Law Students Will Aid Civil Rights Lawyers

Eight Harvard law students will work as clerks in Southern law offices this summer in an attempt to ease the problem of understaffing facing civil rights lawyers.

A total of 50 or 60 students from Northern schools are expected to "help attorneys shoulder the burden of cases" anticipated in the Southern states, Elizabeth Holtzman, a second-year law student and one of the co-ordinators of the Harvard effort, said yesterday.

The problem should be particularly acute this summer, she said, because of the large number of SNCC volunteers who will be working in Mississippi.

The program is sponsored by the Law Students' Civil Rights Research Council, an association of law students studying problems facing lawyers in the field of civil rights.

Students will be employed by Civil Liberties Union and Negro lawyers in most of the states of the Deep South, Birmingham, Mobile, Memphis, Jackson, and Atlanta are among the cities in which the students will clerk. Memphis will be the center for lawyers handling cases in northern Mississippi and Jackson the center for southern Mississippi, Miss Holtzman said.

Joel F. Henning, a third-year law student and another co-ordinator of the program at Harvard, pointed out that there is "nothing unusual" about law students working as clerks during the summer.

Henning added that the law students will not become involved in demonstrations or registration of voters, but will leave "the kinds of work that are likely to end in jail" to others.

Members of the group will study the problems of the lawyer in the South, Henning said. He cited the laws regarding barratry, or solicitation of clients, as major obstructions to the civil rights movement.

The Harvard students going south this summer have studied papers prepared by other students who have clerked in the South to become familiar with some of the problems there.