Corporate Law Firm Internship: What the Work Is Like

A corporate law firm internship in India is mostly research, due diligence and drafting, done at a desk, to deadlines set by associates you may barely meet. Published accounts of the large firms describe exactly this, with the balance differing by firm and by the team you are put in, and with some clerical work included almost everywhere.

It is office work rather than court work. If you are deciding between a chamber and a corporate firm, that difference matters more than the brand on the door.

What the work consists of

Research

The largest part of most corporate internships. You are given a question, often narrow and without much background, and asked for a note. The answer wanted is short, sourced and clear about its own limits: the provision, the position, the authority for it, and what remains uncertain.

Accounts of internships at firms including Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Luthra and Luthra describe research as the dominant task, so a student who cannot write a tight note will struggle regardless of their marks.

Due diligence

Due diligence is the exercise of examining a company’s documents before a transaction, to find what might affect the deal. As an intern you will typically be given a data room folder and a checklist, and asked to go through a category of documents and record what you find.

In practice that means reading leases, employment agreements, licences, loan documents or litigation records, and noting dates, parties, obligations, termination rights, change of control clauses and anything that looks irregular. The work is repetitive and it is also where mistakes are expensive, because a missed clause in a lease becomes a problem for the client months later. Trilegal’s internships are described as combining research with due diligence of this kind.

Drafting and document review

Interns are rarely given a contract to draft from scratch. You are more likely to be marking up a standard form, comparing two versions of an agreement, preparing a schedule or an annexure, or putting together the first cut of a compliance checklist. The skill being tested is care rather than creativity.

Clerical work

Formatting, compiling, scanning, proof reading, collating signature pages. Published accounts of several large firms mention clerical tasks explicitly, including Luthra and Luthra and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. Interns who treat it as beneath them are noticed, and not favourably.

How assignments reach you

Usually from an associate rather than a partner, often by email or a message, often with less context than you would like. You are expected to ask for the context you need and then not ask again.

How much work you get depends on how the first assignments go. At some firms the workload is openly described as performance linked: do well and more arrives, do poorly and the flow quietly stops. An intern sitting idle for three days is usually not being rested.

What they are judging

• Whether the deadline is met. Late is the fault that is remembered.
• Whether the answer is correct and checked. Citations must be real and current.
• Whether it is readable. A note that needs rewriting has not saved anyone time.
• Whether you flag what you are unsure about rather than papering over it.
• Whether you are easy to work with. Interns are in a room with other people’s deadlines.

At some firms the assessment is formalised before you even arrive: Trilegal applicants have been asked to complete legal assessments requiring research and a view on the likely outcome.

Hours

Longer and less predictable than a nine to five, particularly when a transaction is closing. Published accounts describe demanding deadlines rather than fixed hours, and the honest position is that it varies by firm, by team and by what is live that week. Expect to stay late sometimes and to have quiet days too.

How to prepare

• Know the Companies Act 2013 and the Indian Contract Act 1872 well enough to find your way around them quickly.
• Be able to use a legal database properly, including searching by section and tracing whether a judgment is still good law.
• Learn your word processor. Styles, tracked changes, comparing two documents, generating a table of contents. This sounds trivial and it will save you hours.
• Practise the research note format before you arrive: question, short answer, reasoning, authorities, caveats.

Which team you land in matters more than the firm

Large firms are divided into practice areas, and your experience is shaped far more by the team you are placed with than by the firm’s name. Published accounts of AZB and Partners describe work usually falling within the practice area the intern chose, while accounts of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas describe the work as depending on the team. At Trilegal, assignments may come from any practice area.

Where a firm asks for a preference, give one and give a reason for it. Where it does not, ask on the first day who you are sitting with and what that team does. An intern who knows whether they are in general corporate, banking, disputes or competition can ask sensible questions. An intern who does not spends the month confused about why the work looks nothing like what they expected.

What to do when there is no work

Quiet stretches happen, particularly in the first week and after a transaction closes. The wrong response is to sit and wait visibly, and the other wrong response is to message four associates at once.

Ask the person who gave you your last assignment whether anything else is coming. If not, read: the firm’s published client updates, the statute underlying the matter you just worked on, or the documents in the folder you were given that you were not asked to review. Interns who use quiet time on the subject matter are noticeably better by the end of the month, and it is usually obvious to the people around them.

Stipends and what to ask

Practice varies widely and some firms link the stipend to the quality of the work. Rather than relying on figures you read on a forum, ask the firm directly once you have an offer, since the answer differs by firm, by city and by year.

Is it the right internship for you

If you want to see how transactions are built, how risk is written into a contract, and how large organisations are advised, this is the internship to do. If what draws you to law is argument, facts and courtrooms, do a litigation internship first and come to corporate work with something to compare it against. Most students benefit from trying both before their final year, and the four week cap on any single placement under the Bar Council rules makes alternating entirely practical.