Is it a red flag if all of your work experience during law school was unpaid/volunteer? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Recent grad here. Every internship I did during law school was unpaid (for the summers, I received fellowships from bar associations, foundations, etc. but the employer never directly paid me). Would this be considered a red flag to hiring committees of postgrad jobs, since the standards for hiring an unpaid intern are much lower than for paid positions? My concern is that employers look down on uncompensated work.

[nixy]

No. First, it’s not always clear whether a position is paid or unpaid. Second, it’s not universally true that standards for unpaid jobs are lower than for paid jobs (and you presumably had to complete for the fellowships that paid you). What matters is the kind of experience you got and how that experience is relevant to the jobs you’re applying for.

For instance, if you wanted to be a public defender it would be entirely typical that all your law school experience would be unpaid, and working a paid gig for a law firm might not be that helpful because it wouldn’t be comparable to the job you’re aiming for. Conversely, if you spent all your summers working for legal aid or an immigration clinic, it might not be very attractive to a biglaw firm, but that wouldn’t be because the work was unpaid, but because it’s not that pertinent to what biglaw does.

[texanslimjim]

It's mainly a biglaw thing because those firms expect that new associates will have worked at a large law firm 2L summer. A recent graduate applying without that experience is someone who likely struck out at OCI, which tells the firm that a bunch of other firms looked at you and passed. I wouldn't call it a red flag though -- maybe a yellow flag.

Outside of big law it's not an issue at all.

[Anonymous User]

It's mainly a biglaw thing because those firms expect that new associates will have worked at a large law firm 2L summer. A recent graduate applying without that experience is someone who likely struck out at OCI, which tells the firm that a bunch of other firms looked at you and passed. I wouldn't call it a red flag though -- maybe a yellow flag.

Outside of big law it's not an issue at all.

But aren't standards for hiring paid interns higher? And don't compensated internship positions involve more responsibility than volunteer gigs? Getting unpaid legal internships was easy as pie for me. It seems like I was never asked for transcripts.

[nixy]

Not necessarily at all. Some unpaid gigs are very competitive, some paid gigs (for instance law clerk at a small local firm) aren’t necessarily so. And there really isn’t any clear correlation between pay and responsibility. People who do unpaid gigs for the public defender or legal aid sometimes do actual trials for a real client; people who do paid gigs for a biglaw firm sometimes spend their summer doing research memos on someone’s pet project that has no practical relevance at all.

In any case, employers don’t value paid work over unpaid work per se, it depends on who the employer is and what the work you did was. You need to drop your assumptions.

Really what you need to think about is how the experience you did get makes you a good candidate for the jobs you want to get, not just whether work was paid or unpaid.

[The Lsat Airbender]

Nixy is right. In the narrow world of summer legal jobs, pay is pretty much orthogonal to how valuable the experience is, whether as substantive practice or as a signalling mechanism on your resume.

To think otherwise sounds like a prejudice carried over from undergrad internships, where getting paid for the summer helps signal that you were doing something substantive/valuable.

[Anonymous User]

Nixy is right. In the narrow world of summer legal jobs, pay is pretty much orthogonal to how valuable the experience is, whether as substantive practice or as a signalling mechanism on your resume.

To think otherwise sounds like a prejudice carried over from undergrad internships, where getting paid for the summer helps signal that you were doing something substantive/valuable.

Interesting, but that doesn't explain why I wasn't asked for transcripts when that almost always happens for paid internships/summer associateships. Almost as if I was held to a lower standard.

[The Lsat Airbender]

Nixy is right. In the narrow world of summer legal jobs, pay is pretty much orthogonal to how valuable the experience is, whether as substantive practice or as a signalling mechanism on your resume.

To think otherwise sounds like a prejudice carried over from undergrad internships, where getting paid for the summer helps signal that you were doing something substantive/valuable.

Interesting, but that doesn't explain why I wasn't asked for transcripts when that almost always happens for paid internships/summer associateships. Almost as if I was held to a lower standard.

It doesn't explain transcript vs. no-transcript because, again, it's an unrelated factor. All you're noticing here is a correlation with a dominant causal factor: biglaw.

[nixy]

Nixy is right. In the narrow world of summer legal jobs, pay is pretty much orthogonal to how valuable the experience is, whether as substantive practice or as a signalling mechanism on your resume.

To think otherwise sounds like a prejudice carried over from undergrad internships, where getting paid for the summer helps signal that you were doing something substantive/valuable.

Interesting, but that doesn't explain why I wasn't asked for transcripts when that almost always happens for paid internships/summer associateships. Almost as if I was held to a lower standard.

...or almost as if different kinds of employers value different qualifications and grades aren't the be-all and end-all of evaluating someone's skill as an intern/lawyer.

But I mean, you can continue to believe you're doomed if you like. No skin off my nose.

[nealric]

Why would prospective employers even know if your work was paid or not?

I did once see a resume from someone who listed the salary at every job they'd ever had- down to the $7.25/hr fast food job in high school. I think the intent was to show growth, but it was pretty cringeworthy. Don't do that. Prospective employers don't need to know.

[Anonymous User]

Why would prospective employers even know if your work was paid or not?

I did once see a resume from someone who listed the salary at every job they'd ever had- down to the $7.25/hr fast food job in high school. I think the intent was to show growth, but it was pretty cringeworthy. Don't do that. Prospective employers don't need to know.

By asking at the interview. Also, some job applications annoyingly ask you to manually enter in each and every position (even though they ask for a resume too, which covers the same info), and make you put down whether it was compensated or not.

[nixy]

Why would prospective employers even know if your work was paid or not?

I did once see a resume from someone who listed the salary at every job they'd ever had- down to the $7.25/hr fast food job in high school. I think the intent was to show growth, but it was pretty cringeworthy. Don't do that. Prospective employers don't need to know.

By asking at the interview. Also, some job applications annoyingly ask you to manually enter in each and every position (even though they ask for a resume too, which covers the same info), and make you put down whether it was compensated or not.

I’ve never had anyone ask at an interview about whether something was paid or unpaid, and I’d be surprised if anyone but HR saw what you entered through an online system, but again, it doesn’t matter.

[nealric]

Why would prospective employers even know if your work was paid or not?

I did once see a resume from someone who listed the salary at every job they'd ever had- down to the $7.25/hr fast food job in high school. I think the intent was to show growth, but it was pretty cringeworthy. Don't do that. Prospective employers don't need to know.

By asking at the interview. Also, some job applications annoyingly ask you to manually enter in each and every position (even though they ask for a resume too, which covers the same info), and make you put down whether it was compensated or not.

I’ve never heard of someone asking this. I’ve also never seen an HR system that asks your salary for every job you’ve ever been in. If they ask your current salary, put zero. That info isn’t for the actual decision makers anyways.