A large share of litigation internships in India are never advertised anywhere. They are filled from the inbox. That makes the cold email not a preliminary to the application but the application itself, and most are dismissed in seconds.
The good news is that the bar is low, because the majority of these emails are close to identical.
Why the standard email fails
The typical student email opens with a paragraph about the sender's university, lists coursework, expresses eagerness to learn in a reputed chamber, and attaches a CV. Nothing in it is wrong. Nothing in it is specific either.
The reader is a practising advocate with a hearing that morning. They are deciding whether this person will create work or absorb it. A generic email answers neither question, so it gets no reply.
Establish that you know who you are writing to
One accurate, specific sentence about the chamber's work does more than three paragraphs about yourself.
That might be an area they practise in, a forum they appear before regularly, or the kind of matter they handle. You do not need inside knowledge. Public information is enough, and the point is not to flatter but to demonstrate that you chose them rather than pasted them into a mail merge.
Do not invent this. Claiming familiarity with a judgment you have not read is the fastest way to end a conversation, because the one person guaranteed to know is the recipient.
Be concrete about availability
This is the single most common omission, and it is the thing the recipient most needs.
State the exact dates you can work, whether you can be physically present, and for how many weeks. A chamber with a slot in a specific month is scanning for exactly this. "At your convenience" reads as no availability at all, because it puts the scheduling work back on them.
Keep it to a screen
Short is not casual. Short is considerate. A workable shape:
- One line on who you are, including year and institution
- One or two lines on why this chamber specifically
- One line on precise availability
- One line on what you can already do competently
- A closing line and your CV attached
That is five or six sentences. If it is longer, it is being read less carefully, not more.
Claim only skills you can demonstrate on the first day
Saying you have strong research and drafting skills is unverifiable and universal. Saying that you have done a specific kind of research, or worked with particular material, is checkable and therefore credible.
If your genuine answer is that you have limited practical experience, say that plainly and offer diligence instead. Chambers take on students precisely because they are students. Overstatement is riskier than modesty, because it is discovered immediately.
Practical points that decide the outcome
- Use a plain subject line stating the request and the month, so it survives a search of the inbox weeks later
- Send from an address that is your name, not a nickname
- Attach the CV as a PDF, named with your own name rather than "CV final v3"
- Address a person by name where the name is public; write to the chamber where it is not
- Proofread once for the recipient's name and the chamber's name specifically, since those errors are fatal and common
Following up
One follow-up after a week or ten days is reasonable and often works, because the first email arrived on a bad day. Reply in the same thread rather than starting a new one, and keep it to two lines.
More than one follow-up rarely helps. Silence in litigation usually means no, and treating it as such preserves the relationship for a later cycle.
Volume, honestly
You should expect to write many of these and to hear back from a minority. That ratio is normal and is not a comment on you. It is a comment on how many emails a practising advocate receives.
What improves the ratio is specificity, not volume. Twenty considered emails outperform a hundred pasted ones, and they cost less to write than the number suggests.