Know Your Internship:

Internships can be a good way to gain experience in a field. Before signing up, however, you should know exactly what you'll get out of it and what your legal rights are.

From the Wall Street Journal | Feb 14, 2010 | By JONNELLE MARTE

Internships
can be a good way to gain experience in a field while job hunting or
transitioning careers. Before signing up, however, you should know
exactly what you'll get out of it and what your legal rights are.

The biggest legal issues are usually about pay. By law, internships
can be unpaid only under certain circumstances. And paid interns should
be aware of other workplace issues, such as overtime pay.

Beneficial Skills

The Department of Labor lists guidelines
under the Fair Labor Standards Act for when an internship can be
unpaid. They generally apply to employers of all sizes, including
government agencies. But there are limited exceptions for
government-related internships, such as judicial internships and those
with certain elected officials. (Go to www.dol.gov/elaws
and select "Fair Labor Standards Act" from the drop-down menu.) If
these criteria aren't met, the person would be considered an employee
and should be paid.

Among the criteria: An unpaid intern must not displace a regular
employee and he or she should be learning beneficial skills similar to
what would be taught in a vocational school. A company also should make
it clear that unpaid interns aren't guaranteed a job at the end of a
program.

In addition, an unpaid intern shouldn't do work that provides an
"immediate advantage" to the company. For example, an intern who
shadows a professional, completes educational tasks that the company
won't use for business or is lectured on certain aspects of a job isn't
performing work that the company can benefit from. But "if you are
being asked to do...clerical tasks that would normally be done by a
paid employee, that's generally not going to be legal," says Jay Zweig,
an employment attorney with the firm Bryan Cave in Phoenix.

There are some exceptions for students who get school credit for
their work or who have signed up for the internship through their
university, says George Hlavac, a labor and employment attorney with
Tallman, Hudders & Sorrentino in Allentown, Pa.

Some attorneys recommend asking the company to lay out in writing
the hours you'll be required to work, what kind of training you'll
receive, and what compensation you'll get -- an hourly wage or school
credit.

Never Too Old

Here are some other things to be aware of:

Federal antidiscrimination provisions prohibit age from being used
as a reason for denying someone an internship, along with race,
religion and gender, says Edward Easterly, a labor and employment
attorney at Tallman, Hudders & Sorrentino.

Paid interns are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40
hours a week, just like regular employees. If they put in, say, 30
hours one week when they're normally required to work 20, they don't
qualify for overtime wages. But they should get paid for the 30 hours,
says Donna Ballman, an employment attorney based in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla.

It's rare for interns to have to sign noncompete agreements, which
limit where they can work once the internship is over -- and such
agreements aren't usually enforceable in court when it comes to
interns, according to Messrs. Easterly and Hlavac. However,
nondisclosure agreements, which restrict interns and employees from
sharing a company's proprietary or confidential information, are pretty
common.

Write to Jonnelle Marte at jonnelle.marte@wsj.com