My colleague had been handling a particular Writ Appeal before the High Court of Kerala since she joined my Chambers. For the final hearing, she went to Court, and I had also sent an intern to assist her. It was the intern’s first experience working in a lawyer’s Chambers. Until then, all her internships had been with law firms or corporate houses. She was still unsure about pursuing a career in litigation and had joined us partly to explore how the litigation side of law was really like.
Unfortunately, the experience she witnessed that day was not an encouraging one.
For reasons best known to the Judge, one particular Judge on the Division Bench was not appreciative of my colleague’s submissions. The comments made during the hearing were extremely harsh and personal. They were so harsh that even the opposite counsels appearing for the respondent parties felt the need to console her after the matter was over. The moment she started speaking to me after coming out of Court, she broke down and began crying. However, despite this, she appeared before the very same Judge in another matter very soon afterwards, and the Judge was visibly taken aback by her courage.
The intern had witnessed everything.
Her immediate reaction, was that she did not want to pursue a career in litigation anymore. She told me that she would rather choose a profession where she would be treated with respect and dignity. And honestly, I understood her point.
The next day, I sent her to another Division Bench, and on the following day, to yet another Division Bench – both presided over by Judges whom I consider among the finest gentlemen on the Bench today.
What she witnessed over those two days was very different.
She saw that lawyers and judges can disagree strongly, challenge each other’s arguments, and have completely different views on a matter without making the disagreement personal. She saw that advocacy can be firm and fearless while still being respectful. Most importantly, she realised that lawyers are, for the most part, treated with dignity and respect in Court.
What she had witnessed on the first day, I explained to her, was not representative of the entire profession. There will always be a minority who may treat lawyers with indifference, or even as though they are lesser human beings. But that should never be mistaken for what litigation, or the legal profession, is supposed to be.
I do not know whether those experiences changed her mind. I do not know whether she will ultimately decide to pursue litigation or has already made up her mind to choose another career. But she certainly has had a glimpse of what lies ahead.
And perhaps that is what an internship is supposed to do; not merely teach a student how to draft a petition or conduct legal research, but allow them to see the profession in its entirety: its challenges, its frustrations, its dignity, and the different kind of people they will encounter along the way.
This, to me, is precisely why internships are so important for law students. A classroom can teach a student the law, and a textbook can explain the principles of advocacy, but neither can truly convey what it means to practise law. An internship gives a student an opportunity to step into the profession before deciding whether it is what they want to build their life around. It exposes them not only to drafting, research and court proceedings, but also to the realities of the profession; the pressure, uncertainty, setbacks, courtroom dynamics, professional relationships and, equally importantly, the dignity and satisfaction that can come with being a lawyer. Sometimes, an internship can reconfirm a student’s decision to pursue litigation; at other times, it will make them realise that litigation is not for them. Both outcomes are valuable. The purpose of an internship is not to convince every student to become a practicing advocate, but it is to give them enough exposure to make an informed choice about their own career.
However, I do find a very concerning pattern among the law students in Kerala. Mahatma Gandhi University, in particular, has limited the number of internships that a student may undertake under trial and appellate advocates to two. The University’s regulations states that students are not to undergo training under trial and appellate advocates more than twice. The Bar Council of India Rules of Legal Education, 2008, on the other hand, prescribe a minimum period of internship 12 weeks for students of the three-year LL.B. course and 20 weeks for students of the five-year course and require students to undergo training under trial and appellate advocates at least once during the entire academic period. The BCI Rules do not prescribe a corresponding numerical upper limit on the number of internships that may be undertaken under advocates.
This distinction is not merely theoretical. In 2025, a law student from Government Law College, Ernakulam, approached the Kerala High Court [W.P.(C) No. 26313 of 2025, Aswin R. v. Bar Council of India & Ors] challenging the restriction imposed by the College and Mahatma Gandhi University on the number of internships that students could undertake under trial or appellate advocates. The Court issued notice to the Bar Council of India, Mahatma Gandhi University and the College. The challenge demonstrates that the question of whether such a university-imposed restriction should exist is very much a live issue.
From the internship applications I receive at my Chambers, I have noticed that most students tend to intern at Panchayat or Municipality offices, Excise or Police Stations, Collectorates, Crime Records Bureaus and similar institutions, during the first two or three years. An internship with a trial lawyer or an appellate lawyer is often reserved for the final or penultimate year.
I genuinely have no objection to students interning at Panchayat or Municipality offices, Excise or Police Stations, Collectorates, Crime Records Bureaus or other government institutions, provided they are given meaningful exposure and actually have an opportunity to learn. The problem, however, is that almost every student I have spoken to has told me that these internships taught them very little and were undertaken largely to satisfy curricular and academic requirements.
This is particularly unfortunate because many of these institutions deal with issues that have significant legal dimensions. Yet, there is often no one specifically assigned to teach, supervise or mentor the interns and, in many cases, there appears to be no system at all for effectively engaging the students who come there as interns.
An internship, therefore, risks becoming merely a box to be ticked rather than an opportunity to learn. And that defeats the very purpose for which internships are supposed to exist.
In my opinion, the Bar Council of India & law colleges should consider restructuring the academic day in a manner that allows students to gain meaningful practical experience alongside their classroom education. Classes could begin early, perhaps by 8:00 a.m., and conclude by the afternoon, leaving the latter part of the day for students to undertake part-time paralegal work or evening internships.
This could be particularly beneficial in Kerala, where I have noticed that many students miss out on opportunities to intern with law firms and corporate legal teams, often because of a lack of exposure, guidance and, at times, misinformation passed on to them by others. Part-time and evening legal internships do exist in India, but they have not yet developed into a well-established or widespread culture in the way conventional full-time vacation internships have.
A law student does not necessarily have to spend an entire month sitting in a chamber to learn litigation. A structured, continuing arrangement could allow a student to attend college during the day while simultaneously gaining regular exposure to the actual practice of law. For instance, a student could work for four to five hours on weekday evenings and spend Saturdays working for a full day.
The advantage of such an arrangement is continuity. A student who works with a chamber on a regular basis is not merely observing isolated assignments; they can follow matters as they progress and understand how different aspects of litigation fit together.
An evening intern could research cases for matters to be argued the following week, assist with drafting, prepare case briefs, maintain files, attend client conferences, study orders passed during the day, assist in preparing for the next day’s hearings and, where appropriate, accompany the advocate to Court on Saturdays. More importantly, the student can follow a matter through its different stages from drafting and filing to admission, interim orders and eventually final hearing.
That is fundamentally different from the conventional model in which a student joins an office for two or three weeks, is given a few research assignments, obtains an internship certificate and moves on to the next place. There is certainly value in short-term internships since they offer court room exposure, but they cannot always provide the continuity necessary to understand how the profession actually works.
Internships should therefore not become a certificate producing exercise undertaken merely to satisfy an academic requirement. They should be treated as a form of continuing professional training. If law schools can create the academic space for students to gain practical experience alongside their classroom education, particularly through structured internships after college hours, such internships can become far more meaningful.
Ultimately, these internships should serve as a bridge between the law students learn in classrooms and the law they encounter in practice. Legal education provides the theoretical foundation, but it is through meaningful and sustained practical exposure that a student begins to understand how the law actually operates. If we can move away from treating internships as a compulsory requirement to be completed for a certificate and instead recognise them as an integral part of professional legal training, we would be taking an important step towards preparing better equipped lawyers who enter the profession with a realistic understanding of both its demands and its possibilities.
*Raghul Sudheesh is an Advocate practising before the Hon’ble High Court of Kerala. He can be reached via email adv.raghulsudheesh@gmail.com