Litigation Internship Under an Advocate: The Real Work

A litigation internship under an advocate means early mornings at court, a great deal of reading, running between filing counters and court rooms, and drafting that gets heavily corrected. You will not argue anything. What you will get, if you are useful, is a view of how a matter actually moves from a client’s problem to an order, which no classroom teaches.

What a day usually looks like

Court hours set the day. Most courts sit from the morning until the afternoon with a lunch break, so the chamber’s rhythm is built around being in court in the morning and doing the paperwork afterwards.

A typical day for an intern runs something like this. You reach the chamber or the court before the advocate. You carry the files for the day’s board and keep them in order. You sit through the matters, note what the judge said and what the next date is. After the board rises you go back to the chamber, where the research and drafting of the afternoon is set. Somewhere in there you will be sent to a filing counter, a copying section or another court.

Listing is unpredictable. A matter may be reached at eleven or not at all, and days get rearranged without notice. Interns who treat this as disorganisation misunderstand it, and interns who learn to read a cause list become useful within a week.

The work you will actually be given

Reading the file

The first task in most chambers is to read a brief and summarise it. This is not a make work exercise. A chamber wants to know whether you can extract the facts, the dates and the issue from a disordered bundle, and whether your summary can be trusted.

Research

You will be asked for authorities on a point, usually with little context and a short deadline. What is wanted is a short note with the proposition, the cases that support it, the paragraph numbers, and honestly, the cases that go the other way. An intern who hides the adverse authority is worse than useless, because the other side will find it.

Drafting

Depending on the chamber and on how you have done so far, you may be asked to draft a legal notice, a reply, an application for exemption, a short affidavit or parts of a petition. Expect your draft to come back with most of it struck through. That is the method, and the second draft is where you learn.

Court craft and errands

Filing, taking out certified copies, checking the board, finding out which court a matter has gone to, getting a date noted. These feel menial and they are also how a litigation practice physically works. Every advocate in the chamber has done them.

What you should bring

• A notebook and pen. Not a phone. Taking notes on a phone in court reads badly and in many courts is not allowed.
• Court appropriate clothes. White shirt, black trousers or a black and white salwar suit or saree, black shoes. Many courts and Bar associations enforce this.
• Your own identification for entry, and patience with security.
• Water and something to eat. Days run long and unpredictably.

How to be the intern who gets asked back

The bar is lower than students think, and it is mostly about reliability.

• Be early. Court does not wait and neither does the advocate.
• Write down every instruction. Asking twice is fine. Guessing is not.
• Give a deadline you can meet and tell the senior early if you cannot, rather than at the hour it was due.
• Say when you do not know. A confident wrong answer about what a section says can cause real damage.
• Check every citation. Confirm the case exists, the paragraph says what you claim, and it has not been overruled.
• Keep client matters to yourself. Nothing from the file goes on social media, including a photograph of the chamber with papers visible.

On stipends

Many litigation internships are unpaid, and there is no rule requiring otherwise. Commentators have pointed out that India’s labour statutes, including the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 and the Minimum Wages Act 1948, are generally understood not to cover interns, because the definitions of workman and employee do not extend to them, and that the Bar Council rules on internships set requirements without addressing pay.

In practice some chambers pay a modest amount or cover travel, some pay nothing, and almost none advertise either way. Ask politely before you join if the answer matters to your plans, and budget for travel and lunch in a city where you may be staying for a month.

District court and High Court internships differ

A district court chamber usually puts you closer to the facts. There are more matters, more clients in the room, more evidence and cross examination, and more of the ordinary machinery of litigation: filing, service, adjournments, execution. For a student who has never seen a trial, this is the more instructive place to start.

A High Court chamber tends to be more about the written word. Matters arrive on paper, arguments turn on points of law, and the drafting is more demanding. You may see less of a client and more of a brief. Research work is usually heavier and the authorities matter more.

Neither is better. If you can manage both across different vacations, do that, because the comparison teaches you more than either alone.

What to read before you start

• The procedural code that governs the chamber’s work. For a criminal practice, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 and its predecessor provisions, since both numbers are still in daily use. For a civil practice, the Code of Civil Procedure 1908, particularly the Orders on pleadings and interim relief.
• The Limitation Act 1963, at least well enough to know that time runs and where to look it up.
• A few recent judgments of the court you will be sitting in, so the names and the style of the orders are familiar.

You are not expected to know the law. You are expected to be able to follow what is being discussed and to look things up quickly.

What you take away

Three things, if the internship goes well. A sense of what the paperwork of a real matter looks like, which makes procedure papers stop being abstract. A few drafts with your senior’s corrections on them, which are worth keeping. And a person who can speak to your work, which is how most litigation juniors are eventually hired.

Ask for a certificate at the end, on the chamber’s letterhead, with your dates and the kind of work you did, because your university will want it for your internship record.