Everyone in CLAT preparation is now talking about LSAT style questions, because the Expert Committee that reviewed CLAT was asked to benchmark it against the LSAT and the LNAT. Almost nobody is showing you what those questions actually look like. This post is fifteen of them — written from scratch, with answer keys, full explanations, and a note on each item explaining what a typical current CLAT question would have done differently.
Before you start: the CLAT 2027 pattern is unchanged. Five sections, 120 questions, 120 minutes, +1 and −0.25. What is changing, per the Governing Body's 18 July 2026 resolution, is question format and quality within that structure. We have explained the full context in CLAT 2027 pattern change — not the structure, the questions.
The one thing to take away: In this format the correct answer is almost never a sentence you can find; it is a conclusion you have to build, usually in words the passage never used.
How to use this set: attempt all fifteen with a timer — 25 minutes total — before reading a single explanation. Then read every explanation, including for the ones you got right, because on inference questions being right for the wrong reason is a common and invisible failure.
Part 1 — Legal Reasoning (Questions 1–6)
Passage A
An employer is liable for a wrong committed by an employee if the wrong was committed in the course of the employee's employment. A wrong is committed in the course of employment where the employee was performing an act authorised by the employer, or performing an authorised act in an unauthorised manner. An employer is not liable where the employee, at the time of the wrong, had departed from the employer's business to pursue a purpose of their own; in such a case the employee is said to be on a frolic. A departure does not amount to a frolic merely because the employee's conduct was prohibited, provided the conduct was a means of carrying out the employer's business.
Deshpande Logistics employs Farhan as a delivery driver. Farhan is instructed to deliver crates along a fixed route and is expressly forbidden from carrying passengers. On Tuesday, Farhan picks up his cousin, who is walking along the delivery route, and continues the deliveries with his cousin in the cabin. While taking a turn on the route, Farhan drives carelessly and injures a pedestrian.
Q1. Is Deshpande Logistics liable to the pedestrian?
(a) No, because Farhan was expressly forbidden from carrying passengers, and a prohibited act cannot be in the course of employment. (b) Yes, because Farhan was performing his delivery duties, and the prohibition did not convert the deliveries into a purpose of his own. (c) No, because Farhan's decision to pick up his cousin was a departure from the employer's business. (d) Yes, because an employer is liable for all injuries caused by an employee during working hours.
Q2. Suppose instead that Farhan, after completing the last delivery, drove eleven kilometres away from the route to drop his cousin home and injured the pedestrian on that stretch. Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the pedestrian's claim against Deshpande Logistics?
(a) Farhan had made similar detours on three previous occasions. (b) The eleven-kilometre stretch was the only route by which Farhan could return the vehicle to the company depot. (c) Deshpande Logistics had never enforced its rule against carrying passengers. (d) Farhan remained in uniform and was driving a vehicle bearing the company's name.
Q3. The passage's treatment of prohibited conduct depends on which of the following assumptions?
(a) Employers cannot foresee every manner in which an employee may perform an authorised task. (b) An employer's instructions can determine how an employee performs a task without determining what task the employee is performing. (c) Employees who disobey instructions are more likely to cause harm than employees who obey them. (d) A prohibition is legally effective only if the employer enforces it consistently.
Passage B
A public authority may restrict the circulation of a publication only where the restriction is imposed by a law, pursues a legitimate aim, and is proportionate to that aim. A restriction is proportionate where it is suitable to achieve the aim, where no less intrusive measure would achieve the aim to a comparable degree, and where the burden it imposes is not excessive relative to the benefit secured. The absence of any one of these three conditions renders the restriction disproportionate, and the burden of establishing each condition lies on the authority.
Q4. A municipal authority, acting under a validly enacted statute, bans the distribution of a pamphlet throughout a district in order to prevent disorder at a single market square where the pamphlet had provoked altercations. Which of the following most accurately describes the position?
(a) The restriction is proportionate, because preventing disorder is a legitimate aim and the ban is suitable to achieve it. (b) The restriction is disproportionate, because a ban confined to the market square would achieve the aim to a comparable degree. (c) The restriction is proportionate, because the authority need only show that the measure is suitable. (d) The restriction is disproportionate, because preventing disorder is not a legitimate aim under the passage.
Q5. Which of the following, if established by the authority, would do the least to support the lawfulness of a restriction under the passage?
(a) That no narrower measure was available. (b) That the restriction was imposed under a statute in force at the relevant time. (c) That the restriction has in fact succeeded in reducing disorder. (d) That the harm prevented substantially exceeds the burden imposed.
Q6. A court finds that a restriction pursued a legitimate aim and that no less intrusive measure existed, but makes no finding on whether the burden was excessive relative to the benefit. On the passage, what follows?
