Law students should be paid for externships and get salary info at campus interviews, ABA House says
The days of law students working in field placements for credit without monetary compensation may be coming to a close. The House of Delegates resolved Monday at the ABA Annual Meeting to urge law schools to let students receive payment and course credit for field placements. (Image from Shutterstock)
The days of law students working in field placements for credit without monetary compensation may be coming to a close. The House of Delegates resolved Monday at the ABA Annual Meeting to urge law schools to let students receive payment and course credit for field placements.
Resolution 514 also urges legal employers to consider paying law students for field placements, even students who are already receiving course credit.
This topic has been debated in recent years. In 2016, the House approved accreditation standard changes eliminating a ban on students receiving credit and payment for externships. But the ABA continued to let individual law schools decide whether to adopt that policy.
Over half of respondents to the ABA Young Lawyers Division’s 2021 student loan debt survey said they had more than $150,000 in student loan debt at graduation, according to the report accompanying the resolution. The proposal to allow credits and payment is increasingly relevant, as the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is considering increasing the number of required credit hours for experiential learning from six to 15, the report says.
Follow along with the ABA Journal’s coverage of the 2024 ABA Annual Meeting here.
The delegates also passed Resolution 515, which urges law schools to encourage pay transparency during the on-campus interview process and urges legal employers to engage in it, as well.
“Without transparent salary information, candidates may enter negotiations at a disadvantage, unaware of the standard compensation for their role or the firm’s pay structure,” the report accompanying the resolution says. “This information asymmetry can perpetuate inequality and lead to unfair salary discrepancies.”
About a third of law students are first generation, and 35% of these first-generation students graduate expecting to owe more than $120,000 in debt, compared with 23% of their non-first-generation peers, the report says.
“This imbalance of information is detrimental to a fair and informed legal market,” said Brian Plaut, a member of the ABA Board of Governors.
The ABA Law Student Division submitted both resolutions.
