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I received a summer offer at a V20 firm. However, during college (over five years ago) I had two underage drinking arrests. The first one involved a fake ID and the charges were criminal impersonation and underage consumption. The second arrest was underage possession of alcohol a year later. The charges stemming from both arrests were dismissed. I've met with university administration and attorneys who told me that this shouldn't be an issue for C&F so long as I disclose everything accurately.

Now, I am not sure whether I should disclose these incidents to the firm unsolicited. I am prepared to accept the offer. My primary concern is that the firm won't run the background check for a few months and, if it will be an issue, I'd rather learn this now when I still have a handful of callbacks scheduled at comparable firms.

I have two questions. First, does anyone have experience with the background checks that these firms run and know whether arrests without convictions show up? Second, does anyone have any insight into how firms view underage drinking / fake ID arrests? Any advice is much appreciated.

bumping this with another question of how the firms check references/prior jobs. do they only call those references provided by you on a reference list, or do they ever just directly call past companies/firms listed on your resume?