Evangelista discusses purpose of Student Legal Services, Inc. board

The Daily Orange – The Independent Student Newspaper of Syracuse, New York

Student Association President Eric Evangelista on Monday discussed his discovery of a board consisting partially of SA members that is supposed to advise Student Legal Services, Inc.
During SA’s assembly meeting Monday night in Maxwell Auditorium, Evangelista said the board is supposed to be comprised of SA’s president and comptroller and Graduate Student Organization’s president and comptroller. The SA bylaws state the SLS board should include SA’s president, comptroller and three at-large members. SLS provides free legal services to students of Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, according to its website.
The board was meant to meet regularly with SLS, but Evangelista said he only learned about the existence of the board three weeks ago. He gave an update Monday on SLS’s budget, though some of the discussion was kept private.
Evangelista said that it was his understanding that the board’s only restriction was to pass SLS’s budget. SLS requested $300,000 in funding from SA to cover its operating costs, which included $80,000 to pay the salaries of attorneys to help students navigate legal services, he said.
But Evangelista said SLS does not collect billable hours. Most lawyers keep billable hours, a time sheet that details the amount of work a lawyer does for a client, he said.
Because SLS does not collect billable hours, it is difficult to know exactly what services SLS provides, he added.
Evangelista said there was pushback from other members of the board when he requested that SLS impose billable hours. He said the sense he got from other members of the board was that they didn’t believe it was their responsibility to ask SLS to take billable hours.
“The fact that they didn’t provide billable hours to myself or other individuals who were present at this meeting was ...

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