Hero professors protect law students from horrors of receiving credit for paid internships Forum

[Anonymous User]

http://witnesseth.typepad.com/blog/2015 ... ak-up.html

The American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has published a series of proposed changes to the rules for law schools. One of them is a change to "Interpretation 305-2" (current 305-3), a change that would repeal the current ban on law schools giving academic credit for field placements (i.e., externships) for which law students are paid. The current Interpretation prohibits your law school from giving you credit for paid work experience, no matter how practical the experience gained or how closely related to your proposed area of practice. The proposed change would lift this prohibition to allow law schools to decide whether to offer such credit.

Unfortunately, a small but organized minority of law professors don't want you to be able to be paid for work and receive academic credit at the same time, and they are the ones being heard by the ABA. The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), which are special interest groups that advocate for the interests of law school professors, are lobbying the ABA to try to stop it from allowing you to receive pay and credit for the same externship. CLEA is very experienced at this sort of lobbying, regularly pressuring the ABA to add requirements to accreditation that pile on more tuition cost for law school students. These groups are adding insult to injury by depriving law students of the opportunity to defray some of the cost they themselves have created by preventing students from taking paying jobs and simultaneously earning law school credit.

CLEA-SALT argument seems pretty weak. But I'm open to the idea that they are being mischaracterized. Any arguments?

[Anonymous User]

This rule infuriates me. Just had this discussion with my school about my paid government part-time job. Under ABA rules they said I can either refuse to accept payment and get externship credit, or take the money and not get credit.
There is absolutely no logical argument for why this should be true.

[smallfirmassociate]

It's really all just protectionism on behalf of the professors. If you could get paid while learning how to be an actual lawyer instead of falling asleep reading about ancient royal writs of replevin and shit, then more students will get credit that way, law schools won't have to offer quite as many courses, and there would be fewer professor positions.

[LeDique]

As a matter of FLSA compliance, the current rule seems to be the correct one to me. First, receiving academic credit is not a "safe harbor" that makes an FLSA claim untenable against a firm that hires an unpaid law student intern. The internship he seems to describe — basically, just doing legal work like you would as an associate — would not meet the FLSA criteria. Compare what happens at almost every law school internship to what is described in the DOL opinion letter. These things aren't even close, and the fact sheet only further emphasizes the educational value prong. Second, there is an argument that schools would be liable under the FLSA's broad "suffer or permit to work" language for these unpaid internships for issuing credit based on the control they exercise.

Of course, this guy isn't really concerned with the FLSA, he's concerned with the economic and pedagogical results for law students (and I don't disagree with him there). But he completely ignores the realities of the FLSA that could explain the opposition and chalks it up to a conspiracy instead. Maybe he is right.

this is a call-in:

test

[lacrossebrother]

Sorry dude self banned for the bar. Umm ha I never understood the rationale for "oh it's for school credit so we don't have to pay them." The intern six factor test just kinda got blown up though so I also don't know how to even read the regs anymore. I mean imagine if this were like a company saying "We don't like vacation, but if you do one week of unpaid charity work for us a year in which you get to clean our toilets, you will be eligible for a promotion! This is a good charity because it gives our janitors a break."

[lacrossebrother]

It's really all just protectionism on behalf of the professors. If you could get paid while learning how to be an actual lawyer instead of falling asleep reading about ancient royal writs of replevin and shit, then more students will get credit that way, law schools won't have to offer quite as many courses, and there would be fewer professor positions.

This is dumb. At least at my school, it was fairly competitive as it is to get an externship although most people still managed at least one because the school limits you to only two of those. These things are desirable because there's no test and you can put it on your resume. I agree professors have an interest in discouraging a shift towards field placements, but to say that anti-remuneration policies have anything to do with anything besides people in power liking free labor is dumb.