Tuesday, October 8, 1968
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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KU law students advise indigent prisoners
By JOHN GILLIE Kansan Staff Writer
KU law students are running the jailhouse lawyer out of business. A jailhouse lawyer is a prison inmate who advises other prisoners about the law.
The KU School of Law Kansas Defender Project provides convicts unable to afford lawyers counsel and legal advice that was only available through the often unreliable jailhouse lawyer. Twelve third-year law students work in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and Lansing State Prison.
Eight other law students assist Wyandotte County attorneys who have been assigned to defend indigent persons. Both the prison work and the work in Wyandotte County are part of the four-year-old Kansas Defender Project.
The program is a one-hour credit elective for law school seniors. The work usually requires about a half-day a week, said Benjamin G. Morris, assistant dean of the law school and associate director of the project.
The work provides the law student with practical experience in his field. The prisoner is usually the student's first client.
"I had been aware for a long time that legal education has omissions," said Paul W. Wilson, Kane professor of law and director of the project. "We don't do a very good job here in school teaching the facts of life of law practice."
Wilson explained that he began the program to provide law students an internship in their profession. The KU project has served as a model for similar legal assistance programs in law schools across the country, Wilson said.
"Nothing in law practice ever follows the text book, said associate director Morris. "In this method of learning, the student meets a real flesh and blood person with human emotions and feelings, rather than some mythical text book John Doe."
When a prisoner requests legal advice, a pair of law students is assigned to him by Harvey Berenson, assistant professor of law and another associate director of the project.
Often the convict is just looking for a loophole in the law which will set him free. "About 19 out of 20 cases are without legal merit," Wilson said. "The students prepare a memorandum advising the prisoner of this.
When an inmate raises a question which has legal merit, the students bring it to the attention of the court. The court then
"This way keeps many frivolous cases out of court," Wilson explained.
appoints an attorney to represent the prisoner.
Approximately one-third of the prisoners in Leavenworth have detainers against them. A detainer requires a man to be tried in another court after he is released from prison.
ers. Students locate wives and families for inmates, straighten out problems with the Social Security Administration and work for prisoner paroles.
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"But the most significant service is humanitarian," Wilson said. "Prisoners feel abandoned by mankind. They appreciate knowing that someone is thinking and talking about their problems with them."
9th & Iowa
KU students help the prisoner negotiate for the withdrawal of the detainers. "There are many men whom we feel have some reasonable assurance of parole, and more years in prison can do no more good for him," Wilson said.
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Students in the Ford Foundation-financed project also deal with other needs of the prison-