The woman was frightened. She came to the clinic with a folder full of papers from her landlord. She was old enough to be everyone’s mother.
The student attorneys, with the ink still damp on their certificates from the Florida Supreme Court,1 treated her courteously. They puzzled over the legal significance of the notice from her landlord, analyzed the terms of her lease, pulled out the statute books, and fired up the Internet connection to do some preliminary research. They were searching for a legal solution to a problem that could have come out of a casebook or appeared on a law school exam.
And then one of the student attorneys found a connection—her Philadelphia accent. Suddenly, she was not a walking, talking legal problem. She was a person with shared memories of cheesesteaks and the kids’ television show Chief Halftown.