(a) The restriction is proportionate, because two of three conditions are satisfied. (b) The restriction is disproportionate, because the authority has not established every condition. (c) The restriction is proportionate, because the burden of proof has shifted to the challenger. (d) Nothing follows, because proportionality is a matter of degree.
Part 2 — Logical Reasoning (Questions 7–11)
Q7. A city introduced a congestion charge for vehicles entering the central business district on weekdays. In the year following, average traffic speeds in the district rose by nineteen per cent. The transport department concluded that the charge had reduced the number of vehicles entering the district.
The department's conclusion depends on which of the following assumptions?
(a) The congestion charge was the only transport policy introduced that year. (b) Higher average traffic speeds in the district were not produced principally by something other than a reduction in vehicle numbers. (c) Drivers who stopped entering the district switched to public transport. (d) Nineteen per cent is a large increase by international standards.
Q8. A hospital administrator argues: "Our new triage protocol must be working. Since we introduced it, the average waiting time in the emergency department has fallen from ninety minutes to fifty-five."
Which of the following, if true, most weakens the administrator's argument?
(a) Some staff report that the protocol is difficult to apply during night shifts. (b) A second emergency department opened nearby in the same month, and now handles roughly a third of the cases the hospital previously received. (c) The hospital's average waiting time remains higher than the national average. (d) Waiting times in the outpatient department have not changed.
Q9. Every member of the drafting committee who attended the November sitting voted for the amendment. Kavya voted against the amendment. All committee members who voted against the amendment submitted written dissents.
Which of the following must be true?
(a) Kavya is not a member of the drafting committee. (b) Kavya did not attend the November sitting. (c) Everyone who submitted a written dissent voted against the amendment. (d) No member who attended the November sitting submitted a written dissent.
Q10. A columnist writes: "Critics of the new labour code claim it will reduce job security. But these critics are funded by trade unions, whose institutional interest is in opposing any reform of labour regulation. Their claim can therefore be dismissed."
The reasoning in the columnist's argument is most vulnerable to the criticism that it
(a) assumes without justification that trade unions have institutional interests. (b) treats the source of a claim as determinative of the claim's truth. (c) fails to specify which provisions of the labour code the critics object to. (d) relies on an unrepresentative sample of critics.
Q11. Principle: A person should not be blamed for an outcome unless they could reasonably have foreseen it and had a practicable means of avoiding it.
Which of the following judgements conforms most closely to the principle?
(a) Rhea is not to blame for the collapse of the shelf, because although she knew it was overloaded, removing the items would have taken an hour. (b) Tarun is to blame for the spoiled shipment, because the refrigeration unit's warning light had been flashing for two days and a replacement unit was available on site. (c) Meera is to blame for missing the deadline, because the courier's delay was unprecedented and no alternative courier operated in the region. (d) Vikram is not to blame for the accounting error, because although he had been trained to check the figures and had time to do so, he was distracted.
Part 3 — English Language (Questions 12–15)
Passage C
The most persistent misconception about translation is that it is a species of transfer — that meaning sits in the source text like water in a jug and the translator's task is to decant it without spillage. Translators know better. A word carries not only a denotation but a history of use, a register, a set of neighbouring words it habitually keeps company with, and a silence around what it declines to say. None of these survives the crossing intact.
What the good translator does, then, is not transfer but reconstruction: they build, in the second language, a machine that produces on its readers an effect comparable to the one the original produced on its own. This is why the most literal translations are frequently the least faithful. A rendering that preserves every word and loses the joke has preserved the wrong thing.
It follows that there is no such thing as the definitive translation, and that the periodic retranslation of major works is not a commercial contrivance but a structural necessity. The second language does not stand still. A translation calibrated to the ear of 1950 will, by 2030, be producing an effect its translator never intended and would not have endorsed.
Q12. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(a) demonstrate that literal translations are always inferior to free ones. (b) argue that translation is better understood as reconstruction than as transfer, and to draw a consequence from that. (c) explain why publishers commission new translations of works already translated. (d) criticise translators who prioritise fidelity to individual words.
Q13. It can be inferred from the passage that the author would most likely agree that
(a) a translation may become less faithful over time without a single word of it being altered. (b) translators of humorous works face difficulties that translators of technical works do not. (c) the denotation of a word is the least important of its properties. (d) no translation produced before 1950 remains worth reading.
Q14. The author's remark that a rendering "that preserves every word and loses the joke has preserved the wrong thing" functions primarily to
(a) concede a limitation of the reconstruction model. (b) illustrate why literalness and faithfulness can come apart. (c) introduce a counterexample to the transfer model that the author will later refute. (d) establish that humour is untranslatable.
