The judiciary just told judges to ask who else is paying their interns.

The change

The Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States published Advisory Opinion No. 119, "Law Firm Payments to Volunteer Interns and Externs Working in Chambers," in September 2026. It is the newest entry in the Committee's published set, which is carried in the Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 2B, Chapter 2. The chapter's own revision line records the change on September 8, 2026, and the opinion before it in the sequence was published in February.

The question it answers is narrow. A law student volunteers in a federal judge's chambers, unpaid, researching and writing alongside the law clerks and often earning academic credit. A law firm the student expects to join later offers to pay a stipend. May the student take it, and may the judge make the appointment knowing about it.

Why the question arrived when it did

Firms began putting unusually large sums in front of first-year students. Above the Law reported in March 2026 that at least fifteen Am Law 100 firms were offering between $25,000 and $50,000 to 1Ls who commit to returning as second-year summer associates, naming Davis Polk & Wardwell, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Cooley and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan among them. Most of those programs ask the student to spend the first summer somewhere other than a law firm. The ABA Journal reported in November 2025 that Davis Polk would pay $25,000 to students who spend the summer of 2026 in a nonprofit, government or academic placement and then join the firm's 2027 summer class.

An internship in chambers is one of the placements a student can choose to satisfy that kind of condition. That is where the money and the courthouse meet.

The rules the money ran into

Volunteers in chambers are taken on under 28 U.S.C. 604(a)(17)(A), which authorizes the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to accept and use "voluntary and uncompensated (gratuitous) services." Advisory Opinion No. 111, published in March 2014, records that the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees was amended to cover interns, externs and other volunteer court employees expressly, so that people doing substantive work for the courts without pay carry the same ethical restraints as paid staff.

Canon 4E of that code is the operative provision. It bars a judicial employee from taking a salary, or any supplementation of salary, as compensation for official government services from any source other than the United States. Opinion 119 also points to 5 U.S.C. 7353(a), which bars employees from accepting "anything of value" from those who do business with the courts, and to Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which requires judges to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.

None of this is new. Advisory Opinion No. 83, on payments to law clerks from future law firm employers, had already advised judges against appointing volunteer externs whose law firm payments, whenever made, depend on the individual serving in chambers. Opinion 111 likewise advised against an intern paid out of funds pooled from local law firms, on the ground that the source of the funding was the controlling factor.

What Opinion 119 adds

It puts two affirmative steps at the front of the appointment. Judges should ask whether their interns or externs will receive a stipend or any other payment from a future law firm employer. Students should tell their judges whether they intend to accept one. If the answer is yes, the judge is to examine the circumstances of the payment before the appointment is made, and must be satisfied that the arrangement complies with the two codes and the Committee's guidance.

The test is whether the payment is tied in any way to the student's service with the court. If it is, the judge is advised against proceeding with the appointment. The worked example in the opinion is a firm that pays a summer stipend to a first-year student on the condition that the student intern or extern for a judge. That, the Committee says, would violate Canon 4E and raise an appearance of impropriety.

Two clarifications do most of the work. Timing does not cure a tied payment: it does not matter whether the money changes hands before the internship begins or after it ends. And a broader condition does not cure it either. Where a firm conditions payment on obtaining any public-service position, including one outside the judiciary, the opinion states that the analysis is unchanged, because the stipend would still be provided as a result of the individual's service as a judicial intern or extern.

Where a payment survives

If the money is not tied in any way to the service with the court, the opinion says it may be permissible under both codes. The example given is a stipend or other payment offered to a future summer associate conditioned only on a promise not to work for a competitor firm, which the Committee describes as arguably not tied to that associate's service with the court.

Even a permissible payment carries limits. It may not be made during the internship or externship, following Advisory Opinion No. 83, under which a law clerk may not accept any payment or salary advance from a law firm while serving. Payments made before or after are left to each judge applying sound judicial discretion to the facts, with the Committee encouraging judges to weigh whether the payment is, or appears to be, compensation for the student's work for the judiciary. The opinion adds that some judges may prohibit interns and externs from accepting any stipend or similar payment, whatever the timing. And a student who does receive a permissible payment should not work on any matter in which that employer appears as counsel.

The bonuses the opinion sets aside

The Committee separates the stipends from two payments it has long treated as ethically permissible. A clerkship bonus is tied to the individual's experience as a law clerk, work for which the clerk has been or will be paid by the United States, so it is not payment for the clerk's actual labor. A signing bonus offered uniformly to all new associates and paid when the offer is accepted does not depend on judicial service at all. The intern and the extern are different, the opinion reasons, precisely because they are not paid: a firm's stipend is more likely to be read as salary for work done on behalf of the judiciary, which is what Canon 4E forbids.

What does not change

The appointment itself stays voluntary and uncompensated. Nothing in the opinion puts the judiciary in the position of paying these students. Educational stipends from law schools and other non-firm sources continue to be governed by Advisory Opinion No. 111, which allows a modest one in limited circumstances after the judge evaluates the source of the funds, their purpose and the duration of the service. The bar on volunteer employees working on matters involving future employers already existed in Advisory Opinions No. 74 and No. 111; Opinion 119 restates it rather than creating it.

These are advisory opinions, not disciplinary rules. They tell judges and judicial employees how the Committee reads the two codes. The decision on any individual appointment stays with the individual judge.

Three consequences for practicing attorneys

What changes, in practice, for firms and for the lawyers who appear against them: