Harvard Law Students Allowed To Resume Rent Board Work

Harvard Law School students will be allowed to resume representing city residents before the city's Rent Control Board, Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, said yesterday.

A complaint from a Boston lawyer that students were "engaged in the unauthorized practice of law" has kept members of the Student Public Interest Law Group (SPIL) from aiding tenants before the Rent Board for almost a month, but Sacks said yesterday students would be permitted to resume their volunteer work on the cases, pending Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) review of the practice.

"You don't have to be a lawyer to be in front of the Rent Board... It's our position that their activity is entirely in order," Sacks, who told SPIL members of his decision Monday, said.

Walter McLaughlin, a Boston lawyer connected with a state bar review course, said last month students were practicing law without authorization, and wrote a letter to Sacks protesting the practice.

Friendship

"I have a long term friendship with Dean Sacks. As long as he is going forward in good faith with Supreme Judicial Court review, I will hold off on my complaint" McLaughlin said yesterday.

A spokesman for the SJC, Robert Blume, said yesterday the Court's Rules Committee would consider the controversy "maybe in a week, maybe in months."

Blume said the SJC dealt with a similar complaint about a year ago and decided that "if a student was appearing and not practicing law, the court has nothing to do with it. The court doesn't purport to govern anything except the practice of law," Blume said.

The SPIL students are "the main source of help for tenants" in removal permit cases in Cambridge, City Councilor David Sullivan said yesterday.

Under the city's complicated removal ordinance, developers must obtain permits before renovating or demolishing property. "Without the students, there might be real problems in implementing the ordinances, especially if a building is vacant and there is no one to hire a lawyer," Sullivan said.