Why Law Internship Applications Get Rejected

Most rejected internship applications are not rejected on merit. They are rejected because the email was obviously a mass mailing, arrived at the wrong time of year, asked for something impossible, or contained a mistake that made the reader stop. Almost all of it is avoidable.

The mass email

The most common reason, by a distance. An email that opens “Respected Sir/Madam” with no name, praises “your esteemed organisation”, and never mentions anything specific about the chamber or firm is recognisable immediately, because the reader has seen forty of them this month.

The fix is one accurate sentence showing you know who you are writing to. Their practice area, the court they appear in, a matter you read about. One sentence is enough, and it has to be true, because a wrong guess is worse than nothing.

The worst version is the email where the previous recipient’s name is still in it. This happens weekly and it ends the application instantly.

Wrong time of year

Chambers and firms plan intern intake in advance, and the popular windows fill early. Writing in the first week of May for a June internship, when everyone else wrote in February, means the slots are gone regardless of how good you are.

Apply well ahead, and be specific about your dates. Exactly how far ahead varies by organisation and city, so where a firm publishes an application window, follow it, and where it does not, ask early rather than late.

Asking for something that does not exist

Asking a two person chamber for a three month internship, or a litigation chamber for corporate transactional experience, or any organisation for something during a period when the courts are closed, signals that you did not think about it.

Keep your request within what the Bar Council rules contemplate as well. Under Rule 25, an internship in any year is not to run continuously for more than four weeks, so a request for eight continuous weeks creates a problem for whoever has to sign your certificate.

CV problems that cause rejection

• Padding. A one week court visit listed as an internship, a webinar listed as a course, a participation certificate listed as an achievement. Experienced readers decode this instantly.
• Inflated verbs. “Drafted a writ petition” when you proofread one. If you cannot answer two questions about it, do not claim it.
• Length. Three pages from a second year student. One page until you genuinely need two.
• Design. Columns, icons, skill bars and photographs. Law firms want plain text they can read quickly.
• No dates. Internships without months and years look like something is being concealed, and sometimes something is.
• Typos. In a profession whose entire output is documents, a typo on page one is evidence.

The email itself

Subject lines like “Request”, “Internship” or “Seeking opportunity” give the reader nothing. “Internship application: [name], [year], [college]” can be acted on without opening it.

Other reliable ways to lose an application: writing from an address you made at fifteen, attaching a Word file that opens differently on the reader’s machine, attaching five documents when two were asked for, writing three paragraphs about your passion for justice before saying what you want, and asking about the stipend before you have been offered anything.

Sending the same email again two days later, because you heard nothing, is also fatal. One follow up after a week is right. Two is too many.

Things in your control that students treat as luck

No writing sample. Most applications contain no evidence of what the applicant can actually produce, which means the reader is choosing on college name and CV formatting alone. A case comment, a research note or a published article changes that. If you have nothing to send, write something: Lexfolio publishes student writing free through its guest article programme, and a published piece is a stronger attachment than another certificate.

Not following the instructions in the posting. If it asks for a cover letter, a specific subject line, or submission through a form, do exactly that. Firms use it as a filter, deliberately.

Applying only to the best known names. Fifteen applications to the biggest firms and none to the chambers and smaller firms where you would actually be given work is a common and expensive pattern, particularly in first and second year.

Matching the application to the place

A firm’s recruitment team and a two person chamber want different things, and sending both the same application loses one of them. Firms run a process: they want the format followed, the cover letter attached if asked, and the dates within their published window. A chamber wants a short, human email from someone who knows what the advocate does.

The same applies to NGOs, where the usual mistake is writing about career development rather than about the work the organisation does, and to companies, where legal teams want to see some interest in the industry rather than in law generally.

Improving the next batch

If twenty applications produce nothing, the problem is almost never that twenty separate people independently judged you unsuitable. It is more often one fixable thing repeated twenty times: the same weak subject line, the same generic second paragraph, the same CV with no writing sample attached, or the wrong month.

Before the next batch, change one variable and keep count. Show the email to someone who has already done internships and ask them where they would have stopped reading. Read your own CV as a stranger and mark every line that makes a claim you could not support in an interview. Both exercises are uncomfortable and both work faster than sending another twenty.

What rejection usually is not

Silence is not always a judgement on you. Advocates miss emails, chambers fill up, firms pause intake, and a great many applications simply go unanswered for no reason connected to the applicant. Students read silence as a verdict and it mostly is not one.

The right response is volume and persistence rather than agonising: a dozen carefully written applications to places that fit, one follow up each, and then the next batch. The students who end up with good internships are rarely the ones who wrote the single perfect email.