Computer System to Help Law Students Advise Clients

Within the next five years, Harvard law students might be teamed up with state-of-the-art computers to advise and represent low income clients on problems with housing, family, federal and state benefits and immigration.

The more than $2million program, which officials say is at the forefront of computerization of legal studies, was officially launched yesterday by Law School and Digital Equipment Corporation officials in a press conference at Pound Hall.

The project, labelled PERICLES (Program for Education, Research and Instruction in computerized Legal Services), will develop software to teach law students how to advise low income clients-many of whom use the Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plains, said James Vorenberg, dean of the Law School.

The Center's staff, with the aid of Harvard law students, helps low income residents in Boston gain access to the legal system.

PERICLES will "bring together in a dramatic and important way" two major goals of the Law School--the teaching of students and the provision of legal services to those who cannot afford them, Vorenberg said. "This is a pathbreaking undertaking."

Phases

The first phase of the project will use the computers as a "vehicle for the giving interactive lessons" to law students, said Shattuck Professor of Law Donald T. Trautman, chairman of PERICLES's steering committee.

In the second phase of the project, law student at the legal centers will use the Digital computers to interview clients, said Trautman.

By entering all the information from cases into the computer, the students will create an enormous database of statistics, which will provide programmers with cues on what types of questions to ask in a given case, he said.

For example, Professor of Law Gary Bellow said, if a woman comes into the Legal Services Center claiming that her husband is beating her, a law student would consult the computer to find out what types of information are needed to proceed properly.

The end result should be more efficient and higher quality legal services provided to the poor, Trautman said.

Currently, sophisticated software for the program has yet to be developed, but the system is being employed for word processing and standard document production, said John H. Willoughby, the project coordinator at the Center for PERICLES.

Many housing forms which law students help clients fill out run to 20 pages, he said. The computers help the Center quickly find out only those parts which are unique to the situation, he added.

Six more computers are on order, and software which will help keep track of case information should be available by the end of the summer, he said.

"The impact is small now, but it is my hope-and I believe that it's accurate--that [the computers] will have a greater and greater impact" in the near future, Willoughby said