It’s a funny thought, but looks like a nonstarter:
> SLS cannot represent a student when the opposing party is another UW-Seattle, Tacoma, or Bothell student or UW entity.
> SLS cannot represent a student when the opposing party is another UW-Seattle, Tacoma, or Bothell student or UW entity.
Anyone on here friends with a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer who might be interested but doesn’t read HN?
It's very common in the UK. The most visible part of the unions is running social activities, often bars and events, but they can also provide legal advice to their members.
Graduate students sometimes are part of unions, but usually only if they're also employed by the university (somebody paying full tuition for an MBA probably isn't in a union, but a doctoral student teaching or doing research might be).
Undergrads doing part-time work at the university to pay bills (dining hall, bookstore, etc) could be, in theory, but probably aren't.
How would the lawyer even know, without conversation, that there was a conflict?
As for the latter, that's why i said "when they know of a non waivable conflict".
Emphasis being "know of".
Here, they know they have a conflict - they have a client, it's not this person, and they know their client will be adversarial to this person. They aren't even part of a law firm that represents multiple clients regularly or something like that where sometimes the conflicts might be waivable (often not, but still)
This is a very very easy case.
If they don't know they have a conflict, sure, they can have a conversation for the purposes of understanding if they have a conflict.
That's not this case though!
They might but in many cases wouldn't even do that because they still wouldn't get paid for it. Doesn't matter, you don't need them for that.
Who mostly pays them sets the rules.
Anyone working for students while being paid for by the university (like some ombudsman) might think twice before going too hard after anything in the institution side that they work at, with people, etc.
This isn’t to say it should be adversarial, just not endlessly borne back against the currents into being neutralized by bureaucracy and office politics.
If it was independently funded..