5 Key Skills Every Legal Intern Needs to Succeed

Adv. Ananya Jain
4 min readApr 15, 2023

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5 Key Skills Every Legal Intern Needs to Succeed

Legal Intern

Introduction

Legal internships are a crucial stepping stone toward becoming an accomplished legal professional. As an intern, you get to work side-by-side with experienced advocates and gain hands-on experience in the field. However, succeeding as a legal intern requires more than just book smarts; it demands a specific set of skills that can help you stand out from your peers. From research and writing to communication and time management, there are several essential skills every legal intern needs to succeed in their role. In this blog post, we’ll explore these critical skills in detail and provide tips on how aspiring lawyers can hone them for career success. So whether you’re about to start your first legal internship or looking to improve your performance at your current one, read on!

Research and Analysis Skills

Researching and Analytical skills are the most important skills a lawyer must possess. And while in graduation year the law student must learn these skills so that they can master these skills in their practicing years. A law student must research different topics and different case laws available from different sources such as journals, books, legal websites, etc. And also analyze that information to use it in the best way. Because being a Lawyer not only means having all the knowledge but it’s about using it in the best way.

Communication Skills

It is crucial for a lawyer to be exceptional in persuasion in order to convince both the client and the judge. A key legal talent is persuasiveness of speech. A lawyer has a mastery of the language and communicates clearly and confidently to ensure that everyone in the court understands what they are saying. Therefore, you must develop your communication abilities if you are interning or have an internship anywhere else in order to increase your employability after graduation.

A lawyer communicating with the client

Time Management Skills

In this line of work, effective time management is also essential. Most lawyers bill their clients on an hourly basis, so it’s important to keep on schedule when attending client meetings, mediations, hearings, and other responsibilities during business hours. It’s crucial to efficiently allocate time to various duties related to your career, such as researching, compiling paperwork, or obtaining information, in addition to scheduling and keeping track of time spent with clients. And you can develop these abilities as a law student by organising your moot court matches, contests, assignments, exams, and internships. because even modest actions can have a big impact.

Attention to Detail

Lawyers must be detail-oriented in order to build a fool-proof case. As a lawyer, you should learn to question your client on every part of the case and show attention in the smallest aspects in order to analyse the issue and get understanding from it. A small oversight could leave a gap in your argument that the opposition could use against you. It’s critical now more than ever for aspiring attorneys to acquire these abilities given the fierce competition on the legal job market.

Intelligent Lawyer

General Awareness

Apart from all these skills a lawyer must keep up-to-date with general information about the state and the world. A lawyer’s skills and abilities must include daily reading about the latest developments in law, international relations, history, culture, politics, etc. Even as a law student, you must be very well aware of the facts and information about your surroundings.

Bottom line!

Bottom line! observations, research, and dedication, along with experience, help someone to become a lawyer. Training and education help you prepare yourself to enter the profession, however, these vital skills are the pillars of success that you must develop from the first day to become an invincible advocate.

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Adv. Ananya Jain

"Hey, I’m Ananya Jain – a Delhi-based lawyer who loves reading, writing, and balancing law with a creative touch!"