By Sulaksh Editorial Team · Written from the official DU Faculty of Law Sem VIII syllabus (EC 1282) · Reviewed Sept 2026
Ask any senior in the Faculty of Law corridors what CLP-1 really is and you will not hear the word "theory". You will hear something like: yeh woh paper hai jahan tum vakil bante ho — the paper where you stop being a student of law and start behaving like a lawyer. Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing carries the code CLP-1, and after seven semesters of memorising what the law says, it asks a colder question: can you write something a court will accept, a registrar will register, and an opponent cannot tear apart?
I have seen bright students — first-class minds, case-law machines — walk out of this paper with average marks. Not because they didn't know the law, but because they wrote drafts the way they wrote essays. A plaint is not an essay. A bail application is not an essay. The examiner reads your paper the way a senior reads a junior's first draft: red pen out, hunting for the missing verification, the wrong forum, the prayer that asks for everything and therefore gets nothing. This guide is that red pen, applied a month early.
What the syllabus actually demands (seven units, one habit)
DU's Sem VIII syllabus runs like a lawyer's week. It begins with foundations — what drafting, pleading and conveyancing each mean and why pleadings contain facts, never evidence. Then civil pleadings under the CPC (plaints, written statements, injunctions, execution, summary suits), matrimonial and succession pleadings, constitutional pleadings (writs and SLPs), criminal pleadings (bail, complaints, BNSS applications), conveyancing instruments (deeds, agreements, powers of attorney, wills), and finally revision with professional ethics. Different courts, different formats — but one habit underneath: every document must answer four questions before it is filed. Jurisdiction. Limitation. Fees or stamp. Registration, where needed. Tattoo that list on your writing hand. It is worth roughly a third of the paper, scattered across every answer.
Three drafts that failed (and what they teach)
Let me show you how marks actually die, because each of these is a real pattern from answer scripts.
The plaint with no dates. A student drafted a beautiful recovery suit — parties, facts, law, prayer for two lakh rupees. Nowhere did he state when the cause of action arose. No date, no limitation computation, no statement that the suit is in time. In court that plaint invites an Order VII Rule 11 rejection; in the exam it invites a straight cut. Lesson: every plaint opens with dated facts and closes the loop with "the suit is within limitation, filed on…". Dates first, adjectives later.
The bail application that begged. Four pages on the applicant's family, character, and suffering — and one line on the actual grounds. Bail courts decide on flight risk, tampering, gravity of the offence, and parity with co-accused. A bail draft must address each factor by name, cite the correct BNSS provision, and pray specifically: regular, interim, or anticipatory — each with different grounds. Emotion without factors is an essay; factors without emotion is a draft that works. Write the second kind.
The sale deed that forgot the stamp. Perfect recitals, perfect operative clauses, schedules attached — and the question had said the deed was executed on unstamped paper. The student never mentioned it. An unstamped deed cannot be received in evidence for the transaction it records, and the examiner had planted that fact precisely to test whether you check stamping before admiring drafting. Lesson: admire nothing until you have run the four-question check.
Civil pleadings: learn skeletons, not specimens
Students try to memorise twenty model drafts. Seniors memorise five skeletons and hang everything on them. The plaint skeleton: title, cause title, valuation with court fee, dated cause of action, jurisdiction, limitation, relief, verification. The written statement skeleton: traverse each allegation specifically (an evasive denial is treated as admission — examiners love testing exactly this), then add special pleas like limitation, set-off, counter-claim. Injunctions under Order XXXIX, execution petitions, and Order XXXVII summary suits are the same skeleton wearing one different piece of clothing each — learn the single twist per instrument instead of a fresh format per instrument. Then practise the examiner's favourite format: the defective draft. Take a correct plaint, break one thing (wrong forum, time-barred, no verification), and redraft only the broken part. That exercise, repeated ten times, is worth more than reading fifty pages of a drafting manual.
Writs, family matters, and wills: three different temperaments
A writ petition is an exercise in restraint — grounds, maintainability, reliefs, stated so cleanly a judge sees the case in ninety seconds. Maintainability comes first: fundamental right for Article 32, any legal right for 226, and honest treatment of alternative remedy, delay and laches. A writ that hides its maintainability problem fails louder than one that discloses and distinguishes it. Matrimonial and succession work needs the opposite temperament — patience with statutes and people. Hindu marriage petitions, Muslim law of marriage and divorce, guardianship, succession under the Indian Succession Act: build one comparative table (statute, petition, ground, forum, limitation) and stop mixing up grounds across Acts. Wills close the paper's human side — capacity, sound disposing mind, two attesting witnesses, privileged versus unprivileged wills, probate and letters of administration. And the power-of-attorney trap to memorise alongside: authority to transfer immovable property through an unregistered POA fails at the threshold, however elegantly drafted.
A senior's warning about ethics
The final unit on professional ethics is not decoration. Examiners use it to separate technicians from professionals: pleadings must not embarrass, vex, or mislead; verification is a personal oath, not a rubber stamp; and drafting beyond your instructions — inventing facts to strengthen a case — is misconduct, not cleverness. One ethics-flavoured paragraph in a long answer ("the pleading sticks to material facts as instructed, verified by the client") signals the professional standard the syllabus explicitly demands. In a paper about writing like a lawyer, writing ethically like one is the last mark available. Take it.
Your last month with this paper
Weeks one and two: draft two plaints and two written statements from newspaper disputes, one writ skeleton, and the bail trio — regular, anticipatory, cancellation — from a single fact pattern so the differences become reflex. Week three: one conveyancing instrument a day with a fatal-defect table (the one defect per deed that kills it), plus wills and POAs on a comparative page. Final week: timed defective-draft scenarios, every answer ending with the four-question ritual — jurisdiction, limitation, fees, registration. Keep DU's official course-structure PDF open while you work (LLB (Hons) → Semester 1 → Syllabus on Sulaksh); your formats must track the exact units DU prescribed, because the examiner's red pen certainly does.
The verification paragraph: your signature on every draft
Here is a small thing seniors notice in ten seconds: the verification clause. Most students copy it blindly — "verified at Delhi on this date, contents true to my knowledge" — without understanding it is a personal oath with perjury behind it. The examiner tests exactly that understanding. Who verifies? The party, or someone with personal knowledge authorised in writing — not the counsel, not a stranger to the facts. What is verified "on knowledge" versus "on belief and legal advice"? Facts within personal knowledge go on knowledge; everything else goes on belief with sources stated. Get this wrong in a plaint and the whole draft wobbles; get it right and add the date, place, and signature block properly, and the senior marking your paper nods before reading paragraph one. The prayer clause deserves the same reverence: prayers must be specific (recovery of exactly ₹X with interest at Y% from Z date), alternative (in the alternative, any other relief the court deems fit — the line that saves suits), and consistent with the valuation and court fee paid. A prayer for relief the court fee does not cover is a self-inflicted wound. Practise writing five verification blocks and five prayers from memory until the format is spinal. In a paper where format compliance is the majority of marks, these two paragraphs are your signature — literally and figuratively.
Questions students actually ask
Is CLP-1 really different from theory papers? Completely. Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient — format compliance, provision numbers, and the four-question check carry most marks. Draft daily; reading about drafting is like reading about swimming.
Which book should I follow? Any standard drafting manual for formats, but your primary text is the CPC/BNSS/Constitution provisions themselves plus DU's syllabus units. Examiners mark from the syllabus, not from any author's model drafts.
Where is the official syllabus? The full DU course-structure PDF is filed under DU & College → Others → LLB (Hons) → Semester 1 → Syllabus on Sulaksh. PYQs for LLB papers live under All PYQs as they arrive.