FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 13, 2005

CONTACT:
Drake Professor Suzanne Levitt, (515) 271-3851, suzanne.levitt@drake.edu
Student Elizabeth Horton Plasket, (515) 669-4610, eap010@drake.edu
Student Thomas Dance, (804) 901-0239, tbd002@drake.edu
Alex Scherr, president of Clinical Legal Education Association, (706) 542-6510, scherr@jd.lawsch.uga.edu
Deborah H. Bell, professor of law at the University of Mississippi, (662) 915-6867, dbell@olemiss.edu
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

DRAKE LAW STUDENTS HELP COMPILE MANUAL FOR LAWYERS WITH CLIENTS DEVASTATED BY HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

Ten students at Drake University Law School are working with law students from across the country to create a Web-based legal advice manual to help lawyers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The manual, which is posted at www.katrinalegalrelief.org/wiki, is intended to guide attorneys and citizens in various aspects of state and federal laws affecting victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many of the lawyers who are volunteering at disaster recovery centers are asked questions outside their particular area of expertise. The manual anticipates questions that are likely to be asked, provides the attorney with easily accessible answers and directs them to the statute or cases that will allow them to provide advice on the spot.

The Drake students, who are receiving no pay or credit hours for their efforts, are concentrating on consumer debt issues, including credit cards and fraud. Members of the National Association of Consumer Advocates are reviewing the students' work before it is posted on the Web site.

The effort is called the Hurricane Katrina Task Force. It includes clinicians from Drake, Harvard, UC-Berkeley, the University of New Mexico, University of Georgia and the University of Mississippi. The project was organized through the Clinical Legal Education Association and the American Association of Law Schools.

It's an incredible effort by students from all over the country and they're doing a great job," says Suzanne Levitt, professor of law and executive director of clinical programs at Drake Law School and a member of the board of directors of the Clinical Legal Education Association. "This project demonstrates the power of the Internet to provide a clearing house for legal assistance during disasters."

The manual, which covers 15 different areas of law, has been put together in a matter of weeks even though a project of this scope would normally take six to 12 months, says Deborah H. Bell, professor of law at Ole Miss.

"This could not have been accomplished without the willingness of law schools across the country to jump in and commit substantial resources immediately," Bell adds. "Suzanne Levitt of Drake has been one of the leaders of the national group. Her involvement, her enthusiasm for the project and the generous assistance of her students, will be an immense contribution."

Elizabeth Horton Plasket, a 44-year-old in her second year of law school at Drake, was among the first students to volunteer for the project. "As a former Red Cross Disaster Services chairperson, I immediately wanted to go to the Gulf coast to help run a shelter or provide other aid to victims, but I couldn't take my teen-age son out of school," Plasket says. "Then I talked to a friend in Biloxi who had checked on an elderly woman from her church and found that a tree had cut her house in two and a contractor wanted $4,000 to remove the tree when it should cost around $1,000 under normal circumstances. It really made me mad that a contractor would try to take advantage of anyone, especially an older person. Two days later, we were asked if we would volunteer time to this project and I jumped at the chance to make a difference."

Plasket has devoted 24 hours to researching Mississippi laws on consumer issues related to fraud. "I've learned that many state statutes protect the business and not the consumer," she says. "Before signing a contract, consumers need to be fully aware of their rights if something goes wrong."

Thomas Dance, a first-year student at Drake Law School, says he volunteered for the project because "I wanted to in some way help those who were affected by this horrible tragedy. As a new student in law school and as someone with limited time and financial resources, I felt this was the best way I could make a contribution."

The project recently received coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The story is posted at http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=30wzuqy9p66kz64otuzsn798efiwncvp.

- 30 -