CLAT 2024 Topper Interview - “Be Prepared for the Unexpected”, Pawan Kumar Pandey, AIR 11

The CLAT 2024 results were declared on December 10. While over 50,000 candidates appeared in CLAT 2024, only a few of them made it to top positions. Pawan Kumar Pandey, an IAS teacher from Dehradun too was in this race. and with just one month of preparation, he managed to secure AIR 11.

The CLAT topper from Dehradun is a teacher who only appeared for CLAT 2024 to understand how the revised pattern has changed the biggest law entrance exam this year and eventually to help his students prepare better. In conversation with Careers360, CLAT topper says to keep your strategy flexible and practice the sections you are weak in and be prepared for the unexpected.

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Read the full interview of Pawan Kumar Pandey with Careers360 below to know his experience with the CLAT 2024.

Hi Pawan, Congratulations on your CLAT rank! What was your initial reaction upon knowing your rank? Were you expecting such a good rank?

Thank you. I sort of expected the rank to be in two digits. I had posted about that in social media too, even before the exam was conducted. However, actually seeing the score card gave a sense of happiness and validation.

Tell us about yourself, your educational background, the place you belong to, and your family background.

I am a teacher based in Dehradun, where I run a coaching for Civil Services and Law Entrance exams named Oracle IAS. I come from a simple middle class family from Bageshwar district in Uttarakhand. I went to school in Lucknow and college in Greater Noida.

What motivated you to appear in CLAT 2024?

The pattern of CLAT has changed fundamentally over the last few years. In CLAT 2024 too, the pattern changed. As a teacher, I have to be in touch with such changes so that I can guide my students better. Therefore, I decided to sit for the exam in November.

Coming to your preparation, how and when did you start CLAT preparation? What motivated you to go for legal studies?

We decided to introduce Law entrance exams in our bouquet of offerings this year. So I decided to take the exam and started preparation in November 2023.

What was your daily schedule like? How many hours did you give to CLAT preparation?

I work full time as a teacher. So usually, I devoted around 2-3 hours per day to CLAT preparation over 1 month. Although I should add that being an engineer, I was already decent with the Maths section. Additionally, the CLAT exam is based largely on your English reading comprehension. As a voracious reader, I did not have to work hard for that.

What are important subjects and topics that one must cover for CLAT preparation?

CLAT syllabus has 5 sections: Maths, GK, Logical reasoning, Legal reasoning, and English. All sections are important for a good score. One must perform decently in all sections to score good marks.

Tell us about the subject-wise books or study materials you followed for CLAT preparation?

My study mostly consisted of going through a lot of GK because that section can be very unpredictable. I went through the sample papers given by the consortium for a basic idea of the paper and then solved a few mock papers created by my team. No specific books were referred for the preparation.

In the legal aptitude section, the consortium says that prior knowledge of law is not required to answer questions. How was your experience with legal aptitude section?

In the CLAT 2024, the legal aptitude section indeed did not require any prior knowledge of law. That is a good thing as you cannot expect class 12 students to be well versed in law for an exam which gives admission to law college! My experience was good with the legal section.

However, I must add one thing here. Even if the consortium does not require any prior knowledge of law, a basic idea of legal system, common laws and the Constitution would immensely help the students. Firstly, in some cases it can save them time while reading the questions where often real-world laws are referred to. Secondly, in other exams apart from CLAT, questions may be asked from such knowledge.

How important is it to read daily newspapers considering that a good weightage is given to current affairs including legal current affairs?

To be honest, not very much! There is a reason I say this. In CLAT the GK is paragraph based i.e. one paragraph will have 5-6 questions on same topic. This year, many answers were actually within the paragraphs! Now in such a pattern, the topics covered cannot be of momentary significance. If you want to make 5-6 questions about a topic, that topic is going to be covered in detail in news and most likely over many days/weeks.

So strictly speaking, you can ace CLAT GK by reading some monthly magazine. However, reading newspaper daily is a good habit and will help in other ways. Firstly, your reading speed and comprehension will improve with newspaper. Secondly, other entrance exams do not have CLAT pattern. They may ask questions based on smaller events/facts.

Did you solve mock tests? If yes, how important do you think the mock tests are for CLAT preparation?

I did solve a few mock tests. CLAT mock tests are really important to get your strategy right for the paper and help you get into the habit of managing time effectively. Over time, you are exposed to a variety of questions and learn a lot of facts based on just mock tests.

With revised pattern, is CLAT still a lengthy paper? How did you manage your time inside the exam hall.

The exam remains lengthy even with the CLAT revised pattern and reduction in the number of questions. The paper this year contained about 13000 words, which you have to read understand and answer within 2 hours. That requires a processing speed of more than 100 words per minute. If you keep around 15 minutes separately for filling in the OMR sheet, that means processing around 125 words per minute. Sometimes, a question will be easy, but sometimes you have to read a question twice or thrice. You have 1 minute per question to attempt and darken the circle.

So, the paper requires your complete attention for 2 hours. I had the strategy to first do maths and GK which will give some solid confidence to proceed. However, maths was a bit lengthier than I anticipated and I had to read passages in GK(which I had assumed I wouldn’t have to). I think others must have faced this issue too. However I was able to keep calm and complete the paper due to the mock practice, flexible strategy as well as decent reading speed.

Any tips or suggestions for CLAT aspirants appearing next year?

This year many aspirants did worse than their potential, mostly because the paper was unexpected. It was easier in many ways and difficult in other ways. My suggestion is to keep your strategy flexible, practice the sections you are weak in, read GK religiously and be prepared for the unexpected.