New Delhi: The Department of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Law and Justice has announced a set of guidelines to provide internship training to Law students from the National Law Schools across the country.

A Committee comprising of Mr. Mohan Prasaran, Ld. Additional Solicitor General; Professor (Dr.) K.N. Chandrasekharan Pillai, Director, Indian Law Institute and Mr. K.D. Singh, the then Additional Secretary in the Department of Legal Affairs, was constituted by the Ministry to frame guidelines for providing training to interns from the Law schools.

As per the guidelines, the National Law Schools would be requested by the Department of Legal Affairs to nominate students of the 4th or the 5th year of LLB course. In exceptional cases, the 3rd year students may also be considered.

The minimum duration of internship will be four weeks and no financial assistance will be provided by the Government to students who are accepted for internship training.

Selected interns would be required to either work exclusively for the Central Agency Section (CAS) of the Department of Legal Affairs in assisting the Government panel counsels in drafting pleadings, preparation of case analysis and other types of legal work undertaken in the CAS.

Some of the interns would also be allocated, subject to the exigencies of the work of the Central Agency Section, to work as interns under Union Law Officers, including Attorney General for India, Solicitor General of India and Additional Solicitors General of India.

On completion of the internship training, a certificate will be issued by an authorized officer of the Department of Legal Affairs to the concerned internee on the basis of the certificate signed by the officer under whom the internship was organized.

An official from the Ministry of Law and Justice said, "We have been receiving requests from time to tome from individual Law students for internship training as per the requirements of their course of study and from various Law Colleges to give practical exposure to their students on the working of the Ministry."