The draftsmen of the Indian Constitution have mostly been lawyers or great politicians with a degree in law. One who drafts a policy needs to be social, humanitarian and empathetic by nature since a policy is such that it should take into account a majority of the problems faced by all sections of society on the issue at hand. In all of the policies of draft amendments to either the Constitution or other statutes of law in India, the drafts are prepared by assistant lawyers and are then discussed in the Parliament for ratification and suitable changes are made.
Not just amendments to the laws of the country, policy drafting is also required in business for formulating corporate policies and this is done by a corporate lawyer. The count does not stop here. Any organization that works at a large scale requires a well-drafted legal document that contains all the policies of the organization. Thus, policy drafting and analysis is one of the most viable yet less talked-about career options in law.
How to Go About?
A career in policy analysis and drafting is one which requires a lot of patience. It is not one of those career paths where one can directly jump to conclusions on studying a matter for a few days. This is because policies have their effects on a wide plethora of social subjects and all of the facets should be taken into consideration while determining the strengths and weaknesses of a policy.
For this, a law student can ideally start his/her course by paying attention to the basic law subjects and getting a good hold of law and its connections with social facets in the first place. Those who have Economics, Political Science and Sociology as allied subjects in a 5-year integrated course are at an advantage on this point. To start, a candidate can work in NGOs which have recently been inaugurated and who look for interns to draft the policies of the NGO.
After this, the candidate can start applying to policy drafting internships like the Think India Vidhi Internship in India and the UN and UNICEF Policy Review online internships. After collecting experiences, one can apply for the LAMP internship in India which enables a student to assist a politician and work closely on the practical field. For the ultimate icing on the cake, one can ideally try for internships at the Law Commission of India in their final year.
One has to simultaneously work hard on relevant publications as well as publications are mostly the key to getting selected at all of these prestigious internships. Publications necessarily need to be related to the field of Human Rights, Economic Policy review or the analysis of any current policy. There are specialized blogs and journals who publish Policy Reviews on a yearly basis.
Along with all of this, it is very important for an aspirant to be aware of current political national and international news, treaties and conventions with affect policies of the nation and upcoming bills.
