Internship Etiquette: How to maximise the law firm internship experience (Part I)

Internships are an essential part of law school life (and sometimes, even beyond). I don’t need to extrapolate on the importance of internships – that’s already well known.

What is not known as well, however, is the bit about internship etiquette.

Internships are a learning experience – but also an opportunity to showcase ourselves and impress our potential employers. From the first point of view, it is fine to make mistakes; after all, rectifying a mistake is one of the most effective ways to learn. However, from the second perspective – it is best to minimise mistakes – especially the silly, avoidable ones. If we are to put our best foot forward, the shoe on that foot needs to be presentable as well, right?

And this is exactly where internship etiquette comes in. It isn’t rocket science – these are just things I’ve picked up during my five years of law school and twelve years of top law firms after that. Sometimes, what we experience as an intern doesn’t make sense until years later – when we are mentoring interns ourselves. And then we remember our old days and think, “Ah, so that’s what it was!”

So, putting together all that, I have come up with a couple of easy-to-remember formulae for internship etiquette. Acronyms, not mathematical formulae. These capture pretty much everything I’ve learnt over the years – from both perspectives.

Want to know what they are? PAPER and HASH.

Easy, right? And almost impossible to forget. The lives of lawyers (including law students) revolve around papers anyway…and how often do we see # these days (especially if you’re on social media)?

The primary goal behind every internship is to create a good impression. And this is exactly what PAPER and HASH are aimed at.

Now, PAPER depicts the general attitude of an ideal intern, and stands for Polite, Active, Professional, Efficient and Research-oriented. Here’s an image as a visual aid for memory:

Let’s take a look at each of these qualities.

• Polite – Basic courtesy, more or less. Being polite is ALWAYS better than being rude – even (or especially) if the person on the other side is being extremely frustrating or rude or insensitive. And why is this important? Not only does the potential employer see you as well-mannered, but it also shows that you can keep your cool in a difficult situation – which means you can be an excellent negotiator. Desirable quality #1 in a future employee for law firms or legal teams.

• Active – Not active as in jumping around like a headless chicken! This is about taking initiative, about being motivated, about being visible. From what I have seen, the interns who will come up and ask for work when they have none are the ones that end up bagging that elusive PPO!

• Professional – “When in doubt, err on the side of formality” – that’s one of the most important lessons I learnt from a management guru who has been teaching professionals around the world for much longer than I’ve been alive. You are in an office, and workplace etiquette is important. Professionalism should show in your dress, speech, conduct – remember, if you are presentable enough, you may be involved in client-facing work, and if you are mistaken for an associate, you are likely to end up with requisite the paperwork to *be* that associate even before you graduate. I have seen it more times than I can count.

• Efficient – No matter where you work, you will be swamped with work in your initial years (and more often than not, later as well). Now, in this context, if you can demonstrate that you don’t need six days to draft a twenty-page agreement…you get the drift, right? Time management is as important as quality of work.

• Research-oriented – Absolutely essential for the legal profession. Personally, I’ve never seen an intern who copies and pastes the first five Google search results in the name of “research” get a PPO – or get hired, for that matter.

If you ask me, the three top interns I’ve seen in my law firm life (all three got a PPO, by the way) – I’d say they ranked 5/5 on PAPER. They went to different law schools – a top-ranked national law school, a new college where the first batch hadn’t graduated yet and a government college. Their ranks were different – one was a gold medallist, one had average scores and one was in the bottom quarter of the batch.

How did such dissimilar individuals get PPOs?

Because they did phenomenally well during their internships

That’s that for the general attitude. In the second part of this column, I will take a look at specific aspects of the internship experience.

This is an edited version of a webinar exclusively held for our Campus Ambassadors. Jayantika Ganguly is a former corporate lawyer, who now counsels law students and lawyers. You can read more about her work here.