The CLAT AILET gap in 2027 is exactly seven days. CLAT 2027 is on Sunday, 6 December 2026, 2:00 to 4:00 PM. AILET 2027 is on Sunday, 13 December 2026, 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Both offline, both in the same afternoon slot, one week apart.
Most candidates handle this week badly, and they handle it badly in a predictable way: they treat the seven days as a revision sprint. That instinct is wrong, and it is wrong for a reason worth understanding before you plan anything else.
The one thing to take away: After four months of preparation, the marginal value of a seventh day of revision is close to zero and the marginal cost of arriving at AILET depleted is large — so this week is about recovery and format adjustment, not content.
Why the revision instinct is wrong
You have prepared for months. Whatever you know on 6 December, you will still know on 13 December. Seven days of additional study adds a rounding error to your knowledge.
What those seven days can change, substantially, is the state you arrive in. A CLAT paper is genuinely draining — two hours of sustained inference under time pressure, on top of a night of poor sleep and a morning of adrenaline. Candidates routinely underestimate how long the recovery takes, and they spend the week grinding on the assumption that fatigue is a discipline problem rather than a physiological one.
The candidates who do best on 13 December are, with striking consistency, the ones who did least on the 7th and 8th.
There is a second reason. AILET is a different paper set by a different institution for a different university. The gains available in this week come from adjusting to its format — its pacing, its emphasis, its instructions — not from learning more law or more news. Format adjustment takes two focused days. Revision takes as many days as you are willing to give it, which is exactly why it expands to fill the week.
What is actually different about AILET
Three differences are certain and structural, and they should shape how you think about the exam.
One: it is a single-university exam. AILET is conducted by National Law University Delhi for admission to its own programmes. NLU Delhi does not participate in CLAT counselling. This means AILET is not a backup in the ordinary sense — it is the only door to a specific institution, and the candidate pool self-selects accordingly.
Two: it has an entirely separate application. The AILET 2027 notification was released on 23 July 2026 and registration opened on 7 August 2026 at nationallawuniversitydelhi.in. Your CLAT registration does nothing for you here. If you are reading this before the deadline, check it against the notification today — a candidate who prepared for both and applied for one is not a rare species.
Three: the counselling timelines run independently. CLAT counselling is administered by the Consortium; NLU Delhi runs its own admission process. The two produce offers on separate schedules, which occasionally forces a decision — accepting one seat while the other process is still running — that is worth thinking about in November rather than in the middle of it.
The paper itself
NLU Delhi's own B.A.LL.B. exam-details page sets out the AILET 2027 paper:
| AILET 2027 (UG) | |
|---|---|
| Date and time | Sunday, 13 December 2026, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM |
| Duration | 120 minutes |
| Questions | 150 multiple-choice questions, 150 marks |
| Section A: English Language | 50 questions, 50 marks |
| Section B: Current Affairs & General Knowledge | 30 questions, 30 marks |
| Section C: Logical Reasoning | 70 questions, 70 marks |
| Negative marking | 0.25 marks per wrong answer, so four wrong answers cost one mark |
| Tie-breaker | Higher marks in Logical Reasoning |
Put it next to CLAT and three differences matter for this week.
The clock is tighter. CLAT gives you 120 minutes for 120 questions. AILET gives you the same 120 minutes for 150, which is 48 seconds a question instead of a minute. Carry CLAT's pace into AILET and you run out of time with a section still untouched.
Logical Reasoning is nearly half the paper. Seventy of the 150 marks sit in one section, and it also decides ties. There is no separate Legal Reasoning or Quantitative section. NLU Delhi says legal principles may appear inside Logical Reasoning to test reasoning, but the paper will not require legal knowledge.
Current affairs is a smaller share. At 30 of 150 marks it is a fifth of the paper, against roughly a quarter in CLAT. Your CLAT current affairs revision carries over, but it earns less here per hour than extra Logical Reasoning practice.
The exercise this week is to get used to this paper's pacing rather than carry Sunday's over. Check the page once more before the exam in case NLU Delhi updates it.
The seven-day plan
Dates are for the 2027 cycle. The shape transfers to any year with a one-week gap.
Sunday 6 December — after CLAT
Do not check answer keys. Do not join the post-mortem groups. Do not reconstruct the paper from memory with friends.
This is the single most important instruction in this post. Unofficial answer keys circulating on the evening of the exam are frequently wrong, always incomplete, and psychologically corrosive. There is a formal process for provisional keys and objections, and it will run on its own schedule. Nothing you learn on Sunday evening can change your CLAT score, and a plausible-sounding wrong estimate can cost you the AILET paper.
Eat properly. Sleep.
Monday 7 December — nothing
A genuine day off. No practice, no notes, no discussion of the paper. Leave the house.
Candidates resist this day more than any other part of the plan, and it is the one with the highest return. You are seven days out from an exam you have already prepared for; the constraint is not knowledge.
Tuesday 8 December — format adjustment, part one
Now begin, and begin with AILET's structure rather than its content.
