"We have an affirmative action program, but we work hard not to have to use that program by trying to aimour marketing at women and minorities," Sulentic says. "We have tremendous diversity."

Although the Bureau is alive and kicking, it still has some problems to solve, staffers and administrators say.

Problems to Solve

Among these is a decline in the number of students who apply to work at the Bureau. The number of applicants peaked early this decade and has begun to slack off, says Agoglia, who directs recruiting.

"During the late 1970s and early 1980's, it hit its highest point as judged by the number of applicants," Agoglia says. "The applicant pool is declining. We've been talking about it a lot. Some people talk about the change to the more conservative perspective of students. In general, I'm not really convinced of that."

One reason for the decline in applications may be the large number of other clinical programs now available at the Law School, many of which require a smaller time commitment.

The Law School highly recommends that students do some clinical volunteering as part of their course work, but the Bureau is now only one among many programs in which they can work.

"There are plenty of other ways of doing clinical work on a less extensive scale, like the Jamaica Plain Clinical Center, where you only do clinical work for a semester," Agoglia says. The Law School also places students in other legal service centers around the Boston area.

The Legal Aid Bureau also suffers from a problem that inevitably plagues student legal services programs: litigation often lasts longer than the three years law school program most students attend.

"There are normal turnover problems," Haire says. "You naturally lose some continuity. It's hard to work on some cases when you have exams or vacation. But that's going to come up in any academic legal services program."

In addition, some Bureau iniatives have spurred criticism from a few Law School professors. They charge that the law students should be more careful about what sort of cases they handle. But administrator Daniel L. Greenberg, clinical studies director, says that this criticism hasn't been substantial, and that the Law School supports the Bureau's continuous changing nature.

"There is always criticism from some parts of an ecclectic faculty on most issues," Greenberg says. "I think it is fair to say that one of the excellent things to remember as the Legal Aid Bureau celebrates its 75th birthday is that it is steeped in a great deal of tradition but is flexible enough to change and to grow."