume, and only after better material is exhausted. The English passages still function as
practice. The Legal Aptitude section tests memorised legal knowledge that was removed from CLAT in
2020, and the GK section tests static facts that were removed at the same time.
What is the difference between a past paper and a mock test?
A past
paper tells you what the exam has actually done. A good mock tells you what it is likely to do
next, on the current pattern, in unlimited supply. You need both: past papers to calibrate
difficulty and style, mocks for volume. The trap is using a 2013 past paper as though it were
either.
Is the CLAT 2027 pattern changing?
No. The Consortium has confirmed
no change to the syllabus or pattern for CLAT 2027. The expert committee’s proposed restructuring
into three sections is directed at CLAT 2028 and beyond.
What is the difference between CLAT PYQs, sample papers and model papers?
They are three different things and the words get used loosely. A PYQ, meaning a
previous year question paper, is a paper CLAT actually set in a given year. A sample
paper is released by the Consortium of National Law Universities to registered candidates
to show the format, and comes with an answer key. A model paper is written by a
coaching institute or publisher and has no official standing at all, which does not make it useless
but does mean its difficulty is a guess. Only the first two tell you anything reliable about the
real exam, and only the ones from 2024 onwards match your format.
Send me a current-pattern paper and the breakdown
A full 120-question paper on the 2024–27 format with worked solutions, plus this year-by-year guide as one sheet. Free, and it is the last thing we will send unless you ask for more.
One message from Priyanka, not a sequence. We do not pass your number on.
Where to go next
If you want to measure yourself right now, the
free CLAT mock test takes thirty minutes and gives you a
section-by-section score. If you have registered and want the dates and steps in one place, see the
CLAT 2027 registration guide. If you are weighing up
whether to pay for coaching at all, we have written honestly about
what CLAT coaching actually costs and about
how to choose between institutes.
Lawgic runs one live online CLAT programme at Rs 20,000 flat — complete
course, mocks and mentorship, no premium tier.
- Consortium of National Law Universities, CLAT 2027 UG syllabus — 120 questions, 2 hours, 1 mark each, 0.25 deducted per wrong answer, passages of about 450 words, all sections passage-based except the Quantitative data component.
- Consortium of National Law Universities, CLAT 2027 UG instructions — exam Sunday 6 December 2026, 2:00–4:00 pm; registration 3 August to 31 October 2026.
- LiveLaw, CLAT 2024: Consortium notifies syllabus, questions reduced from 150 to 120 — the reduction to 120 was resolved by the Consortium’s Governing Body on 20 May 2023 and first applied to CLAT 2024.
- SCC Online, NLU Consortium announces changes in pattern of CLAT 2020 (25 November 2019) — the reduction from 200 to 150 questions and the move to comprehension-based questions.
- Careers360, How CLAT has changed since 2008 — the 2008–2019 structure (200 questions; English, General Knowledge, Elementary Mathematics, Legal Aptitude, Logical Reasoning), the descriptive section trialled in 2014–2015, and the removal of static GK in 2020.
- Lawctopus, CLAT 2020: changes to the Legal Aptitude section — Legal Aptitude carried 50 questions and served as the tie-breaker until 2019, with roughly 70% reasoning and 30% legal knowledge; legal knowledge questions were removed from 2020.
- Bar & Bench, Expert committee’s suggestions for CLAT, and India Legal, Consortium publishes CLAT reform panel report, defers major changes to CLAT 2028 — the proposed three-section structure and the deferral to CLAT 2028.
We do not host or reproduce CLAT question papers. Official sample papers with
answer keys are released by the Consortium to registered candidates.
