Natalie Boydston / Staff Photographer / nb397205@ohiou.edu

Legal Assistant Lessie Osborne, Managing Attorney Patrick McGee and Heidi Sochia stand with plush animals representing their office’s purpose. The Center for Student Legal Services protects the “lamb” (representing the students) from the “wolf” (representing the police).

Ohio University’s Center for Student Legal Services marks a 10-year milestone today in its history of defending students’ legal rights.

The legal insurance program for OU students has helped students with legal troubles and concerns for the last 10 years and has increased the number of clients by about 50 a year for the last five years, said Patrick McGee, managing attorney for the Center for Student Legal Services

“At any one time, we have about 100 to 110 open cases,” McGee said.

This quarter, about 15,000 students agreed to pay an $8 fee and signed up for the services, said McGee, who has an annual salary of $68,000. About 1,200 clients visited the office last year, and about 800 had cases go to court.

In 1997, the OU Board of Trustees approved the Center for Student Advocacy, the predecessor of the CSLS, after 10 years of lobbying campaigns by Student Senate and student activists, McGee said.

The CSA changed its name in 2004 to the Center for Student Legal Services and moved its office from above Cold Stone Creamery, 8 N. Court St., to above College Bookstore, 50 S. Court St., in response to the increasing number of clients, he said.

“It was a matter of the Board of Trustees becoming aware of the fact that students in Athens did have a lot of legal problems, particularly in the landlord-tenant area,” McGee said. “There were so many instances of abusive practices by landlords.”

Some landlords used to get away with abusive practices because students did not have resources or options for legal help, said Jim Hintz, assistant director of Campus Life for Off-Campus and Community Services.

“(Now,) there are a number of landlords that probably think twice about trying to take advantage of students,” he said.

The CSA originally dealt almost exclusively with landlord-tenant cases, confined typically to juniors or upper-class students. Most of the students in criminal cases were represented by either private lawyers or the public defender’s office, McGee said.

However, when the budget of the public defender’s office was cut in 1998, the office paid the CSA to undertake some of the criminal cases. In the same year, freshmen and sophomores, who typically live on campus, were included in the service, McGee said.

The public defender’s office pulled out from the partnership with the CSA in 2000, and the CSA started representing students in criminal cases without its assistance. Now, about 60 percent of the cases the CSLS has are criminal cases, with landlord-tenant cases and consumer cases accounting for 30 percent and 10 percent respectively, McGee said.

McGee said that one of the most memorable cases in the history of the CSLS was in 2003, when an OU student barked at a police dog and was arrested. It is illegal for people to taunt or provoke a police dog in Ohio, McGee said.

“It was kind of a joke more than anything else that it made Athens kind of a joke to the world,” McGee said.