Passage D
Municipal noise regulation is unusual among environmental controls in that the harm it addresses is almost entirely subjective in its measurement and almost entirely objective in its effects. Decibel thresholds are set by reference to what a hypothetical reasonable resident would find intolerable — a standard that varies by neighbourhood, by hour, and by the political weight of the complainant. Yet the physiological consequences of chronic exposure, on sleep architecture and cardiovascular load, are indifferent to whether anyone found the noise objectionable.
Q15. In the context of the passage, the word "indifferent" most nearly means
(a) unenthusiastic. (b) unaffected by. (c) impartial between. (d) mediocre.
Answer key
Explanations
Q1 — (b)
The final sentence of the principle is the whole question: a departure does not amount to a frolic merely because the conduct was prohibited, provided the conduct was a means of carrying out the employer's business. Farhan was doing the deliveries. Carrying his cousin was an unauthorised manner of doing an authorised act, which the principle expressly covers.
(a) is the trap, and it is the option a candidate reasoning from general intuition picks. It states a rule the passage specifically negates. (d) overstates the principle into something the passage never says.
What changed: a current CLAT item would typically test the first limb — "authorised act in an unauthorised manner" — where the answer maps directly onto a phrase. This item requires you to notice that a later sentence carves back a limitation you might otherwise have applied.
Q2 — (b)
You are strengthening, so you need a fact that pulls the eleven-kilometre stretch back inside the employer's business. (b) does exactly that: if the detour route was the only way back to the depot, the driving was itself a means of carrying out the employer's business rather than a purpose of Farhan's own.
(a) establishes a pattern of frolics, not their absence. (c) attacks the prohibition — but Q1 established that the prohibition is not what decides this. (d) is the most attractive wrong answer: uniform and livery look like employment but the principle nowhere makes appearance relevant.
What changed: strengthen and weaken questions applied to a legal principle are common on the LNAT and rare in CLAT Legal Reasoning, which mostly asks for direct application.
Q3 — (b)
An assumption question. The passage's position — prohibited conduct can still be in the course of employment — only coheres if you can separate the task from the manner of performing it. If an instruction about manner also redefined the task, then breaching the instruction would place the employee outside the task, and the rule would collapse.
(a) is true of the world and sounds relevant, but the argument does not need it. (c) and (d) are irrelevant to what the passage claims.
What changed: this type barely exists in current CLAT material. It asks about the structure of the rule rather than its application to facts.
Q4 — (b)
Three conditions; failing any one is fatal. The aim is legitimate and the ban is suitable, but a ban confined to the market square is less intrusive and would achieve the aim comparably — so the necessity limb fails.
(a) and (c) each stop at suitability, which is only the first of three. (d) misstates the passage.
Q5 — (c)
The trap is that (c) sounds like the strongest possible support: it worked. But the passage's test is prospective and structural — imposed by law, legitimate aim, suitable, necessary, not excessive. Actual success is not one of the listed conditions. (a), (b) and (d) each map onto a stated condition.
What changed: the question rewards a candidate who treats the rule as exhaustive rather than importing a common-sense factor. This is exactly the discipline that tightly drafted principles are designed to test.
Q6 — (b)
The burden of establishing each condition lies on the authority. An unestablished condition is a failed condition. (c) inverts the burden the passage assigns; (a) treats the conditions as a scorecard when the passage makes them cumulative.
Q7 — (b)
Negate it and the argument dies: if higher speeds were principally produced by something else — resurfaced roads, retimed signals, a new bypass — the conclusion about vehicle numbers loses its support. That is the test for an assumption.
(a) is too strong; the argument needs only that no other cause principally explains it, not that no other policy existed. (c) is about where the drivers went, which the conclusion never claims. (d) is irrelevant.
What changed: CLAT currently tests conclusions and inferences far more often than assumptions. Note the negation test — it is the single most reliable technique for this type and most CLAT candidates have never been taught it.
Q8 — (b)
An alternative explanation for the same data. If a third of the caseload moved elsewhere, waiting times would fall whether or not the protocol works.
(a) is a minor implementation complaint, not a rival explanation. (c) concerns the level, not the change. (d) is irrelevant.
Q9 — (b)
Formal inference. All November attendees voted for the amendment. Kavya voted against. So Kavya did not attend.
(a) does not follow — she may be a member who missed the sitting. (c) reverses the conditional. (d) is unsupported: a member who dissented may simply have been absent.
What changed: CLAT Logical Reasoning is heavily weighted toward argument-based items. Strict "must be true" deduction with a reversal trap in the options is closer to LSAT practice.
Q10 — (b)
The columnist infers falsity from funding. Even an interested party can be right; the funding bears on credibility, not truth. This is the classic ad hominem circumstantial.
