As a lawyer who serves in a position where I provide career advice to both J.D. and LL.M. students, I am dismayed by a recent trend: the unpaid legal position, after law school.

The best (or worst) examples of this phenomenon, in my view, are new positions advertised as uncompensated special assistant U.S. attorneys, offered by the agency where I spent my prior career, the U.S. Department of Justice.