GAPSA, UA to share lawyers

Graduate and undergraduate student governments agreed last week to share the costs for legal counsel which is available to all University students free of charge, assembly chairpersons said. Graduate and Professional Students Assembly Chairperson Allen Orsi said his organization will begin to contribute to the flat semester fees for legal services which have previously been completely covered by the Undergraduate Assembly. GAPSA does not provide free legal counsel for graduate students. Orsi said that he told UA Chairperson Jeff Lichtman that GAPSA would give some money for this year's fees. The UA approached GAPSA last year about partially paying for the lawyers, but the graduate student group made no move until now to share the expense, Lichtman said last week. Lichtman said that the UA currently pays Fineman and Bach, P.C., a Philadelphia law firm, $1,800 each semester for legal counsel, but that the UA is now exploring the possibility of involving the University Law School. Thirty-minute legal consultations are available twice a month for students who have applied, UA Legal Services Chairperson Brian Morris said yesterday. Orsi said that GAPSA is now interested in seeing figures that include the degree to which graduate students use the service, but he said there is evidence that the service is utilized by some graduate students. Lichtman, a College senior, said the UA has so far been unable to get the statistics requested by GAPSA. "The lawyers are having a hard time coming up with the information," Lichtman said. "This might be the first year that [the UA] keeps records." But Morris said he is in the process of compiling the figures and expects that GAPSA "will pay their portion of last year's services." Morris, an Engineering sophomore, said he assumes that, in the future, "we'll put the money up front with hopes that GAPSA will pay for the portion they use." Orsi, a doctoral candidate in the Nursing School, also said that he will begin to keep records of the number of graduate students who use the available legal counsel. Any undergraduate or graduate student may use the legal services for any business but landlord-tenant disputes and lawsuits against the University. "We want to provide a service to University students," Lichtman said. "[We] don't want to discriminate against graduate students, but we want money from GAPSA." But Orsi said he is still waiting to see numbers which show the number of graduate students who have used the service. "If [the UA] gives us some information, we'd be able to give them money," Orsi said. Orsi said that when GAPSA jointly pays for the legal service, it will begin to advertise more about the counsel's availability. "I think that it would be to our benefit that, if we wanted to get the service utilized, we would advertise it more," he said. Morris said that six people have used the legal services already this year.

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