(a) misidentifies the flaw — the columnist's claim about union interests is plausible and is not the problem. (c) and (d) describe deficiencies that are not the reasoning error.
Q11 — (b)
The principle requires both foreseeability and a practicable means of avoidance for blame to attach. In (b) both are present: two days of warning, a replacement on site.
(a) invents a threshold the principle does not contain — an hour's work is practicable. (c) reaches blame where the outcome was unforeseeable and unavoidable. (d) withholds blame where both conditions are satisfied; distraction is not an exception the principle recognises.
Q12 — (b)
The passage argues for reconstruction over transfer, then derives a consequence — retranslation is structurally necessary. (b) captures both halves.
(c) captures only the consequence and drops the argument. (a) overstates: the author says literal translations are frequently the least faithful, not always. (d) mistakes an illustration for the thesis.
What changed: the wrong options here are not false. They are true statements about parts of the passage. The question is about scope and structure, not accuracy — and that is where main-point questions get hard.
Q13 — (a)
The last paragraph does the work: the second language does not stand still, so a translation calibrated to a 1950 ear produces, by 2030, an effect its translator never intended. Fidelity is defined by effect, effect drifts, the text does not. The word "unaltered" appears nowhere; you have to construct it.
(b) is plausible in the world but the passage compares literal with faithful, not humour with technical writing. (c) overreads "not only a denotation". (d) is far beyond anything claimed.
Q14 — (b)
A function question. The remark sits immediately after the reconstruction claim and demonstrates the gap between word-level preservation and effect-level fidelity.
(a) misreads it as a concession. (c) invents a structure the passage does not have. (d) is a conclusion the sentence does not support.
Q15 — (b)
Vocabulary in context. The physiological consequences are unaffected by whether anyone objected. The sentence contrasts subjective measurement with objective effect.
(a) and (d) are common meanings of "indifferent" that do not fit. (c) fits the grammar and is the strongest distractor — but "impartial between" needs two things to be impartial between, and the sentence offers a single question of whether anyone objected.
What this set should tell you
Score yourself and then look at the shape of your errors rather than the total.
Missed Q3, Q7 or Q11? Assumption and principle-conformity are the two types least represented in Indian preparation material. Build the habit deliberately: for any argument, state the conclusion, state the evidence, and name what has to be true to get from one to the other.
Missed Q5 or Q6? You are importing outside reasoning into a closed rule. In a well-drafted Legal Reasoning item the principle is exhaustive, and anything sensible that it does not say is a trap.
Missed Q12, Q13 or Q14? You are reading for content rather than for argument. Every wrong option in Passage C is factually consistent with the passage. Scanning cannot separate them.
Scored well across the board? Then the reform is good news for you specifically, because it widens the gap between candidates who comprehend and candidates who locate.
The paper on 6 December 2026 will not be an LSAT. It will be CLAT, with the same five sections, and with items written by setters who have been told to raise the standard. The way to prepare for that is not to abandon your current practice — it is to add this layer of difficulty on top of it. Our full-length CLAT mocks mix conventional and inference-heavy items so the difference shows up in your section analytics rather than on exam day, and the 120-day plan from 8 August to 6 December sequences when to introduce them.
If you want more of these before you commit to anything, start with the free CLAT mock test.
Frequently asked questions
Are LSAT style questions coming to CLAT 2027? Not as a structural change. The Consortium's Governing Body froze the CLAT 2027 pattern and syllabus on 18 July 2026. But it also directed the Convenor and paper setters to adopt the Expert Committee Report's suggestions on question format and quality in a feasible manner, and that Committee's remit included benchmarking CLAT against the LSAT and LNAT. So expect the style of thinking to shift within the existing structure.
What is the main difference between an LSAT-style question and a current CLAT question? Where the answer lives. A typical current CLAT item has an answer that appears in the passage in recognisable form, so scanning works. An LSAT-style item has an answer that must be constructed from the passage, usually in vocabulary the passage never uses — while the wrong options often quote the passage accurately but answer a different question.
What is an assumption question and why does it matter? An assumption question asks what unstated proposition the argument depends on — the gap the author stepped over without acknowledging it. It matters because it is a workhorse type on both the LSAT and the LNAT and is nearly absent from current CLAT practice material, so most candidates have never trained the habit.
Should I stop practising current CLAT question banks? No. CLAT 2027 is the same paper with the same sections and weightings, so your existing practice remains directly relevant. Add inference and assumption work on top rather than replacing what you are doing.
How many of these questions should I expect to get right the first time? Most well-prepared candidates score between 8 and 11 out of 15 on a first attempt, with the assumption and inference items causing the most damage. Treat a low score as diagnostic rather than discouraging — the failure pattern tells you which habit to rebuild.