One question that students keep asking me is, “Ma’am, how many hours should I actually study every day for CLAT?”
And honestly, there cannot be one answer to this question.
If somebody tells you that four hours a day is enough for CLAT, or somebody else tells you that you need to study ten hours every day, both statements may be correct in a particular situation and completely wrong in another.
It depends primarily on how much time is left before the examination and, of course, on what level you are starting from.
I am Snigdha Mehta, Co-Founder and Chief Mentor at Maansarovar Law Centre. I secured All India Rank 23 in the SSC examination and later worked as an Inspector in the Income Tax Department. I have cleared different competitive examinations myself, and I have also been teaching students preparing for competitive examinations for many years now. So when I talk about the number of hours required, I am not looking at it simply from the point of view of finishing a syllabus. I am looking at what it actually takes to become competitive in an examination where thousands of students are fighting for a limited number of good seats.
Let us take the case of a serious CLAT aspirant who is planning to appear for CLAT in December and begins preparation around January.
January to March
If you are beginning in January, you do not need to start by studying eight or ten hours every day.
In fact, I would not even recommend that.
Initially, your focus should be on getting into a routine, understanding the different sections of CLAT and developing your basic concepts.
Suppose you are attending coaching for around three hours a day. Apart from those classes, another one to one-and-a-half hours can go into revising whatever has been taught, doing the assignment given in class, or practising a few questions yourself.
So at this stage, around four hours of CLAT-related work every day is fairly reasonable.
You can follow this for six days in the week.
During the weekend, you should also start attempting mocks. A mock itself takes close to two hours and, more importantly, you need time to analyse it. There is really no point in simply giving one mock after another and never sitting down to understand where the marks went.
So January to March is basically your foundation period.
You are studying, but you are not yet living and breathing CLAT throughout the day.
And that is perfectly fine.
April to June
From April onwards, I would expect the preparation to become a little more serious.
By this time, you have already spent a few months understanding the examination. Now you have to start working independently also.
You should be reading the newspaper every day. You should be working on your reading speed. Current affairs cannot be something that you suddenly pick up in November. Vocabulary and general reading should also become part of your routine.
So somewhere around six hours a day is a reasonable target during April, May and June.
Now, these six hours do not mean six hours sitting with books.
Three hours may already be going into your classes.
Around an hour may go into reading the newspaper.
Another one to one-and-a-half hours may go into practice, assignments or analysis.
Then there is revision, vocabulary, reading and whatever weaker area you personally need to work on.
Some days it may be five-and-a-half hours. Some days it may become six-and-a-half.
I don’t think students need to sit with a stopwatch and become obsessed with whether they completed exactly six hours.
The point is that by this stage, CLAT preparation has to occupy a substantial part of your day.
July to September
From July onwards, I would increase the preparation further.
This is also the stage where one mistake students commonly make becomes very visible.
They keep studying new things but forget what they studied three months ago.
By July, revision has to become a proper part of your schedule.
You still have newspaper reading. You have current affairs. You have current legal developments. You have classes. You have sectional tests and mocks. You also have to go back to earlier concepts and identify areas where you are repeatedly losing marks.
So by July, August and September, around seven hours a day devoted to CLAT is quite reasonable for a serious aspirant.
Again, I am talking about six fairly serious days in a week.
Earlier, I would have been comfortable telling a student to keep Sunday largely free.
At this stage, I would not.
You can keep Sunday lighter, but use three or four hours to revise whatever happened during the week, look at your mistakes and see whether there is some portion of your preparation which is continuously getting neglected.
Because by September, those small neglected areas start piling up.
October Onwards
October onwards, you are very close to the examination.
At this stage, if somebody tells me that they are seriously targeting a good NLU but are able to devote only three or four hours a day to CLAT, I would be concerned.
There is simply too much to do.
You may be attempting a mock, which itself takes around two hours.
Then you have to analyse the mock properly.
You are still reading the newspaper.
Current affairs need repeated revision.
You will have concepts which you thought you knew but which are still going wrong in mocks.
There may be portions left uncovered.
There will also be certain sections where you need targeted practice.
So from October onwards, eight to ten hours of CLAT-related work in a day is not an unreasonable figure.
And again, when I say eight to ten hours, I am including everything.
It does not mean sitting with one book for ten hours.
A mock is preparation.
Mock analysis is preparation.
Reading the newspaper is preparation.
Revising current affairs is preparation.
Doing a Legal Reasoning set or working on Maths is preparation.
All of that put together may easily take you to eight or nine hours.
“But I Know Someone Who Studied Only Four Hours a Day and Cleared CLAT”
This is another thing I hear very often.
Someone knows somebody who studied for three hours.
Someone watched an interview of a topper who apparently studied for four hours.
Someone says they hardly studied and still got a good rank.
Maybe they did.
There are always exceptions.
But you cannot prepare for a competitive examination on the basis of somebody else’s exceptional case.
A student may already be an extremely strong reader.
Another student may have excellent English because they have been reading books since childhood.
Somebody may already be very good at Mathematics or Logical Reasoning.
Someone else may have been following current affairs for years without even considering it “CLAT preparation”.
So when that student says, “I studied only four hours,” those four hours may not tell you the complete story.
I have been teaching CLAT aspirants for many years, and I would not advise an average serious student to take comfort in these stories.
There are limited seats.
There are thousands of students appearing for the examination.
And many of them are preparing seriously.
If you want to compete with them, then your preparation also has to reflect that seriousness.
Quality Matters, But Hours Matter Too
There is another sentence which sounds very good:
“Don’t count the hours. Just make the hours count.”
I agree with it, but only to an extent.
Of course, there is no point sitting for ten hours if three of those hours are spent looking at your phone, another two are spent daydreaming and another hour is spent arranging your notes.
Six focused hours are obviously better than ten useless hours.
But sometimes students use “quality over quantity” as an excuse for simply not putting in enough work.
CLAT has five sections.
You have to read.
You have to practise.
You have to give mocks.
You have to analyse them.
You have to revise current affairs.
You have to keep going back to your mistakes.
All of this takes time.
So yes, quality comes first.
But after a point, quantity also matters because there is a certain amount of work which simply has to be done.
Does Every Student Need the Same Number of Hours?
No.
And that is very important.
The schedule I have given here is broadly for a decent student who begins preparation approximately a year before CLAT and is serious about getting into a good law school.
Someone who is weak in English may need much more reading.
Someone who is struggling with Maths may need an extra hour there.
Someone who already reads very well may not need to spend as much time on basic reading exercises.
A school-going student will obviously have to organise these hours differently from a student who has taken a drop year.
So don’t take these numbers as some rigid rule.
Take them as a broad indication of how the intensity of your preparation should increase as the examination comes closer.
If I had to put it very simply:
January to March: around 4 hours a day
April to June: around 6 hours a day
July to September: around 7 hours a day
October onwards: around 8–10 hours a day
But more important than asking, “How many hours did I study today?” is occasionally asking yourself:
What exactly did I improve today?
Did my reading become faster?
Did I understand why I got those five questions wrong in the mock?
Did I revise something that I was forgetting?
Did I improve a weak section?
Because ultimately CLAT will not ask you how many hours you studied.
It will test what those hours did to your performance.
And if you are still confused about how much time you personally should be spending on CLAT, which sections deserve more time in your case, or how you should structure the months left before the examination, you can always reach out to us at Maansarovar Law Centre for more customised guidance.
Every student starts from a different point, and sometimes the right plan matters as much as hard work.
Together, let’s write your success story.