ASUSU Legal Services to address students
For students who have legal issues or questions but cannot afford legal advice, help is available.
To promote the Associated Students of Utah State University Legal Services to students, Don Linton, lawyer for ASUSU Legal Services, will be speaking to students about civil and student rights. He will be speaking at noon in the northeast corner of The Hub in the Taggart Student Center this Friday.
Linton canceled his meeting with judges across the state so he can speak to the students, Celestial Starr Bybee, ASUSU executive vice president, said.
The ASUSU Legal Services is a place where students can visit to have their legal problems solved for free. Although the department has existed for years, many students are still not aware of it.
One of the main goals of ASUSU is to promote the free service among students, Bybee said.
“Our job will be to keep letting students know that we have free legal advice,” she said. “A lot of students would hear it from their professors and not believe it.”
The department started in 1991 by providing legal services to students starting with an average of five to 10 hours per week, said Scott Wyatt, lawyer for ASUSU Legal Services. But the publicity for it has gone down since, he said.
“We have empty spots,” Wyatt said.
The department provides legal advice for almost anything, although there are some stipulations, Wyatt said.
“We spend about 20 minutes with each person,” he said. “We don’t represent any students. We just meet with them.”
Wyatt said the range of cases coming from students is wide. The legal advice he has given to students in the past range from landlord-tenant problems to personal and immigration problems, he said.
In the case of a landlord-tenant problem, for instance, Wyatt said, “Sometimes we tell students landlords are violating their rights and sometimes we tell them [students] to get their act together.”
Although landlord-tenant questions seem to be the most popular among the many situations brought up by students, these questions are not the majority of questions, Wyatt said.
“We get a fair amount of questions about immigration,” he said. “But no attorney in Logan that I am aware of knows about immigration.”
In a case like this, Wyatt said, he would refer the student to the right sources.
“Some students come in because they have a question about going to law school,” Wyatt said. “And we are happy to talk to them about it.”
No matter what problems students may have, the ASUSU Legal Services can help solve their problems, Wyatt said.
“Most of all, we help them solve the problems themselves or refer them to other sources,” he said. “Happily, most problems were solved working with students.
“This is a very challenging time for students because for most students, this is the first time they are entering into contracts,” Wyatt said. “This is the first time they are away from home.”
Wyatt said this is a free opportunity for these students to come and visit with him for 20 minutes. There were times when students came in because they had a conflict among themselves while at other times, they come in with their landlords to resolve a problem, he said. But in any case, he said he is passionate about his job and he would like to meet with more students and help solve their problems.
Wyatt, who is also a full-time criminal prosecutor specializing in rape, child abuse and homicide cases, said over the years he has gained a specialty in landlord-tenant problems. The goal of the department is “to solve students’ legal problems,” he said.
Bybee said it is nice to know there is somebody there who can give students advice and can lead them in the right direction without charging them. But to Bybee, the best thing about the department is the fact the lawyers are not doing it for the money. Instead, they are doing it because they love their job, she said.
“I am yet in need of a lawyer,” said Marci Bird, a sophomore majoring in math education. “But it’s nice to know that if I need it, it’s there.”
The ASUSU Legal Services is there so students will not feel trapped, knowing there is someone professional whom they could depend on in cases of legal advice, Bybee said.
“Lots of students have problems that they don’t think are worth seeing a lawyer, and maybe they aren’t,” Wyatt said. “But if you get a free 20 minutes with a friendly lawyer, you take advantage of that.
“A lot of the problems are extremely minor that we can resolve in 20 minutes and you can go home and a piece of mind after that,” he said.