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Oct. 4--You are at North Lawndale College Preparatory Charter High School, taking a test in street law. Here is question 44:
Ms. Biehl helps people with civil law cases. This means she can help: (a) Carolyn when her family gets an eviction notice. (b) Monique when she gets fired because her boss does not like female employees. (c) Ebony when she buys a car that does not run. Or (d) all of the above.
The answer, of course, is (d), as most, if not all, of the 400 students at the school now know.
For the last two years, lawyer Sarah Biehl, 29, a self-described "girl from rural Ohio," has run what might well be the city's first-ever in-school law clinic.
Her office isn't much, a former supplies closet on an upper floor of the school, at 1616 S. Spaulding Ave. But her practice is particularly attuned to the needs of her clients--teenagers. A sign outside invites them to "drop in and ask a question any time the door is open."
And they do.
"Kids get lost in our society. They don't have a voice, but they are affected by bad things," Biehl began, in an interview. "When they understand how the system works, they are so far ahead. They know how to fight back. They are better at problem-solving."
Initial backing for the clinic came from the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. The law firm grants 25 fellowships a year, each worth $46,000 and benefits, to provide public interest legal services in low-income areas.
Biehl has been a Skadden fellow for the last two years, running the clinic and serving as a resource person in civics classes at the school.
As Biehl notes, teenagers who are struggling to make it in rough Chicago neighborhoods often have to deal with challenging life issues that outsiders have never confronted. What they need, she suggested, is a better sense of available options when dealing with serious situations.
Those can include everything from dating violence to how to fend off shady mortgage bankers trying to steal a family home. Biehl helps her young clients understand the law, paperwork, bureaucracies and--in many ways--how the system works.
Biehl's clinic has been "nothing but good news," said John Horan, North Lawndale College Prep's director of expansion.
Students, in turn, like Biehl's open-door policy.
"You learn what steps to take, what you can do to solve problems," said Jasmine Stuart, 17.
jsanderson@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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