Students' Paper, Called 'Outlaw,' Hits Law School

A group of students at the Harvard Law School has founded a new publication which is challenging the traditional tenets of Harvard's method of legal education.

The publication, known as The Outlaw (after the Jefferson Airplane's line that "we are all outlaws in the eyes of America") is a bi-weekly newspaper which made its first appearance this month.

The first issue of the newspaper includes articles on prison revolts, the Seattle conspiracy trial, the Kent State indictments, and the increasing politicalization of the legal process.

"We feel the case study method of learning law is irrelevant after the first year," Marian R. Penn, a third-yea student and one of the founders of the paper, said yesterday, "We feel we should have the opportunity to use the school as a base to get out in the community to do something."

Courses at the Law School are based on the case study method. Recently, many students have been arguing for a program of clinical legal education, in which students get credit for actual field work in areas such as consumer protection, tenant-landlord relations, and draft problems.

Students now get one or two hours of course credit for field work, but many complain that they have little time to do it in addition to their regular academic programs.

"It's absurd to study cases and not apply them when there are people out there to be helped," Penn continued. She said that the paper would contain articles explaining what is being done in other universities in the area of legal education reform, and would advocate giving full course credit for work in such areas as legal services and welfare offices.

"We feel that people who go into corporate law get good on-the-job training, because the corporations let them just sit and learn about what's happening for a couple of years," Penn said, "but lawyers who go into public service work have no actual experience, and have to experiment at the expense of their clients."

Frank E. A. Sander, professor of Law and chairman of the Law School's student-faculty committee to investigate educational reform, said that he was happy that The Outlaw was promoting discussion of the issues involved.

But, he added, "People should realize that we're investigating these problems already trying to find innovative solutions to them."

The Outlaw is part of a Cambridge based media collective of 14 papers, which includes the New Old Mole, and Hysteria, a women's Itberation publication.