Law Optional Pros And Cons – For IAS Main Examination.

Law is one of the optional subjects that the UPSC offers its candidates in the IAS mains exam. It is sometimes seen as an unpopular optional but this is far from true.Continue Reading Law Optional Pros And Cons – For IAS Main Examination.

Many candidates take up this optional and it also has a very high success rate. It is perhaps because of this that even non-law graduates now opt for the law optional in the mains exam.

Advantages of Law Optional

• Law is a very basic thing. Everybody (and especially if you are preparing for UPSC) has some understanding of the fundamentals of law, like what is right, what is wrong, etc.
• UPSC doesn’t expect you to be experts in law. You don’t need to be a law graduate to opt for the law optional in the IAS mains.
• It is a scoring subject.
• It is interesting and you can learn a lot about law by reading newspapers and following cases in the news.
• The two papers are application-based and so you don’t have to do a lot of mugging up.
• There is a lot of overlap with the General Studies paper, especially in polity and constitution.
• Topics like governance issues, RTI, citizen-official interface, the exercise of discretion, the relationship between organs of state, etc. have significance for the GS papers.
• The UPSC syllabus for law optional is limited and can be covered in a relatively short time.
• Many social and economic issues should be viewed from the legal angle as well and law students find this easy. So, studying law helps in general studies, essay paper, ethics paper and also in the IAS interview.
• The questions are predictable and have been repeated too.
• UPSC avoids tough portions of the law like taxation laws and FEMA.

Disadvantages of the Law Optional

• Sometimes the vocabulary used in law may seem alien and archaic.
• For non-law graduates, while it is not impossible to crack the subject, coaching might be needed.
• In this subject, the answers are highly specific and you have to use legal terminology. So, if you don’t know anything about a particular question, you cannot hope to get marks for mere attempting.

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