Taking the Law to the People

Founded 75 years ago as the first student-run legal service organization in the country, the Harvard Law School Legal Aid Bureau occupies the first floor of an unimposing white house in a corner of the Law School campus.

But behind the doors of Gannet House lies one of the most active law student organizations both on campus and in the community.

In 1913, the Law School created the Bureau to provide legal assistance to the poor and disadvantaged. Since that time the Bureau staff has grown from fewer than 25 people to more than 60 second- and third-year law students.

As the Bureau prepares to celebrate its diamond jubilee this weekend, President Steve Sulentic says the Bureau closely resemebles a full-fledged legal practice. The all-volunteer staff provides free legal service to the poor throughout the Boston area. Their jurisdiction includes matters ranging from divorces to harassment charges, handling 383 cases last year.

We provide legal services in several different areas to people who cannot otherwise afford lawyers," says Sulentic, a second-year law student. "We cover pretty much the whole area, although for divorce cases, for instance, we're restricted to Middlesex County."

Past participants in the program include Professor of Law Gary Bellow and Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan.

Sulentic says most students average 20 hours of work each week, but that the requirements of the job often bump that number up. "The tradition is we say 20 hours a week, but if you are at a particularly busy time you could easily go over that," Sulentic says.

The Bureau has always been funded by the Law School, although it occasionally receives private donations. "We get a budget through the Law School and we assess the membership every year," Sulentic says. "We also have donations coming in." Last year's budget was $165,852.49.

The Law School's money has funded an constantly growing set of programs. "Over the course of 75 years, it's changed quite a bit," Sulentic says, adding that the Bureau's growth has come largely because of "a move in the last decade toward a considerably greater variety of casework."

Impact Advocacy

The Bureau in recent years has entered the realm of impact advocacy programs," in which students from the Bureau go into the community rather than waiting for members of the community come to them.

One such impact advocacy project led the Bureau to file a class action suit on behalf of 1000 tenants at the Fresh Pond Apartments in Cambridge three years ago. The Rindge class action suit, as it is called, charges the building management with harassing and unfairly evicting tenants. The Bureau filed the suit after several building tenants brought in separate complaints and the case is set for trial this summer.

"This was pretty unusual case for the Bureau, since we usually only handle individual cases," says second-year law student Ken Schmetterer, who is working on the case. "Three years ago we got a preliminary injunction, and now we're going in for a permanent injunction to get damages for the tenants who were harassed."

The staffers working on the class action suit have volunteered to put in extra time in order to complete the case, Schmetterer says. "Four or five of us are going to be sticking around after finals working with witnesses and conducting the actual litigation in court," Schmetterer says.

As in all cases the Bureau handles, the students working on the Rindge case will be working with one of six supervisors who serve at the Bureau. The supervisors are private attorneys who work with the students and give them legal advice.

Massachusetts law allows qualified students to offer free legal services to the poor, but according to third-year student Kenneth H. Zimmerman, a Bureau staffer, the students need supervisors because "realistically we don't know enough about how to go to court."

In addition to more community advocacy programs, the Bureau recently began a pro-se--"do-it-yourself"--divorce clinic for couples who are filing uncontested divorces. The clinic teaches them to file and complete the case without official legal help, thus avoiding drawn-out litigation.

Not only have the Bureau's programs changed over the years, the type of students who join the Bureau has also undergone an evolution.

Until 1969, the Bureau selected its members by their academic standing and was considered one of the top three activities for students with high grade point averages. Now first-year law students apply to the Bureau during the spring, and the Bureau selects its members by random lottery.

"We hold a series of informational sessions every spring for the 1Ls [first year law students]," Sulentic says. "There's a clincial fair we take part in. We do a big marketing campaign. Then people sign up, and we have a lottery."

"If you didn't make Law Review you would go on to the Bureau," says Bureau Vice President Miichael Agoglia, a second-year student. "That changed to a voluntary basis for a number of reasons."

Bureau staffers as a whole are now more interested in hands-on experience and working with disadvantaged people than they were in the past, students say.

"Until 1969, [the Bureau] was very status oriented," Zimmerman says. "People who joined were not necessarily interested in legal services."

Now students join the Bureau for a number of different motives, according to Sulentic. For many, he says, "the opportunity to serve the disadvantaged in the community" is the most important reason.

"I feel very strongly that lawyers should be in legal service," says staff member Susan Haire, a third-year student.

But for others, the appeal of hands-on legal experience, which is the basis for the wealth of clinical studies programs at the Law School, makes the Bureau a good alternative to the Law Review or other non-clinical organizations.

"There's the whole educational component," Sulentic says. "It's a clinical program where you're dealing with real people and real problems in the real world. That's the whole idea behind clinical studies."

"I decided to do it because I wanted the practical experience for cases," Haire says. "It's less prestigious. It's a basic decision on what you want to do. If you want nuts-and-bolts lawyering you don't get at the Law Review, you can do the Bureau. It's a guess where your talents and interests lie."

"I wanted something different than the straight academics after the first year," Agoglia says. "The opportunity to do top quality clinical work in legal services appealed to me."

Unlike some Law School activities, the Bureau has not had problems attracting minority students, Sulentic says.

"We have an affirmative action program, but we work hard not to have to use that program by trying to aimour marketing at women and minorities," Sulentic says. "We have tremendous diversity."

Although the Bureau is alive and kicking, it still has some problems to solve, staffers and administrators say.

Problems to Solve

Among these is a decline in the number of students who apply to work at the Bureau. The number of applicants peaked early this decade and has begun to slack off, says Agoglia, who directs recruiting.

"During the late 1970s and early 1980's, it hit its highest point as judged by the number of applicants," Agoglia says. "The applicant pool is declining. We've been talking about it a lot. Some people talk about the change to the more conservative perspective of students. In general, I'm not really convinced of that."

One reason for the decline in applications may be the large number of other clinical programs now available at the Law School, many of which require a smaller time commitment.

The Law School highly recommends that students do some clinical volunteering as part of their course work, but the Bureau is now only one among many programs in which they can work.

"There are plenty of other ways of doing clinical work on a less extensive scale, like the Jamaica Plain Clinical Center, where you only do clinical work for a semester," Agoglia says. The Law School also places students in other legal service centers around the Boston area.

The Legal Aid Bureau also suffers from a problem that inevitably plagues student legal services programs: litigation often lasts longer than the three years law school program most students attend.

"There are normal turnover problems," Haire says. "You naturally lose some continuity. It's hard to work on some cases when you have exams or vacation. But that's going to come up in any academic legal services program."

In addition, some Bureau iniatives have spurred criticism from a few Law School professors. They charge that the law students should be more careful about what sort of cases they handle. But administrator Daniel L. Greenberg, clinical studies director, says that this criticism hasn't been substantial, and that the Law School supports the Bureau's continuous changing nature.

"There is always criticism from some parts of an ecclectic faculty on most issues," Greenberg says. "I think it is fair to say that one of the excellent things to remember as the Legal Aid Bureau celebrates its 75th birthday is that it is steeped in a great deal of tradition but is flexible enough to change and to grow."