Can a US firm legally hire someone as intern after they have graduated from school/university and aren&#39;t enrolled in any school/university? Can a firm US based in the United States legally hire someone as intern after they have graduated from school/university and aren't enrolled in any school/university anymore? If state-dependent, I am interested in California.
You can call any position an internship without a school being involved. However you need to pay them. An unpaid internship at a for profit organization is only possible if it earns some kind of school credit for the intern.
Yes, in general US prosecutors are licensed attorneys if they're practicing law. You don't necessarily technically need a license if your job is purely administrative, but to appear in court you do. They are subject to professional ethics requirements, and can be disbarred for violating them. There may be a state or two where they aren't licensed, but the common rule is that they are.
As the comment by Ron Beyer mentions when a company wants to impose such restrictions they are normally done through non-compete, non-solicitation, and non-disclosure agreements, as well as via trade secret law. Note the word &quot;agreements&quot;. &quot;Restrictions on working in the field&quot; are simply a form of non-compete agreements. A company cannot, legally, simply impose such agreements on its employees. It can require an employee to sign such an agreement as a condition of employment, and it can often require such an agreement from a departing employee as a condition of a severance payment. Exactly what is covered by such an agreement depends on its terms, and those vary widely. In most US states there are limits on the scope and duration of such an agreement. In some states the restrictions can be broad and of fairly long duration, in others they must be narrow and of fairly short duration. An agreement that goes beyond a given state's limits will not be enforceable in court, if the defendant brings that fact up. Trade secret law can prevent an employee from disclosing the trade secrets of a former employer to a new employer, or indeed to anyone else. But that does not prevent a former employee from getting a new job in the field, as long as the employee does not disclose any trade secrets. If an employee has signed, or is asked to sign, such an agreement, it is a good idea to consult a lawyer with employment law experience. If the state is known, I could edit this answer to include the limits, if any, on such agreements in that state.
Your children may have automatically become US citizens at birth, depending on how long their mother lived in the US before they were born. US law says that any child born abroad to an unmarried US citizen mother is automatically a US citizen, as long as their mother had lived in the US continuously for at least one year before the child was born. There is a clear discussion of the legal requirements in Chapter 3 of the USICS Policy Manual: US Citizens at Birth . Your specific situation is covered by § C.2: Child of a US Citizen Mother (also at the bottom of the page!). (The underlying statute, §1409 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, is here. Like most of the INA, §1409 is not reader friendly.)
This depends very much on the nature of the agreement, and whether it affects the client's rights and obligations. It may also depend on which US state this is in. If the agreement is "We will hold the negotiating meetings at your office instead of mine." the client's rights are not affected and the client probably has no veto. If the agreement is "Yes we will plead guilty to manslaughter." it isn't valid without the client's consent. If the client is giving up any rights or making any significant concessions, then the client's consent is probably required, but I can give no better answer without an indication of the subject of the agreement.
You can file a lawsuit of course. The question is whether you have any evidence whatsoever that they didn't hire you because of illegal discrimination. As you say yourself, they didn't hire you "for no apparent reason". It is entirely legal not to hire you "for no apparent reason". Without evidence of illegal discrimination that court case will go nowhere. Consider that there are jobs where 100 people apply, and a dozen people are interviewed. Getting not hired three times, when 12 people got interviewed, is just normal. If the same 12 people were interviewed at each job, then you and eight others were rejected each time, because there were 12 good enough to be interviewed, but only one job. Not being hired three times is nothing. Maybe instead of thinking of lawsuits, you might think of some training to do better in interviews. So not only do you not have any evidence of illegal discrimination, it's not even reasonably likely that there was illegal discrimination. Are you really claiming that all the three times where you didn't get the job you were the best possible applicant that was there? Did you check who got the job? Maybe it was a gay black jewish woman in a wheelchair who was just exceedingly good at her job? The point is really: Belonging to some protected class doesn't give you a right to get the job. It gives you a right not to be rejected because you belong to that protected class. It doesn't give you a right not to be rejected for any other reason. And being rejected without being given a reason is no proof, not even an indication, of some illegal discrimination going on. The most obvious and common reason for rejection is that out of all the applicants, you were not the best.
What should I do? Don't get intimidated, don't sign/accept/submit to his "agreement" now that you are securing employment elsewhere, and make sure that henceforth all your communications with the CEO &amp; his startup be --or continue to be-- in writing. The CEO's attempt to be reimbursed is pure non-sense because hitherto there is no mutually agreed clause between you two to that effect. Generally speaking, compensation is for the professional's work, not for his employment spanning "n" pay periods. Having there been no employment/founders agreement of any type, he will be unable to prove that this was agreed any differently in your case. Furthermore, the CEO's threat to seek reimbursement of your earned compensation unless you submit to his "mutual" agreement not only amounts to extortion, but it also reflects his cluelessness about contract law. For instance, that contracts which are signed under hardship or duress are voidable. By contrast, submitting to his conditions will needlessly impose on you the burden of proving duress once you decide the situation is unsustainable. This is in addition to the legal weight with which your acceptance and subsequent conduct would support the CEO's allegation(s) that you two have "at all times" been in a cognizable contractual relation. Being realistic, it is highly doubtful that a startup which pays you weeks late is able --or even willing-- to spend money on a lawyer for nonsense like this.
If you're in the United States, another lawyer in a firm you've hired may or may not be your attorney, but it would not be uncommon for him to have some involvement in the case, and he would be expected to treat you as a client in terms of privilege and conflicts of interest. Just the same, this is something you need to be very direct on. &quot;Are you my attorney?&quot; or &quot;Have we established an attorney-client relationship?&quot; are going to be your best options.