HLS Clinics Face Cuts

Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center, which provides low-income Boston-area clients with free or reduced fee lawyering and students with law practice experience, has recently seen its budget cut by roughly a third, and four of its 13 clinics have been relocated to the Law School’s Cambridge campus from Jamaica Plain.

Three of the four clinics that moved in mid-August facilitate community business development and comprise the Community Enterprise Project (CEP), and the fourth aids families with children who have been exposed to family violence, according to Elaine McArdle, spokeswoman for HLS’s Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs.

LSC’s 37 percent funding cut came in response to a mandate to cut HLS’s clinical programs budget by 10 percent, according to McArdle. She said that LSC previously had a budget of roughly $2 to $3 million each year—10 times the amount of funding for most other HLS legal clinics.

According to HLS spokesman Robb London, LSC previously received roughly 40 percent of HLS’s overall clinical funding, but only 20 percent of HLS’s clinical students worked at the Center. He said that of the funds cut from LSC, 22 percent would be reallocated to the units moving to Cambridge and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, which provides free legal services for low-income people in Middlesex and Suffolk counties. McArdle said that the nine remaining LSC clinics will be working with a roughly 15 percent budget cut.

“Our goal was to have the least possible impact that we could on clients and students,” McArdle said, noting that other HLS legal clinics provide services that overlapped with LSC’s. She said that substantially cutting funding for smaller, non-LSC clinics was “an untenable choice” that would have been tantamount to eliminating them entirely.

Lisa P. Dealy, assistant dean for clinical and pro bono programs, said that due to the budget cuts, three LSC employees have been laid off—an attorney, a receptionist, and a managing attorney who did not work directly with students and clients. According to London, LSC previously had 25 employees, nine of whom have been moved to Cambridge.

Robert Greenwald, a senior LSC clinical instructor who will be serving as the Center’s managing attorney this year, emphasized that the Jamaica Plain clinics are committed to providing legal services to the community, despite the cuts. But he also said that while administrators “did their best to minimize the impact [of the cuts] on both students and services,” there was “no question [that] it’s not possible to maintain the same level of service” after the changes.

Brian K. Price, a clinical law professor who oversees CEP, said that his unit’s clientele would now expand beyond low-income clients, and that CEP will be renamed the Transactional Law Clinics to reflect the broader mandate.

McArdle said that moving CEP did not detract from LSC’s core mission of poverty law.

“Obviously economic development is important to the community, but it’s a different mission than, say, helping someone stay in their home,” McArdle said.

Dealy, the assistant dean, said that the decision to move the four clinics was also driven in part by a desire to enhance Law School curricula and strengthen the connection between clinical classroom work and fieldwork.

McArdle also said that locating the clinics in Cambridge may be more convenient for clients as well, especially those coming from communities on the T’s Red Line. She said that Dorchester provides 31 percent of LSC’s clients—nearly double the amount that comes from Jamaica Plain—and Mattapan provides another 8 percent.

But Price, the CEP director, said that it was too early to tell whether the move would make the four clinics more or less convenient to reach, saying only that he and the staff would be working to make services as accessible as possible for past and future clients. McArdle said that she and Price are working on an outreach campaign for CEP both in traditional Boston neighborhoods as well as areas like Cambridge and Somerville.

McArdle said that despite the potential benefits of relocating the four clinics—a “cost-neutral” move—ultimately the reorganization was prompted by the budget cutting process. These decisions were made now because the Law School had to take a broad look at its clinical programs, she said.

But some believe that even if students find it easier to participate in clinical services, they will not necessarily extract the same experience that they would have if they were actually working in the community.

“If you look at the history of the Legal Services Center and its founding inclinations, there’s a very large element to it of being rooted in the community,” said James K. Jacobs ’72, a CEP clinical instructor. He said that moving clinics to Cambridge would detract from that character and make it more difficult for students to embed themselves in the communities they serve, even if clients do continue to make the commute.

“You’re not in the community when you’re in the law school setting, especially when you’re in one so exalted, rightfully or wrongfully, like Harvard,” Jacobs said.

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.