LAW-GAT common mistakes
LAW-GAT · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Treating the Pakistan Bar Council's role as purely advisory and answering that bar councils merely recommend standards to universities, instead of identifying the PBC's statutory functions of recognising law degrees, prescribing the LL.B. curriculum, and enrolling advocates under the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973.
Candidates study professional regulation from general impressions or social media commentary and never read the Act's sections on the Council's powers, so they confuse the PBC with the Higher Education Commission or with the judiciary.
What to do instead
Make a one-page table of the PBC's statutory functions drawn from the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973 (recognition of degrees, curriculum prescription, enrolment, discipline) and place each function beside the body that does not perform it (HEC, provincial bar councils, Supreme Court). Test yourself by asking 'who does this?' for each function until the mapping is automatic.
Answering questions about enrolment and disciplinary procedure by describing the Supreme Court's role, or by conflating the Pakistan Bar Council with a Provincial Bar Council, when the question turns on which body enrols advocates or hears a professional misconduct complaint at first instance.
The layered structure (PBC above, Provincial Bar Councils below, tribunals for discipline) is easy to blur, and candidates memorise the names without the allocation of powers.
What to do instead
Draw the hierarchy as a diagram with arrows labelled 'enrols', 'hears appeal', 'frames rules'. For each level write one concrete scenario (e.g., an advocate struck off by a Provincial Bar Council) and trace the route of appeal. Practise five such scenario traces before the exam.
On constitutional questions, reciting the article number without stating what the article actually does, or citing an article for the wrong subject (for example, using Article 199 for a constitutional petition when the question concerns the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, or mixing up the fundamental rights chapter with the directive principles).
Candidates memorise article numbers from summaries and never anchor them to the text, so numbers float free of content and are easily swapped under time pressure.
What to do instead
Build a two-column list: article number on the left, a one-sentence paraphrase in your own words on the right, grouped by chapter (Fundamental Rights, Principles of Policy, Judicature). For every article you learn, write one hypothetical that would invoke it. If you cannot write the hypothetical, you do not know the article.
Writing contract answers that identify an offer and acceptance but never test consideration, intention to create legal relations, or capacity, and then concluding a valid contract exists without addressing whether a term is enforceable or whether a remedy is available.
Candidates learn formation as a checklist of offer and acceptance and stop there, because that is the part most often repeated in revision notes, while the later elements feel less examinable.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed sequence for every contract problem: offer, acceptance, consideration, intention, capacity, formalities, terms, vitiating factors, breach, remedy. Write the headings down before you write prose, and fill each heading even if only to say it is satisfied. Mark yourself against the sequence, not against whether the answer 'sounds right'.
In tort problems, naming a tort (negligence, nuisance, defamation) and then asserting liability without establishing each element: for negligence, failing to show duty, breach, causation, and damage separately, and failing to discuss remoteness and defences.
The instinct is to reach the conclusion quickly, and candidates treat the elements as obvious rather than as things that must be proved and argued on the facts given.
What to do instead
For each tort, write a skeleton with one line per element and a blank for the fact that proves it. In practice answers, apply each element to a named fact from the question ('the duty arose because...; breach because a reasonable person would have...'). If an element has no supporting fact, say so and discuss the gap.
In criminal law questions, confusing the ingredients of an offence with defences, or with the standard of proof, so that an answer on murder drifts into a discussion of insanity or grave and sudden provocation as if they were elements of the offence rather than partial or complete defences.
Textbook chapters place offences and defences side by side, and candidates revise them as one block without separating what the prosecution must prove from what the accused must raise.
What to do instead
For every offence, write two boxes: 'prosecution must prove' and 'defence may raise'. Keep the burden of proof written at the top of the page. In practice, structure answers as actus reus, mens rea, then defences, and never let a defence appear before the elements are established.
In criminal procedure, describing investigation and trial as a single undifferentiated process, and giving a timeline that ignores the statutory sequence of FIR, investigation, charge, trial, and appeal, or the limits on police powers such as remand and the rights of an arrested person.
Procedure is learned as narrative rather than as a chain of stages with documents and time limits attached, so the order collapses when a question asks what happens next.
What to do instead
Draw a flow chart of the criminal process from complaint to appeal, and beside each arrow write the document or order that moves the case forward (FIR, challan, charge, judgment). Add the time limits and the safeguards at each stage. Rehearse by taking a fact pattern and stating which stage it is at and what the next lawful step is.
In evidence and civil procedure, answering relevance questions by quoting the definition of 'relevant fact' without applying the exclusionary rules, or discussing admissibility of a confession or an electronic record without stating the statutory provision and its conditions.
Definitions are easier to memorise than the exclusionary rules, and candidates hope a definition will carry the marks; they also avoid provisions whose conditions they have not learned.
What to do instead
For each rule of admissibility you revise, write the provision, its conditions, and one example of evidence it excludes. Pair every definition with a fact pattern in which it decides the outcome. Practise stating the section number and then the condition in the same sentence.
In family law and Islamic personal law, giving a single uniform answer to a question that depends on which school of law or which statute applies, or applying the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act to a question that turns on talaq, khula, or the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, without identifying the governing provision first.
Candidates revise family law as a list of topics rather than as a set of distinct sources, and they do not notice that the same word (divorce, maintenance, guardianship) carries different rules depending on source and school.
What to do instead
Before answering any family law question, write one line identifying the applicable source (statute, school, or general law) and why. Build a matrix with topics as rows and sources as columns (MFLO, DMMA, Guardians and Wards Act, classical Hanafi rules) and fill the rule in each cell. If the question is silent, discuss the alternatives rather than choosing silently.
In Islamic jurisprudence, treating usul al-fiqh sources as a list to be named (Quran, Sunnah, ijma, qiyas) without explaining how each operates, and failing to distinguish primary from secondary sources or to show how a rule is derived in a worked example.
The sources are learned as vocabulary because the names are familiar, while the method of derivation requires practice that candidates skip.
What to do instead
For each source, write what it is, its authority, its conditions of validity, and one worked derivation of a rule from it. Then take a modern issue and write a short derivation using two sources in sequence. Marks come from showing the method, not from listing the names.
In legal reasoning questions, writing a conclusion first and then arranging the facts to support it, or ignoring the counter-argument and the strongest authority against the position taken, so the answer reads as advocacy rather than analysis.
Under time pressure the instinct is to commit to an answer and defend it, and candidates fear that discussing the other side will look like indecision.
What to do instead
Use an IRAC-style structure with a mandatory counter-argument paragraph: issue, rule, application, counter-position with the best authority for it, then a reasoned resolution stating which side is stronger and why. Practise on past-style fact patterns and mark yourself on whether the counter-argument is genuinely the strongest one available.