Stanford Law School - Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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LEGAL ID Criminal Branch. Seated I. Huhs, I. Klevens, P. Mitchell, E. Potter, W. Cottrell, I. Iennings, R. Fastov QPresidentj, M. Norek, I. Culpepper, W. Terheyden, G. Buffington, L. Aufmuth, C. Sainsbury, R. McAulay. Standing: G. Wright, I. I-Ioak, R. Shulman, L. Myers, G. Hoff, A. Mendel, A. Sherry, R. Terry, D. Brooks, R. Borass, R. Mulford, R. Emmett, I. Atwood,,B. Price, D. Blacker, P. Nicholson, D. Farmer. This year the Stanford Legal Aid Society significantly expanded its goals and the scope of its services under the supervision of Professor Iack Friedenthal. In addition to gaining meaningful practical experience by rendering daily legal assistance to the indigent and the semi-indigent, the members of the Society are experimenting with legal education programs, helping to develop effective indigenous institutions and organizations, and promoting legislative reform. Approximately 80 students participated in the activities of the Criminal Branch of the Society this year. The majority were active in the San Iose and Palo Alto Bail Bond Projects. Members of these projects interview prisoners to determine whether the prisoners have sufficient community ties to justify release on their own recognizance pending trial. The Palo Alto Project is in its second year of operation under the direction of Dan Brooks. The San Iose Project, chaired by Alan Mendel assisted by Louise Ginzburg, was an experiment to enable Santa Clara County judges to assess the feasibility of establishing a permanent project. In November the San Mateo Assistant Defenders commenced operation. This group, led by Bob Fastov, Bill Cottrell, and Larry Myers, renders assistance to lawyers appointed by the San Mateo courts to defend criminal indigent cases. The students work closely with the attorneys on all types of cases interviewing defendants and witnesses, researching problems of evidence, substance, procedure, and consti- tutional law, drafting motions and jury instructions, and assisting on court appear- ances and appellate argument. An interesting facet of this program is the practicing criminal law seminar, which is prepared and conducted solely by the Assistant De- fenders on a bi-weekly basis. Approximately 35 students participated in this yearfs Civil Branch activities. The most imaginative of the projects, the East Palo Alto Legal Services Committee, was made possible by a three year grant of funds from the American Association of Law Schools. Under the direction of Dick Kuhns and Read Ambler, the committee com- menced operation in October in the Neighborhood Legal Center in East Palo Alto. The student's daily activities are supervised by a Stanford Teaching Fellow, Roy Schmidt, who is a staff attorney in the office. In addition to interviewing clients, re- search, investigation, and drafting, it is hoped that students will shortly be making appearances before administrative boards. Bankruptcy, domestic relations, welfare, and debtor-creditor problems form the bulk of the caseload. Moreover, the members of this committee are preparing legal education and case materials which will be distributed to other law schools and, hopefully, lead to new legislation and a better understanding of the legal problems of the indigent. Most of these activities emanate from the committee's seminar on the Problems of the Poor, which allows the stu- dent to bring his practical experiences to bear upon analysis of the socio-economic foundations of poverty and the development of effective legal remedies. The prospects for continued expansion ing a record of competence and responsi- bility so that an effective case may be pre- sented for the student practice of law in indigent and semi-indigent cases. of Sta1f1fO1'd Legal Aid Society are good. It Civil Branch. Seated: R. Fastov, V. Popkin, M Sherwood R Kuhns A Mendel Standing will Continue to Seek means of establish- I. Hoak, W. Terheyden, F. Ohly, R. Farrow, R Emmett W Hoffman P Frey D Iensen E Wright, L. Anderson, W. Neukom, L. Meyers P Popovich

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LSCRR LSCRRC. Seated: E. Wright, I. Rosenberg, E. Steinman CChairmanj, L. An- derson. Standing: D. Brooks, P. Nicholson, I. Wilcox, E. Valentine, R. Kuhns, R. Fastov, L. Myers. The Law Students Civil Rights Research Council CLSCRRCJ is an independent, student-directed civil rights legal organization. Founded in l963 by law students who had worked throughout the country as legal assistants to attorneys participating in the civil rights movement, the Council serves a three-fold purpose: Qlj To bring social change within the law, C2j To develop a sense of responsibility for so- cial problems in law studentsg and CBJ To provide students with practical expe- rience in legal Work while still in law school. As one of over 40 law school branches affiliated with the Council, the Stan- ford Law School LSCRRC chapter during the past academic year provided its 20 members with legal research projects requested by the national office or by local attorneys. Most of these dealt with the constitutional questions involved in civil liberties and civil rights litigationg much of this student work was later used in court briefs and legislative materials. One of these research projects was a brief deal- ing with the constitutionality of the State of lVlississippi's refusal to permit out-of- state attorneys either to practice law or to participate in any legal affairs in the state. Again this year, the heart of the Stanford LSCRRC chapter's activities will cen- ter upon the Summer Internship Program. The chapter plans to place Stanford law students as legal interns in the North and the