Student Legal Aid to Prisoners Threatened

A Harvard Law School program that has provided free legal representation for prisoners for the past 30 years may face a crippling reduction in available student advocates.

A policy change is currently under review at the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) that would prohibit all first-year and some second-year students in Harvard’s Prison Legal Assistance Program from representing prisoners in court.

These students make up the vast majority of PLAP, a student-run, volunteer-based organization that provides inmates with free legal representation for administrative prison hearings on matters such as discipline violations and parole.

The policy, known as Rule 303, has been part of the Supreme Judicial Court’s program for many years, but in the past it has not been applied to PLAP. According to DOC spokesperson Justin Latini, in the course of a routine review 18 months ago the DOC began deliberating over whether to apply the rule to Harvard Law School.

Public hearings on the matter ended earlier this month, and the DOC’s decision is now pending in the hands of commissioner Michael T. Maloney. Under the proposed change, second-year students who have taken a course in evidence could still serve as advocates.

Officials at the DOC are concerned that first and second-year students do not have enough experience with law to be able to adequately represent clients. Latini said that limiting the pool of participants in PLAP mostly to third-year students would protect prisoners from inexperienced advocates.

“You could have a first-year that hasn’t even taken Criminology 101 walk in in October and represent themselves as a law student,” Latini said. “If someone says they’re a law student, especially if they’re coming in to represent, [one] would think they were pretty versed in the law.”

PLAP’s supervising lawyer John Fitzpatrick said that the DOC’s fears about younger students are entirely unfounded.

“A lot of time and resources are invested in training before students go out and do their first hearing,” said Fitzpatrick. “I spend a lot of one-on-one time training with them. I work with the students, step by step to get them prepared for their first hearings. They also do a mentorship under a second or third-year law student.”

Fitzpatrick added that the DOC had provided no evidence to prove that younger students give less adequate counsel.

“The fact is we’ve never ever in the history of PLAP, to my knowledge, had a problem with a first-year solely because that person was a first-year,” he said.

PLAP student leaders said the rule would devastate the organization’s ability to help inmates.

“It would severely limit the number of students available to represent prisoners,” said Kia Sears, one of PLAP’s executive student directors. “The largest population in PLAP is the first-year class. After that, there’s other opportunities to get practical experience, and there’s more out there to choose from.”

Fitzpatrick said that letting all students continue to participate in the program provides a dual purpose—prisoners get access to legal expertise they wouldn’t otherwise have, and students gain field experience.

“Prisoners aren’t respected by the correctional officers and the hearing officer who conducts the disciplinary hearings,” Fitzpatrick said. “Having someone from outside come in and speak on their behalf, their voice is actually heard.”

“Students get a tremendous range of benefits from this experience,” added Fitzpatrick. “If you’re a first-year, you get a lot of intensive training on how to be an advocate right from the get-go of your law school experience. It’s one of the best ways to learn how to become an advocate, actually representing clients in real adversarial hearings.”

PLAP participants who would be affected by the ruling were also anxious.

“I find it really frustrating that people who are willing and able to help would be kept from doing that,” said first-year Daniel Alban.

The DOC acknowledges that the new rule would make significantly less representation available for inmates. But Latini said that he hoped the schools could adjust.

“I would hope that schools would be able to provide the inmates with representatives,” Latini said. “If part of their program is to assist, that would be part of their program. We can’t set their criteria for them.”