We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
With regards to SC Clerkship (Exam One), the process is very tedious/ambiguous, but the first step is clearing exam for which you can prepare. The rest would depend on how you fill preference and how actively/honestly the Hon'ble Judges choose the candidates.
With regards to HC, each High Court has their own way of selection. Infamously some HCs just to their respective NLUs and ask CVs, and sort them and call for interviews later on. Some have exams, some have rolling applications, some have no structure at all, leaving everything on the lordships.
The entire process be it SC/HC/District Courts is ambiguous. The best way to go about is to find information relating to the court which you want to target. SC's process is the most transparent of them all (which tells you a lot about this entire process). Anyways, you shouldn't be banking on this as a definite career option, as a lot of crowd is here.
But doing internships is still a good idea, provided you build connections. (Because sometimes instead of interning under the Judge, you're interning under his/her Law Clerk).
Having internships will not retract or inhibit you from giving the exam. The aim should be to do both. Merely giving the exam and even securing a rank may not prove useful in the ultimate prospect of securing a clerkship. Post the exam, whether you get placed in a judge's office is dependent upon a lot of factors, and just clearing the exam isn't one of those factors. Usually the experience of the candidate is one metric by which people who have cleared the exam are shortlisted and placed with judges. It plays an important role in interviews but again its not a sure shot guarantee either. Lastly, if you have internships at least at the Supreme Court, you have fair idea of vacancies and the judge(s) themselves might be familiar with you and thus, more open to keeping you.