AN EVICTION notice comes in the mail to a Cambridge mother with four young children. She doesn't think that there is anything she can do to stop it. But the notice looks like a legal paper, and something tells her she should go to a lawyer. She doesn't have any money, but maybe she remembers hearing one of her friends talk about a group of lawyers in the neighborhood who work for free.

She walks into the Community Legal Assistance Office (CLAO), not sure of what anyone can do for her. A law student discusses her problem and suggests several actions she can legally take.

Paul Newman '63. chief CLAO staff attorney, describes CLAO's job as "trying to convince these people that they have rights." CLAO is a neighborhood law office at 235 Broadway opened by the Harvard Law School. Six full-time attorneys and about 100 law students provide free legal aid for Cambridge residents whose income falls below a set limit. The office is funded by an OEO grant with a ten per cent contribution from the Law School.

CLAO works with people who have never used the law for protection, people who have been on the adverse end of the legal chain in such encounters as evictions, repossessions, and police arrests. Consequently, CLAO uses several tactics to show its clients that they can use the law to help themselves. Probably the most effective of these is simply talking. "Sometimes you sit around and have coffee... and get the word across to them that we're doing things." Newman said. "You show them that they have the right to fight."

This can mean showing a tenant that he can fight his landlord's attempts to evict him. Or it can mean telling a welfare recipient that a social worker has no right to search his home. A great deal of talk is often required simply to uncover the problems, since CLAO clients frequently do not realize their legal rights.

Howard Cohen, a second year law student, conducts long interviews with his clients. "The one thing they don't get from any other service is time," Cohen said.

"Sometimes you uncover a problem that wasn't there before. That's where the clients come in with one problem and have another problem solved that was on their mind but they hadn't realized," he explained. "You know, somebody comes in who has been a landlord-tenant problem. You find that she also has a welfare problem and then you help her out on your own initiative."

One measure of the success of this method is the number of clients who are happy enough with the service to return. "A lot of my clients have called back and brought other problems in and asked for me." Cohen said. During the first half of last year 24 per cent of CLAO's cases were from former clients.

But the individual cases are often boring and frustrating for the law students: boring because they are the same routine cases and frustrating because the real problem is that the whole legal system needs reform.

About 40 per cent of CLAO's cases are in family law. Most of these are routine divorces and are handled by law students. Good interviewing sometimes turns up other problems. but the students still admit that most of the divorce cases are boring and are one of the reasons why students leave CLAO. "Particularly the Harvard Law students sort of think in grander terms and get upset about doing the very mundane work." Cohen said.

ONE WAY to get away from the case-by-case routine is to spend time on legislative reform and on test cases. Van Lanckton, the director of CLAO, acknowledges the importance of individual service, but says that legislative reform is more significant. "Rather than simply guiding one individual through the legal maze, we try to change the system and make it more fair." Lanckton said.

However, there is disagreement at CLAO about this point. "This day by day plodding along is greatly underrated." Newman says. "In a way I see law reform as a cop-out. You're going to the courts where the problems are often not the worst."

Decisions on test ???

CLAO's practice. CLAO clients include tenant unions, consumer groups, the Cambridge Tenants' Senate, and a chapter of the Welfare Rigths Organization.

Determining if the impetus for organization should come from CLAO or the group involved is a touching issue. Traditionally, lawyers are not supposed to seek out business. However, as Newman points out, "The rules are really relaxed when you're not doing it for money."