Ask a graduate of Harvard Law School how to probate a $5 million estate, and he will hand you an 85 page brief. Ask him what to do about a young mother in danger of losing welfare payments unless she files charges against her lover, and you can expect only an embarrassed grimace. Harvard and most other law schools have long concentrated on "affluence law," neglecting and sometimes ignoring the legal problems of the poor.

But the national preoccupation with poverty has begun to have its effect on the law schools: Harvard Law is experimenting in ways to assure equal representation for those unable to pay lawyers' fees. The Community Legal Assistance Office, which opened its doors to all comers last October, is the school's answer to the problem. Established under an $80,000 research and demonstration grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity, it offers legal aid to all indigents.

Unlike the Legal Aid Society and Voluntary Defenders--the traditional legal aid bureaus of the school--CLAO seeks to minimize its open ties with Harvard in favor of active participation in the neighborhood. Its cramped offices are located in a low-income neighborhood in East Cambridge, not in what the local poor regard as the "other Cambridge" around Harvard.

Student response to CLAO has amazed even its director, John M. Ferren '59. He had expected 50 or 60 students to appear at an introductory meeting last fall--more than 200 came. Today 75 of these second-and third year students work from five to ten hours a week under the supervision of licensed staff attorney Paul Garrity.

To attract clients, CLAO papered neighborhood churches, grocery stores, and pool halls with posters informing residents of its legal services. And clients began to come in, either on their own initiative, or on the advice of social agencies. As the caseload grew from an October average of 16 per week to 25 per week in February, word of mouth became CLAO's best advertisement. "We've been getting a lot of clients," Garrity says, "who just say they've heard somewhere that those fellows at 245 Broadway are a pretty good bunch of lawyers."

CLAO tries to preserve a normal lawyer-client relationship. No paupers oath is required; financial eligibility is determined in casual conversation. Clients fill out no forms; they discuss their cases and the staff member takes notes on the traditional yellow pad. One student works on each case until its final disposition, sometimes doing 100 to 150 hours of research on it.

During the fall term, CLAO restricted court appearances to the staff attorney, in order to give students a chance to work on case research. Since February, Garrity has permitted third year students to appear in court for small civil suits. Their record, he feels, has been quite satisfactory--both to him and to their clients, some of whom have given their "lawyers" neckties in appreciation.

To date, about half of CLAO's 436 cases have dealt with divorces, non-support cases, and other problems of "family law." Landlord-tenant and consumer problems together make up another quarter. Eleven per cent have been criminal, mostly juvenile and misdemeanor cases.

Felonies--which account for an infinitesimal percentage of the CLAO case load--could confront student assistants with ethical problems far removed from the dry case studies of the law school. "Suppose a client comes in, says, 'here's the knife,' and asks a student to defend him. What does the student do?" Ferren asks.

In other cases, economic, social and legal problems combine to form a "poverty syndrome." One student assistant arranged for the probation under his supervision of two parents accused of child neglect, helped them to arrange their debt problems, and subsequently to obtain hospital care. "Most of us no longer make snide cocktail party comments about welfare mothers; we have some insight into their problems," one staff member comments.

Such multiple-problem cases inevitably bring CLAO into close contact, and sometimes conflict, with social agencies. One social worker warned CLAO not to give juveniles the impression that they can "always get off the hook by going to CLAO."

Another area of friction has been the "family lawyer" plan proposed by the CLAO last fall. They hoped that clergymen and social workers would help them select families whose credit, housing, or social status indicated a possible legal crisis in the near future. A CLAO staff assistant would then be assigned to the family to help it avoid the potential crisis.

A frosty reception from clergymen and social workers caused the plan to fall through. In particular, most social workers felt that law students could not counsel families whose problems were still non-legal. "Students would be," they claim, "in the way of those who know what to do."

Social agencies have been somewhat more receptive to another CLAO proposal, to take advantage of lawyers' organizational skills by using them as "general contractors" for combined cases. When such a case came to the CLAO office, a student would organize the client's future contacts with other agencies--arranging meetings of workers to plan a joint case strategy.

This plan has worked well in several cases, but, according to Ferren, it appears that the personal qualities of a given lawyer, not necessarily his organizational skills, determine the outcome. CLAO continues to get references from most local social and welfare agencies.