What CLAT Mentors See Students Doing Wrong in the Final Phase and How Bootcamps Fix
Only a few days remain before CLAT 2026, and this time period can significantly impact an aspirant's overall performance. While many students prepare for months, they often make poor strategic decisions in the final hours due to misconceptions about the current format of the CLAT exam. Experienced instructors and mentors can identify these gaps, and specialized boot camps are well-positioned to address them through focused and intensive training.
Misreading CLAT’s updated pattern
CLAT 2026 (and 2025) will test candidates with over 120 multiple-choice questions in two hours, with a –0.25 negative mark for every wrong answer. There are five sections: English Language (20% weight), Current Affairs + GK (25%), Legal Reasoning (25%), Logical Reasoning (20%), and Quantitative Techniques (10%).
Mentors often observe that students treat CLAT like a memory test or a speed-reading challenge. However, all the sections, especially English, Current Affairs, Legal Reasoning, and Logical Reasoning, are more passage-based. Ignoring this framework can impair one's ability to read and reason during the exam. Bootcamps address this by recreating real CLAT-style passages as daily drills. Students repeatedly practise comprehension under timed conditions, building both speed and the ability to apply reasoning or legal rules directly from text.
Over-Accumulating GK Rather than Thematizing it
A repeated error: students in the final phase try to know every headline or memorize facts without a theme. However, the CLAT syllabus focuses on issue-oriented current affairs, not on more information. Selecting a passage almost always has an arts, international affairs, policy, or legal topic.
Mentors notice students failing to connect news to principles of law or policy, which is what CLAT frequently tests in “current + legal affairs” passages. Bootcamps fix this with GK clusters, dividing content into high-yield themes (e.g., judicial reforms, global treaties, landmark judgments). They also provide structured weekly capsules and problem-set passages that integrate current affairs with legal or policy reasoning.
Mock Tests Without Deep Analysis
In the final weeks of madness, numerous candidates habitually run through mock tests consecutively without really understanding their errors. Mocks done without a thorough examination of errors are merely speed exercises and not effective learning methods.
Mentors emphasize that mock tests must be diagnostic. They should be followed by error tagging (which questions went wrong), time-map analysis (how many minutes were spent per passage), and option-behaviour tracking (why a wrong option was tempting).
Bootcamps do this through carefully staged mock review sessions. With each test, students have a feedback loop with professional guidance. In this way, they get to know their repeated error patterns (for example, incorrectly using legal maxims or misunderstanding inference questions) and adjust their strategies.
Poor Time Management Under Pressure
One of the major problems in the last stage is the improper distribution of time. Mentors often notice that students are excessively engrossed in complex legal passages or go through a Logical Reasoning paragraph twice. This makes them tired, slows their pace, and decreases their accuracy in the last 20 minutes.
Since CLAT has sections with different weights and is a very pressurised test, time management is of the utmost importance. Bootcamps bring the real exam environment with time, limited sprints, and sectional sets. They do drills in which students have to finish a legal reasoning passage set within a predetermined time or complete GK, current affairs passages on a very short timer. These tasks create a natural flow, which is very helpful for students under stress to decide which passages to do first or to skip.
Neglecting Foundational Revision
At the end of their preparation, many students assume they have already covered the basics — vocabulary, legal maxims, reasoning frameworks, and quantitative formulas, so they don’t revisit them. Mentors warn this is dangerous: in a tiring two-hour paper, you are more likely to make mistakes on “easy” questions if your fundamentals are shaky.
Bootcamps counteract this through micro-revision routines. Every day, students get short, targeted bursts of review: legal principle drills, vocabulary flash cards, formula recaps, and quick reasoning warm-ups. This ensures core concepts stay fresh and reduces silly errors on exam day.
Conclusion
In the most recent CLAT format, success in the final phase relies more on precision than volume. Many students struggle because they misread the exam’s structure, overload themselves on GK without meaning, take mocks without analysis, mismanage time under pressure, and neglect fundamentals. Bootcamps offer a purpose-built corrective architecture, combining real-exam simulations, expert feedback, and high-yield revision. With this method, the last stretch isn't just a test of endurance; it's a way to improve your performance. The author is Vice Chairman - CL Educate Ltd.
