LNAT model essay: unpaid internships

It defines the term in the question, so the answer applies to the right cases, and judges the objection on the essay's own value. 507 words.

1. Unpaid internships that involve real work should be banned. If a person is doing a job, they should be paid for it. Short periods of observation, where a student watches and learns but produces nothing for the employer, are different, and nothing in this essay is aimed at them.

   NoteThe answer is followed by a definition that limits it. That avoids the easy counterexample of a day of work shadowing.

2. The central problem is access. An unpaid internship of several months, often in an expensive city, is open only to those who can live without earning. Students whose parents can support them, or who can stay in a family home in London, can take the place; others cannot, however able they are. Because internships are often the route into law, media, politics and finance, unpaid places quietly hand the next generation of those professions to the children of the comfortable. The effect is hard to see in any single office, but it shows in who reaches the top.

   NoteA clear mechanism followed by its consequence for whole professions. The point about who ends up in powerful jobs gives the argument its weight.

3. There is also a simpler argument about fairness to the intern. An organisation that accepts weeks of research, writing or administration from a young person is gaining from that work. If it would have to pay a temporary assistant for the same tasks, it is hard to see why the label "intern" should make the work free. Calling something a learning opportunity does not change what is being done, and nearly every job teaches something. The law already recognises this in principle: a person who works as a worker is entitled to the minimum wage, whatever their job title.

   NoteA second reason, about the intern rather than society. The final sentence ties the moral point to an existing legal principle without overstating the law.

4. The best objection is that a ban would reduce opportunities. Small charities, theatres and start-ups may be unable to afford a wage, and if they must pay, they may simply stop offering places. Some experience, the argument goes, is better than none. Students themselves sometimes say they would rather work unpaid than not at all. Interns also gain contacts and references that may be worth more than a few months' pay, and no one is forced to apply.

   NoteThe objection is stated sympathetically, with the employers most likely to be hurt. That makes the reply more convincing when it comes.

5. Even if a ban reduced the number of places, the remaining places would be open to everyone who could do the job. Fewer opportunities, fairly shared, are better than more opportunities reserved in practice for the wealthy. Nor is the choice truly free when the alternative, for an ambitious graduate, is to give up on the profession. And the claim that organisations cannot afford to pay often means only that they would rather not: if an intern's work is valuable enough to want, it is valuable enough to pay for, at least at the minimum wage. Where a small charity truly cannot pay, a short, well-structured placement that is clearly about learning, not output, remains possible under this rule.

   NoteThe reply weighs the two outcomes by the essay's own standard, fairness, then challenges the objection's hidden assumption.

6. Experience matters, and some organisations will offer fewer places if they have to pay. That is a price worth accepting. A rule that every intern who does real work is paid would make the start of a career depend on ability rather than on the ability to work for free. That is a principle worth more than the extra places a ban would cost.

   NoteThe conclusion concedes the cost honestly and ends on the essay's central contrast.

What would make it stronger: Explain how the ban would be enforced, for example by treating interns who do real work as workers entitled to the minimum wage.