Significance Of Internships In Shaping Careers Of Lawyers

The young minds are required to nurture their nurture and amplify their potential of every field. Therefore, the legal sector requires proficient individuals who comprehend the Indian law structure well in which legal internships play a crucial role. 

In answering what personality the legal field expects from youth to become, Pramod Dubey, Senior Advocate said, “You can't expect a good personality from a student who just entered into the law college; rather you have to develop and nurture. And this is a joint effort of the institution where they study and where they do internships. You can't put the entire burden of the institution on the lawyers, by saying that he is looking for a particular personality.”

As far as the internship is concerned, Dubey emphasised that there is a difference between internship, law-researcher and judicial clerks. 

Talking about the recent trend in the Indian internship pattern,  Mayank, CEO, JRTC Intern said that we do not expect anything from interns in any Indian organisation because we think they are at the initial stage of their life. We think that they need to understand how their life would be five years down the line when they will be in the same position.

Mayank also mentioned that workshops can be game changers in order to make the interns understand the core of the fields.

Talking from the students’ perspective, Pallavi Pratap, Managing Partner, Pratap & Co informed from her personal experience that students come for internship in order to learn but with some terms and conditions.

She accepted that there is a gap in how much legal mentors should contribute towards making interns learn efficiently. 

Representing his firm, Vaibhav Kakkar, Senior Partner, Saraf and Partners said, “I'm from the first batch of National Law University (NLU) Jodhpur, and nobody knew about National Law University until I did my internship and got a placement offer from Luthra. We look at the internship programme very, very seriously. We are looking at almost the top 10 law schools we take interns from them, pay them a good stipend and look after them. Typically interns are assigned to specific teams. They're expected to make a presentation at the end of the internship.” 

Kakkar reasoned that interviews cannot identify what a student is, hence, internships help them to know the student more deeply. 

Pointing out the current expectation from young interns, Pranav Mehra, Director – Legal, Freshworks said that the interns these days are seeing the last leg and desiring such work-life balance though they are aware of the struggles those senior people have to reach that point of their work stature. 

The internship is a deep learning process that needs both hands to work on, the mentor and intern both have to come forward a step ahead to learn and teach. So that interns will be good professionals in their further careers and mentor will have one more skilled individual in their workforce.