Paid Externships

June 8th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has agreed to hold hearings on a proposal that would allow law schools to grant academic credit for paid externships. I favor the proposal because it might encourage the development of innovative partnerships between employers and the academy. I also hope the proposal would ease the financial burden on law students although, as I explain below, this is unlikely to happen. Instead, law schools need to consider other options for reducing that burden.

Employers and Externships

Advocates of paid externships have urged that, given the high cost of law school tuition, students shouldn’t have to choose between paid jobs and unpaid externships. I agree that students shouldn’t have to make this choice, and that we should do as much as possible to lower law school tuition. Unfortunately, however, the proposed ABA rule change will create few paid externships.

The problem is that employers have no incentive to turn paid positions into externships. Creating and maintaining an externship imposes administrative burdens on employers. Some employers will accept those burdens in return for free labor; they hope that the externship rubric and university participation will create an exemption from the minimum wage laws. But if an employer is already complying with those laws by paying a law student for her work, what incentive does the employer have to submit to a law school’s oversight through an externship program?

There may be some employers that are willing to do this; that’s why I support the proposed change in law school accreditation standards. That change, however, offers no guarantee that employers will embrace paid externships. I suspect that relatively few will do so.

Alternative Paths

If we want to lower the cost of attending law school and/or give students more experiential learning opportunities, law schools have other choices. One option is to “decelerate” law school by allowing students to attend school part-time for the same total cost they would pay as full-time students. Currently, most part-time programs cost more overall than a full-time program would. Even summer credits cost more than academic-year ones at some schools. These pricing schemes penalize students for their need (or desire) to combine work and study.

Another option for many law schools is simply to reduce the number of credits required for graduation. ABA Standard 311 requires that students complete at least 83 credit hours to earn the JD. A quick google search, however, reveals that many law schools require more hours than that minimum. Schools that want to ease their students’ ability to work part-time for pay could simply reduce the credits they require for graduation. While they’re at it, they could reduce tuition to reflect the reduced demand on teaching resources.

Law schools could pursue either of these options today, without waiting for ABA hearings or rule changes. We could also develop other approaches to restraining the cost of legal education and enhancing its value. Don’t get me wrong: permitting paid externships is a worthwhile change. But I predict that the change will have little impact on the cost of legal education. If we want to lower those costs, we have to do the work ourselves.