South, both to help solve the need for legal services in these areas and to acquire personal practical legal expe- rience. During its three years of operation, the Stanford chapter has sent more than 25 students into internship programs as legal clerks and assistants. Last summer, seven Stanford law students worked upon civil rights and the problems of the urban poor in such diverse projects as a community organization in a Chicago slum and an Office of Economic Opportunity COEOD sponsored program in a Zuni Indian reservation. The LSCRRC Summer Internship Program incorporates the goals of the organi- zation into its own aims by providing qualified technical legal assistance to over- burdened civil rights, civil liberties, and poverty attorneys. Furthermore, it exposed law students to the social and racial wrongs of society. By that exposure, it hopes to inspire continuing personal and professional commitment to a broader concep- tion of law in solution of these problems-eradication of discrimination and poverty. Over the past three summers, Stanford law students and hundreds of others throughout the country have occupied a myriad of roles. These positions in the South have included work as clerks to local attorneys and legal assistants to civil rights workers in the field. In the North, student legal work has been performed as clerks for cooperating attorneys of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress On Racial Equality, and other civil rights organi- zations. Other Northern positions have included clerking for the legal departments of those national civil rights organizations, and working as legal assistants to com- munity organization projects in Northern ghettos, Indian reservation projects, and OEO programs. This summer, Stanford Law students and other LSCRRC in- terns will inaugurate a new project under the Vista Associates Program. As Vista volunteers in OEO Neighborhood Legal Service Centers, the LSCRRC-placed stu- dents will use their skills to help organize and educate community groups by hold- ing workshops on consumer education, landlord-tenant problems, and constitutional protections, rather than involving themselves in research, writing, or litigation for individual clients. In other chapter activities, members attended a conference on The Practicing Lawyer and the Problems of the Poor in October in San Francisco. Sponsored by the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild, the conference attracted speakers from throughout the country. These experts on legal problems affecting the poor spoke on such topics as family law, welfare rights law, social agency serv- ices, wage attachments and exemptions, landlord-tenant problems, fair employ- ment practices, and social security procedures.

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Serjeants at Law: A. Levenstein, T. Flynn fPresidentj, M. Gerry, I. Iohnston, I. Petrush, A Pierce E. Wilhite. SERJEANTS AT L W According to last year's Yearbook, this or- ganization is called the Serjeant's Innfejn and began operations during the 1965-66 aca- demic year by conducting more than twelve trials held semi-annuallyf' Pj in which over 50 students participated. In fact, the humble beginnings of the organization date all the way back to 1964, and the cumulative records re- 'veal that the twelfth mock jury trial is an event which will belong to some future year. All this is not to say that the year 1966-67 has been unproductive or uneventful for the Serjeants. The present regime marked its in- ception with a well-attended inaugural ban- quet in the spring of 1966, shortly after the mock trial program was severed from the Moot Court Board's sponsorship. The new organiza- tion accepted its new name, as a mandate from above, and plunged forward into inactivity. It was, of course, the grateful recipient of all the trappings which accompany the imprimatur of the administration, including a generous bud- get and a well-equipped office in the Law Annex. The only things which the organiza- tion lacked were members, officers, advisors, cases, and the faintest idea of how to sustain itself, let alone progress, in the alien world of design and presentation of worthwhile jury trials. Although not unwilling, the Serjeants were quite unable to compromise quality for quan- tity. During the fall of 1966, they presented the successful First Annual Dj Faculty Mock Trial, United States U. Durtz, Professor Kaplan pressed eagerly for the conviction of hapless narcotics addict Larry Durtz, while San Francisco Public Defender james Hewitt and the Honorable judge Donald Constine provided the humor and Dean Keogh and Professors McDonough and Meyers served convincingly as witnesses. Somewhat stunned by this event, the Serjeants fumbled through only one additional trial dur- ing the fall term. Enthusiasm was again sparked by two excellent student trials of People v. Abbott, a clever murder case from the files of the Yale Barrister's Union, and spring term witnessed several well-executed student trials. However, any commentary on the year's ac- tivities must conclude with the observation that all was pretty much a by-product of the organization's efforts to design, for some future year, a program of mock trials derived from a file of interesting, well-tailored cases and con- ducted pursuant to carefully drafted ground- rules. Such a program is well underway and more or less guarantees the eventual success of an effective mock jury trial organization at the Stanford Law School. The interest and contribution of members of the local bench to the beginnings of this program has been sub- stantial, and as student interest and participa- tion mounts, the importance of this practical segment of the legal education will undoubt- edly be realized.