Law specialism Incorporated - legal firms and internships Essay - 1

Law specialism Incorporated - legal firms and internships - Essay Example Statistic from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development reveals that more than 20 percent of the employers have plans to hire interns between April and September 2010, this being an increase from the summer of 2009 where only 13 per cent of the employers in the market were willing to hire these interns. On the other hand, the government has supported internships through the Graduate Talent Pool initiative that was initiated in July 2009 that aims at providing additional opportunities to the graduates that have just concluded their studies and are struggling to find work in the recession period. Although there are employment regulations governing the conduct of the organizations that are willing to employ these interns, there are no requirements for the internships to be paid. An internship charter drawn up by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development voluntarily has codes of practice details a list of six principles upon which an internship should be based to advance t he interests of the intern as well as the hosting organization. It proposes that the recruitment of the interns should be done the same way employees are recruited and proper consideration placed upon the qualifications and skills they have best fit in with the roles they are expected to fill in the firm as well as the advertisement of the internship indicating the length of the internship period. The intern should be indicted into the firm and given the necessary support to integrate them into the firm, offer supervision to the intern, answer questions and provide feedback to the necessary issues they feel need assessment. A formal performance review should be conducted formally by the firm on the intern’s period and give an evaluation of both the firm and the intern. The employees as well as the interns should be treated with the same degree of professionalism as expected in the working environment and be allowed time off occasionally to attend job interviews or complete st udy requirements that come with the completion of the internship period. At the end of the internship period, the firm should be willing to give a certification or a reference letter to the interns with details of the roles undertaken as well as the results of the performance review conducted to help such an intern in his future career development. The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organizations at any one time has 5 interns and roughly 30 staff engaged in a wide variety of responsibilities relating to research, lobbying, campaigning and press work,  including  drafting correspondence, articles and press releases, preparing policy briefings, and managing their own policy projects, (Acevo Policy Internships, 2013 p. 1). Under The Minimum Wage Act 1998, a worker is someone who has a contract of employment either oral or written with a firm to perform certain duties, services or work for another party that has to be expresses or implied in the stipulated contract and he must be paid a minimum wage unless they are subjected to some special exemptions. Hence it is not an outright assumption that an intern is a worker due to some internship characteristics to do with work experience, voluntary work or work shadowing schemes. In the general traditional approach, internship periods last six to