Internship Experience @ FortiFend Legal, Hyderabad

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    Anshu Priya Parchuri

    Fortifend Legal, 2nd Floor, Purva Summit, White Fields Road, Kondapur, Hyderabad, Telangana 500081, India.

    June 3, 2026 – June 19, 2026

    Applied via email, followed by an interview and article submission.

    My work included identifying appropriate WIPO/Nice classes for client products to ensure broad trademark protection; preparing trademark search reports; tracking trademark application status on the IP India portal; drafting a reply to an examination report; drafting a client email seeking approval to file a notice of opposition; conducting research for a newsletter; and handling various other trademark-related tasks.

    Rigid and poorly planned day-to-day operations, with little regard for interns’ well-being or safety; internal coordination among seniors was inconsistent, and last-minute demands were common.

    I was genuinely interested in IP as a field and had no prior experience in the field, so I pushed myself to research as thoroughly as I could on every task assigned. This internship helped me grasp trademark prosecution concepts in real depth because of that personal drive to learn.

    While I understand that legal practice often comes with demanding schedules and pressure, I also believe that if a firm takes on interns, it should be equipped to manage and mentor them professionally. Unfortunately, that wasn’t consistently the case here.

    Communication within the team was disorganized, often leading to confusion, rework, and repeated follow-ups going unanswered. On one project, I shared a detailed work outline in advance and followed up multiple times over calls and texts without receiving a response.

    When I subsequently presented the completed work, based on thorough research aligned with that outline, it did not appear to receive full attention during the discussion, and I was asked to condense it significantly below the scope originally outlined.

    Work was often not planned adequately in advance, which at times resulted in time-intensive tasks having to be redone due to oversights on the part of the seniors involved, and I was assigned tasks outside the scope of legal work, including Canva template design to be done at home and looking for brand names overtime at the office.

    I was expected to take work calls and respond to messages after office hours and during my rides back home on a two-wheeler, despite this being an unpaid internship. Seniors also frequently spoke down about my previous internship experiences while insisting theirs was superior.

    When I was spoken to sharply and responded by calmly explaining my position or asking a clarifying question, this was treated as if I were being difficult or “talking back,” rather than reasonably standing my ground. There was zero flexibility around timing.

    During a period of heavy rain, I asked about working from home given the conditions, especially since the seniors themselves didn’t come in that day, and was told that my safety was not the firm’s concern. I got home at 11 PM that night and was still expected to be in on time the next morning.

    It was an unpaid internship.

    Stayed at home in Kokapet and commuted through Uber and Ola, which were quite expensive (about Rs. 400 per day), with heavy traffic and unsafe conditions due to flooding on roads during rain and uncertainty in booking.

    Following the conclusion of the internship, my access to the timesheet I had used to track my own work was also revoked, which I found to be an unnecessary and unprofessional way to conclude the internship.

    As a law student, I believe it is important to be transparent about internship experiences so that fellow students can make informed decisions about where they choose to intern.

    Internships form a formative part of legal education, and firms that take on interns bear a responsibility to support and mentor them appropriately.

    Disclaimer: Internship Experiences are opinions shared by individual law students are personal and subjective. Internship Experiences are NOT Lawctopus’ official views on the internship. We also do not edit internship experiences (except to enhance readability) to ensure that the intern’s voice remains intact.

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