ALG Internship is a full time program, meaning thereby you cannot do an ALG Internship in combination or in conjunction with any other professional/work commitment or engagement. It must be exclusive, and not part-time. You will be required to provide a declaration to this effect in your application for internship.

Internships at ALG are organized on the basis of calendar months, i.e. all internships of a month begin at the first working day of the month and conclude on the last working day of the month. It is not possible to select a different duration or starting date of internship. You will be required to provide your preferred month of internship (out of the available months) in your application form.

Internship at ALG may be sought by students who are currently enrolled in a full time law degree program (accredited by the Bar Council of India) and expect, upon completion of the law degree program, to acquire eligibility to enrol with the Bar Council of a state in India to practice as an advocate.

For specific eligibility to different internship programs, please read the details under ‘Types of Internship’ and ‘Categories of Internship’ below.

ALG administers following Internships under its Internship Program:

1. Pre-Final Year Internship

This internship is only for students in the pre-final year of their law degree program. You may apply for the Pre-Final Year Internship anytime from 12 months before entering the Pre-Final year till 1 month before exiting it. This means you can apply for a Pre-Final Year Internship as soon as you enter your antepenultimate year of law degree. During the entire period of the internship, the Intern must be a full-time student in the pre-final year of the law degree program. Internship is for one month, and it is not possible to do more than one internship while one is a pre-final Year student. Pre-Final Year Internships are not for-pay internships.

2. Final Year (Follow-On) Internship

This internship is only for students in the final year of their law degree program who have previously completed a Pre-Final Year Internship at ALG and have also received a recommendation from ALG to apply for a Final Year (Follow-On) Internship. It is possible to apply for a Final Year (Follow-On) Internship anytime from earning a recommendation to apply for a Final Year (Follow-On) Internship till 1 month before exiting the Final Year. However, there must be a gap of at least 6 months between the Pre-Final Year Internship and the Final Year (Follow-On) Internship. During the entire period of the internship, however, the Intern must be a full-time student in the final year of the law degree program. Final Year (Follow-On) Internship is for one month, and it is not possible to do more than one internship while one is a final Year student.

In case the Final Year (Follow-On) Internship is an assessment internship for the Placement of the intern, it will be a paid internship. Currently the stipend for a paid Final Year (Follow-On) Internship is INR 12,500/-.

While a recommendation to apply for Final Year (Follow-On) Internship does strengthen the application if made but it does not guarantee selection. We are selective in giving our recommendations for Final Year (Follow-On) Internships, and we are even more selective in accepting applicants for Final Year (Follow-On) Internships. Final Year (Follow-On) Internship are granted to only those candidates who can be expected to earn a recommendation to apply for placement in an attorney position. In case the intern had already secured a placement before the commencement of Final Year (Follow-On) Internship, it shall not be an assessment internship and hence not a paid internship.

3. Final Year (Regular) Internship

This internship is only for students in the final year of their law degree program who did not intern with ALG in their Pre-Final Year or interned with ALG but did not receive recommendation for Final Year (Follow-On) Internship. You may apply for the Final Year (Regular) Internship anytime from 12 months before entering the Final Year till 1 month before exiting it. This means you can apply for a Final Year Internship as soon as you enter your pre-final year. During the entire period of the internship, however, the Intern must be a full-time student in the final year of the law degree program. Final Year (Regular) Internship is for one month, and it is not possible to do more than one internship while one is a final Year student. Final Year (Regular) Internships are not for-pay internships.

There are two categories of Internship –

(i) Patents – The scope of Patents Internship subsumes the practice areas of not only patents but also designs, plant varieties, technology and telecom. Eligibility to apply for Patents Internship is restricted to students having at least a graduation degree in science.

(ii) General IP – The scope of General IP Internship covers all other practice areas of core IP as well as of IP+ including environment and consumer protection.
While applying for an Internship, you need to apply either for the Position of an Intern (Patents) or for the Position of an Intern (General IP). You will need to select one and only one of these two categories for your Internship application.

Application

Before filling up the application, you should keep pdf files (max 2MB each) of your publications (up to 3) and/or of your writing samples (up to 3) ready to upload along with. (If any writing sample is a part of your academic course work in an educational program, please mention this upfront inside it.)Internship applications cannot be submitted without uploading at least one publication or writing sample.Your Internship application will be critically assessed on the quality of your legal scholarship evidenced in these documents. At this stage you will not need to upload any other documents for submitting your application.

On successfully completing the application and submitting it, you will automatically receive a system-generated acknowledgement email with an allotted application number. Please do not reply to the acknowledgement mail.

If your application is found suitable, you will be contacted by email to provide documents supporting your application and formally complete your application for acceptance. The firm may contact your University/Law School for verifying your academic credentials.

Availability & Selection

We select internship applicants against available internship slots in any upcoming month. There is a separate selection process for each month and an internship offer, provisional or even final, for one month does not automatically guarantee selection for any other month. Months for which the slots of Internships are fully booked will not be visible and available for selection as preferred month of internship in the web-form application.

We receive far too many deserving applications against limited Internship slots in each month. These internship slots are taken up largely by Pre-Final Year students. Select internship slots for Final Year students are mostly occupied by Final Year (Follow-On) Interns. If you are a Final Year (Regular) Intern, you are amongst the very few so selected. Your chances of being accepted for a Final Year (Follow-On) Internship are significantly higher than your chances of being accepted for Final Year (Regular) Internship. Since we receive far too many highly deserving applications for extremely few internship slots, we are unable to issue recommendations or offer internships to many highly deserving candidates.

