Reading…
Reading…
Every law student in India interns. Most come away with a certificate. The ones who come away with something else treat it as the first file they ever worked, not as attendance.
What the rules require
Five-year course
20 weeks
Across the whole degree, not in one block.
Three-year course
12 weeks
Same rule, shorter degree.
In any one year
4 weeks max
You cannot bank it all into a final-year summer.
Bar Council of India, Rules of Legal Education 2008 (Rule 25). Internships may be served in courts, chambers, law firms, legal departments, or with an NGO — and the weeks must be spread across the degree rather than banked into one final summer.
What you will actually be asked to do
Not a summary of the area — the answer to the question asked, with the authority that decides it and the ones that cut against it. A note that hides the bad case is worse than no note.
A first draft of an application, a notice, a paragraph of a plaint. It will come back marked. The marks are the point; keep every version.
Carry the file, note what fell, note the next date, and report it the same day. A missed date is a real consequence for a real client.
The pleadings first, then the orders, then the documents. Most questions you will be asked are answerable from the file.
The first week
What to leave with
Every draft you touched, in the version you wrote and the version that was filed. The difference between those two is the only teaching material that is genuinely yours, and it is the thing you will still be learning from in your third year of practice.