If you don't have 'meaningful work' to give to interns, then why take them to begin with? It does not matter whether you make that person copy pages of Black's Law Dictionary, if you are making him do the work, you ought to pay him. As for your second point about your own inability to pay, that point too has been addressed by Midnighter already. Maybe you should get an intern to read things carefully and make you a note before you start responding to those. If you think someone deserves 3k for working 3 weeks with you, but deserves nothing for working 1 week, then your argument lacks logic and rationale. I agree that one week's internship hardly provides any value addition, but that's on the people who offer such internships to begin with, rather than the students who apply for those.

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If you do not want to pay people for doing your work (for which you are getting paid), then don't get them to do your work, plain and simple. Expecting or asking for payment for work done is not a sign of entitlement in any culture.

Hmm.

Firstly, interns barely do any meaningful work in the initial years apart from writing articles or making case notes. For students in the advanced years, I may agree.

Secondly, by your logic an intern for 7 days should be paid. Very good. So anyone who spends even a second on my work should be paid. Bhai mere paas khud ka netflix nahi hai. Main already gareeb hu. Kaha se laao itne paise?

Thirdly, to the guy interning, bhai BCI rodega 7 din ki internship dekh ke. Please stay for 3 weeks atleast to ensure that your internship has any value to it. And if you don't have 3 weeks time. Toh might as well chill.

To all those who are exclaiming about interns for a week expecting stipend: This is precisely the mindset that we have been conditioned into. Let's admit one truth: no person hires an intern out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they need work to be done, and doing it all by themselves would not be the best possible use of their own time. It does not really matter whether the intern is working for a week, for a month, or more. You should not make people do your work, and then not pay that person anything. If you think that the intern's work is not good enough, remove that person. If the intern believes that they have learnt enough while working with you so as to render any monetary payment unnecessary, then that is their call, and let them refuse the payment when you offer it to them. Interns can and do incur expenses too while working for you, especially when they are interning away from their home city. Not compensating them for it is highly unethical. If a lawyer does not have the financial wherewithal to pay interns, then that is a different thing, and the lawyer must make it clear to the intern, and also try to assist the intern in other ways, including writing good, customized recommendation letters (of course, if the work is satisfactory), helping the intern to find affordable accommodation and transport in the new city, spending time mentoring them personally etc. However, this should be clarified in advance when the internship application is being accepted. It is only when we as responsible lawyers start introducing these changes that the industry would begin to change for the better. If you do not want to pay people for doing your work (for which you are getting paid), then don't get them to do your work, plain and simple. Expecting or asking for payment for work done is not a sign of entitlement in any culture.

I've actually had better experiences with the students from younger NLUs and well-known government colleges and private colleges as interns, compared to the students from older NLUs. Much less entitlement issues, more eager to learn, more willing to put in the hard work (I do not mind shortcuts, so long as those are intelligent ones). If you use a proper review of CVs and interviews to get interns, you are more likely to get candidates who would not only be good in general, but would also suit your own style of working. This doesn't mean that I've never got good interns from the older NLUs too, but on an average, had better experience with the other category.

Say whatever. But it's a true estimation of the general experience. No bias/prejudice, but sheer experience. That's why bothered to add "personally" not happy.

In the corporate world, you don't get anything as given.

Firms don't make such policies overnight, but is based on reasonable observations. L&L and KCO are happy for themselves. Hope you never get to feel sorry for yourself.

Being a 3rd year associate at one of the Tier 1 firms, I am personally not happy with most of the non-NLU interns. There are some exceptional cases for sure. An intern from a private law college in Odisha was by far one of the best interns I have ever met. But in most of the cases, I end up being disappointed with non-NLU interns.

On the contrary, the top 5-6 NLU interns are mostly good.

So, I think it's a fair policy to generally pay NLU interns some stipend. The quality of work is definitely not the same.

To be fair, he don't have policy of paying internship stipend. Many corporate law firms too don't pay internship stipends, Senior Advocates are extremely successful and busy, still he found time and was nice enough to give a dairy milk, reco letter and also shook hands with you.

Here's my story. Senior Advocate. Delhi. Filthy rich. Fancy bungalow and cars. I worked as an intern for 7 days and sometimes worked till midnight. B*****d gave no money. On last day of internship he just gave me a dairy milk chocolate and shook my hand. Gave me a reco letter, but with my last name spelt slightly wrong. I asked if he could print it again. He said one must save paper. Used a whitener and corrected it with a pen.