Legal Aptitude – the solving

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In our previous blog, “Legal Aptitude – the pattern” we tried to highlight the details and significance of the legal aptitude section tested in law entrance examinations, especially CLAT. We discussed areas of law tested, points it carries in CLAT and the kind of questions it envelopes. We continue our discussion about the “problem solving questions”, the issues faced and how to address these issues.

As said earlier, these questions typically contain a rule or a set of rules of law and a fact or a set of facts. Candidates are required to apply the rule(s) to the fact(s) and choose the “best” answer. Let’s now discuss these questions in larger detail.

1. The principle (rule of law)

• These questions contain one or a set of different legal principles / propositions.
• These legal principles correlate to one or a set of facts together or independently.
• Each candidate must assume that the principle is the correct rule of law. Please do not apply any of your legal knowledge that suggests otherwise subject to a few exceptions explained in class.
• The questions that students face on the exam carry a legal principle as shown in the below example:
  Principle: Everybody is under a legal obligation to take reasonable care to avoid act or omission which he can foresee would injure his neighbor, the neighbor for this purpose is any person whom he should have in his mind as likely to be affected by his act.
  In this example, you are given a rule of law / principle which you will apply to a fact to solve the question and pick your answer.
  To understand it better, let’s talk about the fact.

     2.  The fact

• Like the principle, you will be presented with one or set of facts representing a story.
• Spotting the issue
  • The / these fact(s) will represent a situation where your defendant will breach the principle presented. That is your legal issue. “Defendant” is the person who will generally breach the law and be sued in a court of law.
    
    

      3.   Solving the question

To solve this question, you must start by carefully looking at the call of the question. Read the principle(s) and the fact(s). Spot the issue, apply the rule of law and pick your option. Sounds simple? It is, but not so. Let’s continue our above example for better understanding:

Facts: Krishnan, while driving a car at a high speed in a crowded road, knocked down a cyclist. The cyclist died on the spot with a lot of blood spilling around, Lakshmi, a pregnant woman passing by, suffered from a nervous shock, leading to abortion. Lakshmi filed a suit against Krishnan claiming damages. Discuss Krishnan’s liability.

 (a) Krishnan will be liable, because he owned a duty of reasonable care to everybody on the

road including Lakshmi

(b) Krishnan will not be liable, because he could not have foreseen Lakshmi suffering from nervous shock as a result of his act.

 (c) Krishnan will be liable to Lakshmi because he failed to drive carefully.

 (d) None of the above

Let’s try and solve this question.

1. Spot the issue: The issue is whether or not Lakshmi was foreseeable victim.
2. Let’s solve: let’s understand and break the principle:
   • The defendant must take reasonable care to avoid
   • Foreseeable injury to anyone who is more likely than not to be impacted by the defendant’s act or omission.
3. Application of the principle to the fact:

Analyzing as to what happened in our factual story, Krishnan knocked down a cyclist. Because of this incident, Lakshmi (a witness to the incident) suffered an injury.

• Call of the question: What is Krishnan’s liability towards Lakshmi (look at the options presented)
• What was the legal issue? Is Krishnan liable to Lakshmi? Was an injury foreseeable to Lakshmi?
• Now let’s apply the principle to the fact:
  • We agree that Krishnan acted carelessly / recklessly towards the cyclist.
    • According to the principle, the “neighbor” in this case would be ________________.
    • Did he owe a duty of care towards the cyclist? _____.
    • Did he breach his duty? _______.
    • Is Krishnan liable towards the cyclist for his/her injury according to the principle presented? ______
    • Did Krishnan owe a duty of care towards the bystander, Lakshmi? _______.

FILL THE ABOVE BLANKS FOR US BY COMMENTING BELOW. AFTER THAT, WE SHALL RETURN, ANSWER YOUR BLANKS AND COMPLETE THIS BLOG ARTICLE IN THE NEXT PART.

Also, please feel free to post any questions / queries in the comments below. We shall be more than happy to answer.

In the next part, we shall discuss:

A detailed explanation of this problem.
What is the meaning of “best” answer?
Some problems faced by students.

STAY TUNED.

REMEMBER, WE ARE WAITING FOR YOUR COMMENTS.

Thanks for reading and you time

Avocat Tutorials.

Legal Aptitude – the pattern

Today, legal aptitude is a significantly essential section of all law entrance examinations in India. Talking about Common Law Admission Test (“CLAT”), legal aptitude carries 50 marks out of the 200 and becomes a significant factor in deciding tie-breaking. For the purposes of this article, let’s take a deep look at the areas of law, kind of questions they like to test and the ideal approach to address them.

 Areas of law:

All law entrance exams in India test principally four subjects in legal aptitude, i.e. Constitutional Law, Criminal Law (“IPC”), Law of Tort (“tort”) and Law of Contract (“contract”). The three areas, i.e. IPC, tort and contract mostly carry equal weight age in the number of questions. To understand it better, let’s take a look at the kind of questions they like to test.

Kind of questions they test?

Most exams today, by one way or the other, test legal aptitude questions in two forms. One – they test theoretical questions testing prior legal knowledge and the other in which you must solve a given set of problem. The good thing is that all these questions, in fact the whole test carries only multiple / objective questions with four choices out of which you must choose one.

Questions testing prior legal knowledge:

These questions encompass all the above four areas of law where Constitution requires a special mention. In this area, while you will face questions on all four, i.e. Constitution, IPC, tort and contract. However, maximum of such questions that you will encounter will be based on constitution. The rationale is rather simple, i.e. it is difficult to find and/or form problem solving questions based on constitution. That being said, you will face a far lesser number of problem solving questions based on constitution.

It is pertinent to mention CLAT here whose administrators claim that they will not test these questions. However, the recent trend has shown that they do not keep themselves from testing these questions in the sections of legal aptitude and/or general knowledge under the veil of legal GK.

That takes us to the second type of questions, i.e. problem solving questions that you will have to practice and will be tested upon.

   Problem solving questions

As said earlier, these questions are the second type that gets tested in legal aptitude section of all of the law entrance exams in India.

These questions typically contain a rule or a set of rules of law and a fact or a set of facts. Candidates are required to apply the rule(s) to the fact(s) and choose the “best” answer.

What do we mean by “best answer”? How to approach and solve these questions? 

We will answer all these questions and more in our next blog. Stay tuned. In the meantime, can we ask you to comment on our Face Book post or here (on our website) and tell us how you like this article and blog in general? We promise to be back with the next part very soon.

Thanks for reading and you time

Avocat Tutorials.