Internship with Adv. Harish Salve

My internship experience at Harish Salve's Chambers

This article was originally written for a student's blog and hence the format is to suit 
the readers of that site. It describes my internship experience with one of India's top lawyers 
and an honest review of working there.

Name of the organization. City

Harish Salve, Senior Counsel, Supreme Court and former Solicitor General of India- best known
for turning the judgment in the Vodafone case regarding double taxation and learning under
Mr. Palkhiwala, the tax law moghul.

Duration of the internship :

4 weeks (seems very little)

How big was the office? Team strength?

7 associates and around 10 administration staff.

There are two apartments on the sixth floor of the posh Bhagwan Das road. One houses the
chamber, a small waiting room, the associate’s room while the other has a huge waiting room,
Manager’s room and kitchen.

The Harish Salve office also has a small room for interns to wait in.

There is no dearth of space in the conference room where the clients and law firms are always
on their toes , briefing sir – the first day I saw more than 20 people come for a conference in one go.

Application procedure. Internship contact details :

You can call and enquire.

Duration in weeks. No. of days/week. Timings :

4 weeks, 6 days a week 8.30am to 8pm., ( Saturday half day) I generally went for morning
conferences which started at 8.30am and lasted upto 10.30am and then court Except on Monday,
Friday and Saturday since there’s no court on Miscellaneous days.

In the evenings Harish Sir takes an hour’s break and goes for swimming so we are relatively
free till 6 pm. Then there are back to back conferences till 8pm.However, girls staying far away
have the option of leaving early.

On Sundays it’s off and Friday evening too. Saturday conferences start in the evening.

Accommodation: how, where, how was it?

I stayed at DU Campus Housing …there are a lot of hostels and rooms for rent available around
North Delhi. There is also a direct metro line near the office on the blue line.

If you get the chance you should try finding a place in the Hostels located on Bhagwan Das road
itself. Maybe your State bhavan such as Gujarat Bhawa for me since I come from Gujarat can accommodate you for the month. The HR who coordinates the internships can be contacted for it.

First impression. First day, formalities etc.

I arrived extremely early and had to wait for the other people to arrive.
The staff was courteous and offered tea while I was waiting. By 10 am the rooms began to fill
with associates and clients. We got an email with a list of conferences scheduled and we started
to attend it.

One thing I am extremely tempted to mention is that the first client to walk in was a high profile
ex MLA for a case. I was awed and even more when I saw that all cases were extremely
interesting and I had a great first day ahead in store for me.

But I was more taken aback by seeing Boss at his desk for more than 10 conferences straight
and being as energetic and active for the last conference as for the first. He constantly had to
talk -quite a feat. Maybe our lecturers complaining about getting tired after two three lectures
should take a leaf out of his book!

Main tasks (in detail)

Taking notes in of conferences and courts. Assisting associates in research and preparing
list of dates.

The associates at the chambers of Harish Salve provide extremely systematic assignments and
instructions are to the point.

One of my co interns got to counsel a client in a criminal matter on his own without any associate
being present, I think that is the ultimate!

Work environment, people:

You can never ask for a better team… The associates are always there, constantly working and
guiding us to attend courts and conferences.

The assistants send us an email daily stating which conference to attend, the cook prepared food
and coffee, espresso etc whenever we were hungry, there were instructions to contact Ma’am in
case of any issues.

Everything was as smooth as possible! There was lunch in huge afternoons for the entire office
and snacks such as soya chips and diet coke for us too in the evenings.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have had such an amazing experience. 

Best things?

Seeing high profile clients come to seek sir’s counsel.. You get to learn why someone has such a
high reputation… Is it the meticulous studying, the uninterrupted focus (never seen sir constantly
checking his phone), the curiosity to constantly learn new acts and amendments, the dedication to
provide the best solution , having a great support system or the persuasive advocacy style.

It is completely out of the world and guarantees you learn a great deal!

After watching Boss on you tube and twitter, I understand the hype that surrounds such a great
lawyer and why every business house and politician(we witnessed a lot of them being advised
by Boss) comes to only Harish Salve!

But there was a better unheard of version too- I jotted down a few of my favorites.

Once, I saw a bag of dog biscuits near the security cabin. I came to know that besides the fact that
Sir is a dog lover and has five dogs, the dog biscuits were for the street dogs. Isn’t that sweet?

Another incident is his ever forgiving nature- he readily forgives late clients and mistakes by his
staff. Mr. Harish Salve is also a pro at time management-he never wastes time with small talk or
traveling to and from his rest room is within the office itself and Supreme Court is literally round
the corner.

Bad things?

Sir was always having what seems to be magical potions that helped conduct non stop conferences
for hours together. For us mere mortals having no powers, no time to breath!

Besides, the Harish Salve internship seems extremely short since Sir had to travel quite often!
But on the plus side more time to attend college in between and manage attendance for students
studying in Delhi especially since the Bar Council’s new rules about attendance and internship.

Stipend/ month

No stipend

Anything else you’d like to tell T

he staff was extremely courteous and always on their toes… Another is the green concept with
which all of the matters are conducted-he uses his ipad and Mac rather than printouts. Also
Sir is a big Apple promoter – work is always on a Mac!

Biggest lessons

Always be on the clients side… Never stop sympathizing with the client, think from his
point of view, keep excellent relations… Sir has great relations with all firms … Something
which counts a lot..

Also the kind of exposure that we gained as law students with Mr. Harish Salve is something
which cannot be described in a page!

Lawctopus Original Article