From roommate agreement forms to landlord-tenant handbooks, NIU Students’ Legal Assistance office is working to provide accurate legal information and counseling to all fee-paying NIU students.

Whether students are in need of legal assistance or are curious as to what students’ rights are in any situation, NIU students’ legal services can provide “a professional service at no additional cost to the student,” said Lynn Richards, Students’ Legal Assistance office attorney.

Richards said legal problems confronted by students “vary from year to year. College students have just as many problems as others and sometimes even more so because they are usually on a limited budget.”

“We usually encounter three main catagories of legal problems: housing problems; city ordinances and traffic violations; and consumer oriented problems,” Richards said.

She said the only stipulation to get legal assistance through the office is that “you must be a fee-paying student and you can not be making a claim against the university.”

“We try to make preventative legal education a main thrust of the program,” Richards said.

Maureen Hunter, third year law student and Students’ Legal Assistance Office law clerk said, “The most important aspect of legal services is to provide legal information. You don’t want to wait until a problem does occur. You want to be preventative.”

Hunter suggests that all NIU students should pick up literature on the Students’ Legal Assistance Office and read it. “Students need to read it just to make them think. A lot of people find themselves in situations where they don’t know what’s going on legally.

“If they read the material we offer through the office, then they would be able to better understand what their rights are and what we can do to help them,” she said.