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Uas the title suggests, I’m a final year law student interning at a local litigation firm, which isn’t very big but not very small either. I’ve done judicial internships before as well as litigation firms but i honestly struggle to understand so many of these concepts in practice that we learn nothing about in college, like wtf is the difference between a petition and a suit, what is a memorandum of grounds, what are all these things????
what we study in college is either mostly useless since we’ll have to relearn after graduating and enrolling, or its just pointless stuff. college is a breeze compared to practice, it seems like a huge jump that clg hasn’t prepared me for at all. I am struggling to understand how the court works, what happens in the sections??? there are so many applications, petitions, etc to file and i just don’t understand how each one is different, and how to file, what to file for which case and all.
i feel very embarrassed to also say this to my peers/seniors bc I feel like as a final year student if I don’t even know the basics, I don’t think I’ve dont anything right all these years.
recently I was taking dictation from the senior associate (my elder cousin brother, who called me up and asked me to intern at his firm this time), for affidavit and memorandum of grounds, and he began to grill me on who the petitioner/respondent was for each OS, IA, etc was and I got so confused and messed it up, and he wasn’t very happy and I was so so embarrassed, idk what to do, and it’s worse that he’s my relative, I am so embarrassed that I was so dumb and that he prolly judged me for not knowing even the basics after 4.5 years
the imposter syndrome is killing me, I feel like I’ll be very bad at litigation as I don’t understand the drafting stuff and all, which I haven’t done much and neither do I understand the section work for filing etc bc there is sooo much, it feels like it’s all information overload for a newbie who’ll intern for a month and leave, and will have to relearn it next time. i feel so stupid, I feel like I don’t belong here at all and idk what to do 🙁 corporate also seems very out reach for me, like I’ve never done corporate internships, and idk how to get a corp job atp
also i have cousins who are in their 4th year and they seem muchhh better, they seem to have a better grip on all this court stuff than I have at any point 😭 these 2’s respective dads are lawyers and help them get good internships, but I’ve also got cousins/uncles who are lawyers but I seem to suck at it and it’s killing me. i can’t quit and I also seem to be horrible at learning this shit, it’s just so complicated, i just wanna quit on internship and cryyyyy. someone pls tell me if it gets any easier, if there is atleast anyway to read up on all this and learn this section and petitions shit. sorry for the long rant
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UDon’t worry. Happens at times. Take your time to learn if you’re totally into litigation. Read and understand the terms and definitions and yes most people feel dumb and helpless during internships. If it’s up to you you can find yourself a good advocate and talk to him about your problems and why you want to learn. Don’t be shy to ask questions and clear your doubts. Make sure that the advocate is quite approachable.
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