Read the official information brochure end to end. Map the paper: how many sections, how many questions in each, how long, how it is marked. Then work out your time allocation on paper, per section, before you attempt anything. Write it down.
Then attempt one AILET past paper, timed, in the 2:00 to 4:00 PM slot. The point of this attempt is not the score. It is to discover where your CLAT pacing fits badly — which section you over-invested in, where you ran out of time, where you had time you did not use.
Wednesday 9 December — format adjustment, part two
Analyse Tuesday's paper properly: two hours, error categories, the same discipline you have used since August. Then attempt a second past paper in the afternoon slot, applying the timing corrections you identified.
Two papers with real analysis between them is enough to reset pacing. A third adds very little and starts to cost you freshness.
Thursday 10 December — current affairs, warm only
Ninety minutes on your consolidated current affairs notes. Your existing notes, wherever you have kept them: your dashboard, a notebook, or the five-theme system in the CLAT 2027 current affairs guide. No new sources, no new months, no new topics.
Then stop. The rest of the day is light.
Friday 11 December — short sets and logistics
Forty minutes of short timed sets — one passage from each section — purely to keep the machinery warm. Nothing longer.
Then logistics, completely and finally: admit card printed, photo identification checked against the requirements in the brochure, centre located, journey timed on a Friday afternoon rather than assumed. Note that your AILET centre may not be your CLAT centre.
Saturday 12 December — taper
Read your error log once. Read your current affairs summary once. Stop by 6 PM.
Do not attempt a mock. Do not attempt "just a few questions". Sleep at your normal time.
Sunday 13 December — AILET, 2:00 to 4:00 PM
Same discipline as the 6th.
If CLAT went badly
This is the situation the week is really for, and it deserves to be addressed directly rather than in a motivational register.
A bad CLAT feels like the end of the year. It is not. It is one paper, sat by one candidate, on one Sunday. The rational response is narrow and specific.
Do not withdraw from AILET. Every year, candidates who had a poor CLAT talk themselves out of sitting AILET on the reasoning that it will be another failure. This is the most expensive avoidable mistake in the window. AILET is a different paper, a different pool, and a different university. Your CLAT performance carries no information about it. You have already paid the fee and done the preparation; the only cost remaining is a Sunday afternoon.
Do not diagnose from memory. You do not yet know how badly it went. Perceived performance and actual performance diverge sharply immediately after a hard paper, and they diverge in a specific direction: a paper that felt hard to you probably felt hard to everyone, which moves the cutoffs. Judgements formed on Sunday evening are formed on the worst available information.
Do not restructure your preparation. Whatever you conclude went wrong on the 6th, the fix does not fit into six days. Attempting it will damage the 13th without helping anything.
Do keep to the plan above. Monday off. Tuesday and Wednesday on format. Taper into Sunday. The plan is the same whether CLAT went well or badly, which is precisely why it is worth having decided on it in advance.
The wider decisions — whether to consider another cycle, what your score means for your options — belong to January, with real results in hand. We have set out that decision properly in CLAT drop year 2027, and how ranks map onto colleges in which NLUs are realistic at your rank. Neither is a December conversation.
What to do before December
Three things, and all of them belong to October rather than to the last week.
Handle both applications in one sitting. CLAT registration closes 31 October 2026 at consortiumofnlus.ac.in; AILET registration opened 7 August 2026 at nationallawuniversitydelhi.in. Confirm the AILET deadline against the current notification. Doing both together means one document-gathering exercise rather than two.
Read the AILET brochure in October, not in December. If AILET's structure differs from CLAT's in ways that affect your pacing, you want to know that with two months to adjust, not five days.
Slot two AILET past papers into your November mock schedule. The 120-day CLAT 2027 study plan runs twice-weekly full-length mocks through November; make two of them AILET papers. This does most of the format-adjustment work in advance, and turns the December week into a genuine taper rather than a scramble.
If your mock cadence is not yet running, start with a free account and get the November schedule set before October arrives.
Frequently asked questions
How many days are there between CLAT 2027 and AILET 2027? Seven. CLAT 2027 is on Sunday, 6 December 2026 and AILET 2027 is on Sunday, 13 December 2026. Both papers run from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.
Should I take AILET if CLAT goes badly? Yes, and the case is strongest precisely then. AILET is a separate paper for a separate university, sat a week later, and a poor CLAT has no bearing on it. Withdrawing after a bad CLAT is the most common avoidable mistake in this window.
What should I study in the week between CLAT and AILET? Almost nothing new. Take Monday off completely, spend two days adjusting to AILET's format with past papers, keep current affairs warm with your existing consolidated notes, and taper again into the Sunday. Recovery is the binding constraint in that week, not knowledge.
Is AILET only for NLU Delhi? Yes. AILET is conducted by National Law University Delhi for admission to its own programmes. NLU Delhi does not participate in CLAT counselling, so AILET is the only route to it.
When did AILET 2027 registration open? Registration opened on 7 August 2026 at nationallawuniversitydelhi.in, following the notification released on 23 July 2026.