Owing to large number of applications that keep coming in, we are unable to engage individually by email/phone etc. with any of the applicants we do not ourselves contact with a provisional offer. We do reserve, and when occasioned exercise, the discretion to contact an applicant to enquire if the applicant would like to intern in a month not indicated in the preferences. Unfortunately, most applicants will not hear back from us any further after receiving our acknowledgment-email immediately upon submitting their application. We do not share any updates or otherwise communicate regarding an application except only if we contact an applicant at our own initiative with a provisional offer. We request not to remind us or follow up on any application. We do not check on an application if such a communication regarding it is nevertheless received. We do not, however, select or shortlist month by month nor applicant by applicant. Instead, for each open slot in any upcoming month, we look at all pending applications to shortlist and select from. This is why an application indicates a 12 month expiry date: it may elicit a provisional offer anytime until the expiry for any month considered eligible for the application-type. No application is ever rejected. Application only expires after 12 months.

All the Internships are in-person at the firm’s New Delhi office.

Interns will be required to produce their Certificate of double vaccination prior to the commencement of their internship at ALG. Only the fully vaccinated Interns (with both doses, if so prescribed) will qualify for the in-person Internship at the firm’s New Delhi office.

Attendance to each internship event is mandatory by an Intern. Interns attending an internship event at the office of the firm will be doing so in the same office room and will thus be able to interact with each other.

All ALG internships are assessment internships.

Firm’s assessment is based on many factors including the law-practice skill demonstrated by that Intern during the work assignments carried out during the internship; content and quality of legal scholarship pieces written and published during the internship; discipline, and behaviour during firm events, activities, and submissions; etc.

As a Pre-Final Year Intern, you will automatically be assessed for a decision by the firm on whether or not at the completion of your internship, to issue to you a recommendation to apply for Final Year (Follow-On) Internship.

As a Final Year Intern, Regular or Follow-On, you will automatically be assessed for a decision by the firm on whether or not at the completion of your internship, to issue to you a recommendation to apply for placement in a specified attorney position. A Follow-On Internship significantly improves chances of Placement.

At the commencement of the internship, a schedule of all planned internship events is shared in advance. Each of these needs to be attended in-person by an intern in the firm’s Delhi office.

An Intern is assigned a firm member as an Internship Facilitator and a more senior firm member as an Internship Mentor.

During the Internship, Interns can expect to receive and undertake generally two types of work assignments and tasks:

A. Legal Practical Work. This is to provide practical and hands-on experience and exposure to the practice of law through the allotment of actual file work. This typically include the task of legal drafting and legal-representations, followed-up by review and discussion with Mentor or other members of the firm. The tasks may vary depending upon the Type and Category of the Internship. For instance:

(i) A Patent Intern may expect to receive legal practical work assignments related to reading and analysing patent documents, technical specifications, research papers, technology briefs, and Controllers decision; Preparing opinions on patentability of invention, validity of patent, and infringement of patent; Preparing provisional / complete patent specification & claims; Drafting response to patent examination reports and office actions; Preparing opinion and draft for opposition and revocation of patent; Drafting patent assignment / license agreements; etc.

(ii) A General IP Intern may expect to receive legal practical work assignments related to drafting response to examination reports and office actions in trademark and copyright applications; Preparing opinions on infringement and passing off; drafting notice of oppositions, and cancellation petitions; drafting legal notices; drafting agreements for assignment / licensing / franchising of trademarks and other IP; conducting case law research on a legal issue; etc.

B. Legal Scholarship Work. This is to assess the legal analysis and drafting skills of the Intern. Interns are required to submit at least one 400 word legal scholarship piece on the basis of independent legal research, conforming with detailed guidelines that will be provided. Interns may voluntarily submit more pieces, which are optional but encouraged for enabling better assessment of the internship. If any of these written pieces are found suitable for the purpose, they are posted on the firm’s website, LinkedIn and other platforms crediting authorship by name as an Intern or Former Intern, as may be. Confirmed Interns are advised that before they commence their internship, they read some such recently posted pieces of other Interns, for guidance.

Please note that client-confidentiality, which is taken very seriously and implemented very stringently by the firm, always inherently restricts the bounds of such experience, exposure and observation provided to the Interns. Nothing in or about any client-file is shared with or made accessible to any Intern except strictly only as is freely available and generally accessible to anyone in the public domain. Likewise in relation to legal-representation case hearings, it is only public hearings of unrestricted access to the general public that an Intern can possibly expect to attend. An Intern is not allowed in on any client meeting.

At the end of the internship month, an Internship Certificate is issued to the Intern. It will be an E-Certificate which is verifiable online securely and independently by anyone through a QR code on the Certificate.An Annex to the Internship Certificatewill mention the names of the Internship Facilitator, the Internship Coordinator and the Internship Mentor of the Intern. It will mention in brief the hands-on legal-work experience, the legal drafting exposure and the legal-representation observation particulars gained by the Intern on law-practice assignments; along with the firm’s assessment of the corresponding law-practice skill demonstrated by that Intern while gaining it. The Annex will also mention the title of the single compulsory 400 word legal scholarship piece required to be submitted by an Intern on the basis of independent legal research, conforming with detailed guidelines that will be provided. If an Intern voluntarily submits any other piece which is optional but encouraged for enabling better assessment of the internship, the titles of these will also be mentioned.

The Email issuing your Internship Certificate may, if the firm deems fit and depending upon the assessment, contain a Recommendation encouraging you to apply for a Follow-On Internship or for a Specified Attorney Position depending on whether you are a Pre-Final Year student or a Final Year student.