Name:Aanchal Arora
College: Campus Law Centre Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
Year of study: 3rd( Final) Year
Email ID: aanchalarora09@gmail.com
Name of the organisation.: PXV Law Partners; New Delhi ,1791, Ground Floor, CR Park
The office is huge enough to accommodate a team of 6-7 principal associates, separate rooms of 4 partners (Actually, 3 now, since Deepto Roy relocated to the Mumbai branch of PXV) and 2 interns in a month.
Yet, it isn’t one of those grand glass and steel, technologically robust structures one would expect at Global Business Park or Nariman Point. But, I think, this balance of a functionally sophisticated and simultaneously cozy set-up would immediately induce comfort and confidence in an intern. So says my experience.
Duration of internship: 1 month
Application procedure: I sent my application to the HR, Shilpi Rajpal, at shilpi.rajpal@pxvlaw.com.
I had just finished my summer internship at Tehelka and peer pressure made me realize that being in my sophomore year of Law school, I should do a legal internship too before the after-exam-winter-season of internship.
So, on August 1st, I quickly short-listed a 4 mid-sized firms in Delhi and sent my resume. I did not expect replies at such a short notice.
I happened to call the office and Shilpi said that since one of the two interns scheduled for the month of August hadn’t turned up, so she could forward my application to the partners. The procedure took a couple of days and I joined office on the 7th of August.
Duration in weeks. Days of work per week. Timings: Saturdays are off. So office is 6 days a week. They make you work on Sundays.
All right, kidding. So the office is 5 days a week. Office timings are 9:30-6:30, which reasonably extends to 7:30 on most of the days. They don’t ask you to linger around unnecessarily and of course allow you to submit work from home if you have to take an early leave.
First impression, first day, formalities: The HR, Shilpi, took me around the office, introduced me to all the associates on the first day. On the notepad she wrote the passwords for the system, interns’ email-id and manupatra. As soon as I settled in, work started flowing.
I began my day researching on a criminal matter, then switched to IPR for the second half. It was fun.
Main tasks: I used to hate corporate governance and company law and firmly maintained that it isn’t my cup of tea- mainly because I had never tried learning the practical aspects of it.
But, I would ever, ever be grateful to PXV for flipping my interest in it around by 180 degree.
Senior associates like Shivani Chugh, Aparajita and Arvind would be so patient in explaining those tedious master circulars, amendments, exemption rules, forms, compliance etc. They forwarded us formats for drafting SLPs, Due Diligence, even simple things like framing and formatting Case Notes for internal discussions.
It is a full service firm and the quality of work they give is respectable. You would not get the time to sit idle or worse, take print outs.
Work environment, people: Here, I want to tell my reason of writing this. I read the internship experience of a student at PXV Bangalorea few minutes ago and I found that “friendly interactions” which made this intern feel ”ragged” could also be a comforting factor for another (comforting and cheery for most of us, rather).
It is unfair to “blast” the firm based on the fact that the “associates acted like they were in college”.
I mean, the firm’s doing great and it is a refreshing change if associates at these law firms break hierarchy and choose not to adorn the stoic wooden corporate demeanour.
It is a usual mix of strict, easy and heady group at the Delhi office. There was an office party, a lunch at Barbecue Nation, a mini birthday celebration in my one month of internship there. Interns were decorously invited to all of them.
And again, what I found striking about PXV was the negligible hierarchy in interactions and healthy osmosis of ideas between the associates and interns. The partners, Mohit, Anuj, Thomas and Deepto were very sharp and inspiring. I would love to go back and work with them again.
The best things AND the bad things: I know I might come across as biased in enumerating my experience but there are no “bad things” that I can think of. May be that I didn’t get a pat on my back the times I put in substantial efforts.
May be the fact that they don’t give you a stipend. Or the fact that a couple of new associates are not as scintillating as you’d want them to be.
But again, all this gets overshadowed by the colossal, almost magical amount of legal knowledge you can gain in just one month there. Also, I was lucky to have an extremely intelligent co-intern for that month, who happens to be my boyfriend now.
Stipend/month: None