Law School Students to Work With Judges in District Courts

Students at the Law School began last Tuesday to participate in a course which will focus on the lowest level of the judicial system by offering them direct experience as law clerks in district courts.

John C. Cratsley, Lecturer on Law, said Monday that his seminar, The Judicial process in Community Courts, marks the first time that the Law School has offered a course centering on district courts.

The 15 students enrolled in the program meet with Cratsley every Tuesday night for two hours, and will spend eight hours a week as part-time volunteer law clerks for district court judges in the Boston area, for which they receive four Law School credits.

Cratsley, who is also a special justice in Roxbury Municipal Court, said he hopes that "the field work will make a vital input into the learning process," adding that the district courts are "another aspect of our judicial system which deserve examination."

"Clinical Offerings"

Cratsley said that he is also offering the course with the intent of expanding the Law School's "clinical offerings." The only other clinical course now beings offered places students with the Cambridge Public Housing Authority.

"I'm not aware of any program involving so novel an interaction between the curriculum and the lowest courts," Cratsley said. He said the only similar program he knew of in the past allowed students to act as observers in Superior Court.

Carl Rogers, a law student in the program, said Monday that the class had agreed at its first meeting that the district court system suffers from overwork and a lack of qualified attorneys. He said that the present court does not fulfill its purpose within the community.

Rogers said he hoped the program would result in "some small constructive changes in the court system."

James W. Dolan, district judge for Dorchester, said yesterday that he could not estimate the success of the program since it has not yet begun, but said "it should be a real opportunity for students to become involved in the administration of justice at the lowest level."

Dolan said that the program should permit students "to get away from books and theory to see how the legal machine operates with all its blemishes and mistakes. Law school deals with law only in the abstract."

He said that he plans to use his clerks for research as well as for projects not directly related to law, such as "systems analysis of the district court, helping to make it more responsive, effective, and efficient."

Marilyn Go, another stqdent in the program, said it would be "a rare opportunity to see the other side of the judicial process, this time on the side of the judge rather than the client."