Adult internships: Are they legal?

After writing about adult internships as a way to explore career change or freshen up your skills, I heard from several people asking why I didn’t cover the legal issues around these arrangements.  The main reason is that these issues are mostly of concern to employers, not to the people seeking internships. But since the question has been asked a few times -- and since it lets me flex some muscles I haven’t used for a while -- I decided it was worth answering.

Regardless of which side of the deal you’re on, it is is a good idea for everyone to be aware of potential legal concerns.

There are two main issues to think about: whether an intern is doing work in violation of labor laws, and whether the employer is exposed to any liability based on things the intern might do while on the employer’s premises or acting on behalf of the employer.

To get a better understanding of the labor law side of things, I called Joel Rice, an employment lawyer with the Chicago office of Fisher & Phillips. He explained to me is that these laws were written to protect workers from being taken advantage of and don’t recognize that there are many people -- not just students -- who are eager to work for free in order to build skills and make connections. “These laws are very paternalistic,” he explained, “and they simply don’t allow people to make voluntary arrangements.”

The other tricky thing, he said, is that the federal law has an exemption for student interns, but it might be harder to argue the exemption applies to adults. The way to get around the free labor issue, he said, is to make sure that the arrangement is primarily for the education of the intern, not for the benefit of the employer. (Complicated as all this sounds, Rice says this area isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity for the Department of Labor since the very people who would likely report a violation are the ones seeking an internship.)

Brian Kurth, founder of Vocation Vacations, a company built entirely on the model of matching up people seeking career change with mentors who can help show them the ropes, says he built his business taking these issues into consideration. The companies he works with all have proper insurance to address the potential liability issue.  And Kurth uses the language “unpaid volunteers” to ensure that what he calls “vocationers” are not viewed as employees and are not subject to workers compensation or labor laws. In addition, some of the mentor companies he works with ask the mentee to sign a non-compete agreement. “If Marci wants to volunteer at One Girl Cookies in Brooklyn and is dreaming of opening her own business in Brooklyn, our mentors will require that Marci agree not to open her bakery within X miles from One Girl Cookies,” he said.

So, if you’re trying to set up one of these arrangements with a company, expect that the company might ask you to sign something -- or might use language like this, used by Wowowow.com, to describe its executive intern program.

If you’re an employer thinking of having adult interns, make sure that the program is weighed heavily towards the education of the intern rather than towards helping you get any work done. Make sure you have proper insurance in place. And make sure your interns don’t think of themselves as employees. And  if you happen have a lawyer and accountant handy, have them sign off on the details.