After the second generation reforms of Legal Education, 1st National Law University namely, National Law School of India University was established at Bangalore in 1987.It took more than 10 years for the second National Law University, i.e , NALSAR (National Academy of Legal Studies and Research) at Hyderabad to come up in 1998.Then different States established NLUs. NLUs are islands of excellence created under State Statutes with Chief Justice of India or Chief Justice of respective High Court as Chancellor. (RMLNLU, Lucknow and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Law University Rai, Haryana are exceptions where The Chief Minister and Governor are Chancellors respectively).

NLUs were created on the pattern of IIMs and IITs. NLUs have changed the face of legal education in India. Infact, India, is the only country in the world which has Universities for legal discipline alone. Today, we have 23 NLUs out of which 22 are admitting students through Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) (National Law University, Delhi having its own separate test).From 1987 to 2007, there were only seven NLUs each having its own test.

In 2006, a PIL was filed in the Supreme Court of India by a parent for Common Test (CWP 68 of 2006 decided on Nov 23, 2007-Varun Bhagat v. Union of India) for conducting a single test for admission to all the NLU’s.

In 2008, seven NLUs signed MoU to hold CLAT in presence of Secretary MHRD and UGC representative.

First CLAT was conducted in 2008, which was MCQ based and offline. This continued till2014 as such without any major glitches. In 2015,a revised MoU was signed to include other seven NLUs within the ambit of CLAT and CLAT went online.

In 2015, the seeds of CLAT Consortium were sown and participating NLU’s deliberated to found Consortium in the larger interest.

In 2015, a PIL was filed by Shamnad Bashir (CWP 600 of 2015) in which it was emphasised that there should be a permanent secretariat with a permanent body to look into the CLAT.

In 2018, another CWP 551 of 2018 was filed by Disha Panchal v Union of India. In this case, direction was issued to MHRD to look into the conduct of CLAT so as to conduct in just and fair manner.

On 17.10.2018, a permanent CLAT Secretariat was established at Bangalore. In 2018, Consortium also decided to conduct the test offline again. Earlier the test was being conducted by the University by rotation and now it has been decided that it will be conducted by EC of Consortium.

The Consortium became the legal entity when it was registered at Bangalore under the Karnataka Co-operative Society Act, of 26-03-2019 in which 16 NLU’s signed and became the founding members of the Consortium. The remaining NLU’s (except National Law University, Delhi) subsequently joined the Consortium. It has three permanent member, i.e., National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, National Law Institute (NLIU), Bhopal.

The General Council of the Consortium every year elects Presidents, Vice-President and Convener for conducting the CLAT. The Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU, Bangalore is Ex-officio Secretary of the Consortium. The main objective of the Consortium is not only to conduct admission test CLAT for graduate and post-graduate programmes of the participating Universities but also to promote quality legal education in all the member institutions.