CEDE Internship Guide

Veda Singh
Vijetha Ravi
Diya Deviah
Arunima Nair
Sitamsini Cherukumalli
Sudarshan Srikanth
Avinash Mathews
Hamsadhwani A.
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WRITING
I. Drafting

1. Learn how to work with footnotes and citations.

2. To ensure that your draft is free of grammatical errors, use Grammarly. It
will also help with improving your language. Use this guide to avoid
common errors.
3. Organise your writing. Provide an introduction, body and conclusion. Use
transitional phrases such as ‘however’, ‘further’, etc. Use sub-headings
wherever necessary.
4. Proofread, proofread, proofread. Make sure to always do a satisfactory
amount of proofreading before sending in your draft.
5. When writing a memo, article or opinion, start with an outline of headings
and subheadings. This will help you save time, and will bring clarity.
6. In legal internships you will always be given a sample document. Ask for one
if that isn't the case. Make sure to understand exactly what the purpose of
the document you are drafting is - whether it will be used in court, to show a
client or internally in the office.

II. Formatting

1. Important to get used to MS Word, and its formatting’s strange ways. This
only comes with experience.
2. Learn keyboard shortcuts.

Source: John Gruber

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3. Follow Scott Hanselman’s MS Office videos on YouTube for an in depth

understanding of the ins and outs of MS Word.
4. Uniformity of font must be maintained throughout the draft. Please find out
if there is a font style/size that is normally used for the specific kind of
drafting you have been tasked with, and follow that style.
5. Always add a header with page __ out of __.
6. Always use paragraph numbers in your documents. This makes it easy for
superiors to reference, and to cross reference the document.
7. When submitting a judgment to a senior, always attach an SCC copy to the
email with the details of the key paragraphs either in the file name or in the
body of the mail.
8. Always add serial numbers in any tables that you add to a document.
9. Dates must always be in dd/mm/yyyy format. Do not use dd/m/yy,
d/m/yyyy, or other such formats.

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LEGAL RESEARCH
1. Ensure to keep reading judgments. It will take a while at first, but will
progressively get easier as you can filter out what is relevant.
2. Learn to identify and understand the issues of the case as well as the
findings of the judge in that case.
3. Structure your thoughts and notes in the Issue, Rule, Analysis and
Conclusion (IRAC) format. This will help you develop and structure
arguments effectively.
4. Do not rely on the headnote. Use headnotes only as the starting point in
your research. Always try to understand the facts well and how the law in
question applies to them.
5. Learn how to effectively work with legal databases such as SCC and
Manupatra.
6. Attempt to spread your research across multiple legal databases as opposed
to solely relying on any single one.
7. Use Boolean operators in your searches on legal databases and general
search engines. It will take a little practice to get used to them, but they are a
powerful tool for effective research. The main Boolean operators are:
a. AND: use AND between two or more words/phrases when you only
want results that contain both/all the specified words/phrases
together.
b. OR: use OR between two or more words/phrases when you want
results that include either or all the words/phrases together.
c. NOT: use NOT next to certain words/phrases that you want to exclude
from the results of your general search.
d. “ ”: use double quotation marks around phrases of two or more
words when you need the exact phrase in your results.
8. Check for the status of the judgment before the Supreme Court, if citing a
High Court case.

How to effectively read a judgment:

Source: How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students by Orin S. Kerr.

- Understand the components of a judgement

1. Case name [plaintiff v. defendant]
2. Citation
3. Judges on the bench and judge(s) who authored the judgment

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4. Facts of the case: it will be the first or first few paragraphs of the
judgment, and will include procedural history as well.
5. Law of the case: this is the heart of the judgment. It will discuss
precedents and the legal principles involved. Pay close attention to
this section as it will show how the law is applied to the fact situation
described in the previous part of the judgment.
6. Concurring and/or dissenting opinions: The main part of the
judgment will indicate the ‘majority opinion’ of the bench of judges.
Sometimes, there will be opinions in agreement and/or disagreement
with this majority opinion. Such opinions will be written by the
respective judges separately in the judgment, and will explain the
reasons for concurring or dissenting with the majority opinion.

- Always search and find meanings of legal terms like plaintiff, defendant,
tort, contract, crime, judge, attorney, counsel, court, verdict, party, appeal,
evidence, etc. as and when you come across them. This is crucial to
understanding a judgment. You can press Ctrl+F to search for a legal term in
this legal dictionary.

- Know the facts well: If you don’t know the facts, you can’t really understand
the case and can’t understand the law.

- Know the specific legal arguments made by the parties: judges write
judgments only when two parties to a dispute disagree on a particular legal
question. This means that legal opinions focus on resolving the parties’ very
specific disagreement. The lawyers, not the judges, take the lead role in
framing the issues raised by a case. Because the lawyers take the lead role in
framing the issues, you need to understand exactly what arguments the two
sides were making.

- Know the decision of the court: This is the action the court took based on its
opinion. It is often announced at the very end of the opinion.

