Is it legal to hire unpaid interns

<p>I worked for a major financial institution, and we often had college students who would come in and offer to work for free doing an internship to get experience and a foot in the door. Since the work they would do was work that we would normally pay for, our legal department said no. I’m sure the reasons were more complex than what I’ve stated, but the bottom line was we didn’t have unpaid interns.</p>