Legal Aid Bureau Has Busy Schedule Advising Tenants, Divorcees; Warns Chiselers Beware

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, now in its 27th year of activity, has established itself as an important force in the affairs of the community of Cambridge. Growing rapidly since its founding in 1913, when 191 cases were handled, the Bureau now takes charge of an average of 750 cases yearly.

The purpose of the Bureau is two-fold. It attempts, first, to help members of the community who are too poor to hire a regular attorney in those cases where they need his services; and, secondly, to give law students the training which even so large a law school as Harvard cannot pretend to furnish.

The Bureau consists of thirty-two students in the Harvard Law School. Sixteen men come from the second-year class, and are chosen solely on the basis of their scholastic standing for the previous year. The remainder must attain a "B-plus" average in order to become members of the organization.

The first case ever handled by the Bureau was that of a scrubwoman who shark, a case which, the Bureau likes to point out, resulted in the mortgage shark's being run out of the city. The success of the Bureau hasn't diminished appreciably, however, since that time, for of the 76 cases taken into court last year, favorable verdicts were returned in 67 of them.

Cases involving landlord and tenant are the most common, with divorce and separation running close seconds. Five cases of libel and slander, and two involving estates of incompetents were handled last year.