- Understand the reasoning of the majority opinion: firstly, identify the

source of the law the judge applied (Constitution, Codes, common law, etc.).
Secondly, identify the method of reasoning that the court used to justify its
decision. This could simply be following the statute, following the
precedents, justifying based on public policy grounds, justifying based on
morality, fairness, natural justice, or a mix of two or more of these).

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- Understand the significance of the majority opinion:

a. Identify the ratio of the judgment. This is a clear rule of law applying
to the case that is new to that particular case. Take a minute to think
about how the court’s rule would apply in other situations. A rule
might look good in one setting, but another set of facts might reveal a
major problem or ambiguity. Further, applying the rule to a different
situation will help identify the legally relevant facts for this particular
rule.
b. Contrast the ratio with the dicta of the judgment. ‘Dicta’ refers to
legal statements in the opinion not needed to resolve the dispute of
the parties; the word is a pluralized abbreviation of the Latin phrase
“obiter dictum,” which means “a remark by the way.”
c. Accept that some judgments are vague. Sometimes a court won’t
explain its reasoning very well. It’s not your fault. Rather than trying
to fill in the ambiguity with false certainty, try embracing the
ambiguity instead. One of the skills of topflight lawyers is that they
know what they don’t know: they know when the law is unclear.

- Understand any concurring and/or dissenting opinions: This is very

important. This practice will help you evaluate which rules and explanations
are strong and which are weak. Disagreement between the majority opinion
and concurring or dissenting opinions often frames the key issue raised by
the case; to understand the case, you need to understand the arguments
offered in concurring and dissenting opinions.

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WORKPLACE PROFESSIONALISM
1. Aim for open, transparent communication. If you require more time, do let
your supervisor know well in advance. If you have made a mistake in your
work, admit it and ensure to not let it happen again.
2. Do your best to be punctual with deadlines, showing up to meetings, etc. As
mentioned before, if you require more time, do let your supervisor know in
advance. Specify when you can deliver the assignment by. They will usually
understand, but try not to make it a regular practice.
3. Always be honest about how much work you can take on, if you require
some guidance with certain kinds of work, or if you require additional
resources or time. It’s better to be honest about your abilities than to take
on more than what is not possible for you.
4. E-mail etiquette
- Fill in the recipient’s name last so as to ensure that you don’t send the
email out incomplete accidentally.
- Double-check the recipient’s name.
- Pay attention to the subject line. Make sure that it is not vague and
reflects exactly what the mail is about, while being brief.
- Use an appropriate salutation.
- Introduce yourself wherever necessary.
- Double-check your attachments.
- Always try to reply within 24 hours, or within the amount of time that
is required for that particular mail.
- Do not use ‘reply all’ if your reply is directed only to one person and
does not require the other people in the conversation to read it.
- Generally, avoid using emojis.
- Use a conversation closer, such as ‘looking forward to hearing from
you’, ‘let me know if you have any questions’ etc. and follow it up
with ‘Warm regards’ or any other appropriate phrase.
- Create an email signature.
- Always, always proofread your mail before hitting send.
- Remove default signatures such as ‘sent from my phone’.
5. Be respectful, but not obsequious.
6. Dress code - Not necessarily fancy, but look well-groomed. If there is a
particular dress code the office requires, try your best to adhere to it.

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OFFICE INTERACTIONS
1. It’s important to build the courage to talk to advocates and co-interns and
interact with them. Most of the learning in an internship happens through
these interactions. Further, the friends you make during these experiences
will help you later in your career.
2. Do not be afraid to ask for feedback on your completed assignments from
your supervisors, either after an assignment or at the end of your
internship. This applies to both physical and virtual internships.

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VIRTUAL INTERNSHIPS
1. Let the office know if you have Internet issues in your house/place of work
resulting in being unable to attend video meetings, or if you require extra
time due to slow internet/power cuts, etc.
2. Use fast.com to check your internet speed. Try and find the place where that
speed is highest, and work from there.
3. If you do not have institutional access to software like SCC and Manupatra,
let your supervisor know. They will usually provide you their office access. If
that doesn’t work, contact CEDE.
4. Learn how to use the video meeting software before your first meeting.
Check the guides provided by Zoom, Google Meet or any other software that
your office is using, on the website of the software.
5. Always try to look presentable during video meetings. It is easy to forget to
do so when working from home.
6. Make sure to mute yourself during meetings if you have background noise.
Generally, try to find a quiet place to have meetings in.
7. Try to have a neutral background, like a plain wall or curtain. If you are
opting for a virtual background, use one that is not too in-your-face.
8. Try to engage in meetings wherever necessary.
9. Avoid looking into your phone or other devices during meetings. You will
look distracted and it will reflect badly.
10. Invest in a webcam cover for court or other video meetings, this will ensure
an additional layer of privacy and prevent accidental appearances.
11. Return missed phone calls on time.
12. Pick the appropriate method of communication. If the person you wish to
contact has expressed comfort with being approached over call/text, you
may do so. Otherwise, use e-mails only. But if it is a time-sensitive issue, do
feel free to call/text them.
13. Be mindful of timezones.
14. Respect off-hours time. Try not to contact people during non-office hours.
It’s easy to forget that office hours may still be applicable when working
from home.

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