The All India Law Entrance Test (AILET) is conducted once a year by National Law University, Delhi for admissions to its courses of B.A LL.B, LL.M and Ph.D. AILET 2017 was conducted on 7th May 2017 at 19 centres across the country. The total seats offered for B.A LL.B are 80. There is 1 additional seat for Kashmiri migrants and 2 supernumerary seats for the students from Jammu and Kashmir.
AILET is an offline (pen-paper based) exam consisting of 150 questions from 5 sections: English; General Knowledge; Mathematics; Legal Aptitude and Reasoning. The time given was 90 minutes (1 hr. 30 mins.) and each question carried 1 mark. There was no negative marking. The division of questions was as follows:
English- 35
General Knowledge- 35
Legal Aptitude- 35
Reasoning-35
Mathematics- 10
Let us now have a look at the question type and difficulty level for all the sections individually.
English:
| Question Type |
Number of Questions |
| Synonyms |
1 |
| Antonyms |
2 |
| Meaning |
2 |
| Match the columns (grammar based) |
4 |
| Odd one out |
3 |
| Error spotting (grammar) |
6 |
| Idioms and phrases |
3 |
| Sentence Rearrangement |
3 |
| Cloze Test |
11 |
| Total |
35 |
The English section of this paper was dominated by vocabulary and grammar based questions. The surprise this year was that there was no reading comprehension passage in the verbal section. Most of the vocabulary questions were based on idioms and contextual vocabulary. They were moderate to tough. In other words they were based on knowledge of idiomatic phrases and to score well one should have proper knowledge of words/idioms and their usages. There was only a question based on sentence rearrangement and it was easy. There was a set of 11 questions based on cloze test. This set was again easy except a few words in the options of these questions, which made the options close and questions tricky.
General Knowledge:
| Question Type |
No. Of Questions |
| Govt. Schemes & Policy |
1 |
| International & National Org. |
3 |
| Science & Technology |
6 |
| Economy |
2 |
| Business |
3 |
| Banking |
2 |
| Miscellaneous |
5 |
| Finance |
2 |
| Current Affairs |
3 |
| World Geography |
4 |
| Awards & Honours |
1 |
| Sports |
3 |
| Total |
35 |
Current affairs related to above mentioned GK areas combined with Sci. & Tech questions dominated the question paper. The questions that appeared in this year’s paper were difficult when compared to the 2016 AILET General Knowledge section.
Legal Aptitude:
| Subject Name |
No. of Questions |
| Law of Torts |
5 |
| Legal GK |
14 |
| Law of Contract |
3 |
| Constitution |
10 |
| Legal Miscellaneous |
3 |
| Total |
35 |
| Question Type |
No. of Questions |
| Assertion-Reason Questions |
7 |
| Principle-Fact Questions (Legal Reasoning) |
9 |
| Legal Fact Questions |
19 |
| Total |
35 |
The legal aptitude section of AILET 2017 can be easily called one of the toughest so far. Questions from the Indian Penal Code were given a complete miss. The Principle-fact questions were extremely lengthy and used multiple aspects of knowledge in the given area to form the principle. The section was dominated with questions from Indian Constitution and Current Legal GK. The Current Legal GK questions were related to proposed amendments in various laws, case laws and various other legal developments. Some of the questions stumped the AILET aspirants completely, like- youth bar association judgment, maternity benefit duration, public trust doctrine, legal personality awarded to river in New Zealand.
Reasoning:
| Area |
Number of Questions |
| Input and Output |
4 |
| Analytical Reasoning |
8 |
| Directions |
2 |
| Relations |
3 |
| Odd man Out |
2 |
| Series |
4 |
| Critical & Verbal Reasoning |
10 |
| Miscellaneous |
2 |
| Total |
35 |
There were in total 25 questions of reasoning (except the critical & verbal reasoning) and the level of the questions was easy to moderate. The critical reasoning questions were lengthy and thought provoking. They needed time to gauge and get 100% accuracy.
Mathematics:
| Area |
Number of Questions |
| Mensuration |
1 |
| Ages |
1 |
| Calendars |
1 |
| Boats and streams |
1 |
| Time speed and distance |
1 |
| Ratio |
2 |
| Percentage |
1 |
| Average |
1 |
| Profit and Loss |
1 |
| Total |
10 |
Once the results are declared, counseling is conducted to verify documents and offer final admission to the candidates. To know more about the previous years’ cut-off for AILET, check out the following link:
| Section |
Level of difficulty, Time & Accuracy |
| English |
Overall feel of this section was moderate to tough. As there was no sectional time limit so one should have been extra careful in allotting time to different sections. The verbal section should have been given 20-25 minutes and an attempt of 28+ questions with at least 75- 80% accuracy would help to clear cut –off this time. |
| General Knowledge |
The overall level of the section was moderate to difficult. Not more than 12-15 minutes should have been spent on this section. A score of 23-25 was easily achievable for someone who regularly reads newspaper. |
| Legal Aptitude |
Most of the questions were moderate to difficult and would require 25-30 minutes for a comfortable attempt. A good score in this section would be in the range of 25-27. |
| Reasoning |
The ideal time to solve the section is 25-30 minutes and the score one could achieve was 23- 25 with 80% accuracy. |
| Mathematics |
The level of the quant section was easy. Ideally 15-20 minutes were sufficient to solve the section and the achievable score was 7-8 with 80% accuracy. |
