Legal Support

Every enrolled student who pays the University Park Student Initiated Fee is eligible for our services. The level of service Student Legal Services can provide depends on many factors, some of which are outlined below. 

Every enrolled student who pays the Commonwealth Fee Board Student Initiated Fee is eligible for Student Legal Services support services. Commonwealth Campuses that do not participate in the Student Initiated Fee may also opt into the program by contributing equivalent funding. The level of service Student Legal Services can provide depends on many factors, some of which are outlined below. 

Students enrolled in graduate programs in the College of Medicine are also eligible for support services. Students at the following campuses are eligible for Student Legal Services support: 

• Abington
• Altoona
• Beaver
• Berks
• Brandywine
• DuBois
• Erie (Behrend)
• Fayette
• Greater Allegheny
• Great Valley
• Harrisburg
• Hazleton
• Lehigh Valley
• Mont Alto
• New Kensington
• Schuylkill
• Scranton
• Shenango
• Wilkes-Barre
• York

Legal Support Appointments

Scheduling an appointment ensures you get a dedicated one-hour meeting with an attorney, so your questions are fully addressed without waiting. The earlier you can provide your documentation or other information concerning your legal issue to our office, the more prepared the attorney can be for your appointment. Appointments are available in-person, via zoom, or by phone. 

• After submitting an online intake form, you should receive a response from our office within one-business day when the university is open.

Drop-In Appointments

We offer drop-in hours on Tuesdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. so you can get help when it fits your schedule. Sessions are first come, first served and typically last about 30 minutes. Students should complete the intake form before attending drop-in services. Once you complete the intake form, join the online reception room during drop-in hours to connect with staff and learn next steps.

We provide consultations on a wide variety of legal issues in both criminal and civil matters. All our attorneys are licensed in Pennsylvania and can only provide advice on Pennsylvania and certain federal laws.

Prep Your Attorney Meeting

Make the most of your appointment and come prepared:

1. Bring all documentation or other information relating to the legal problem to the initial meeting. It is helpful if you provide copies of long documents, such as leases, in advance of the meeting. Do not email social security numbers, driver's license numbers, bank account numbers or other confidential information! For sensitive information, we can provide a link to a secure portal to allow you to send the information securely.
2. Be honest. An attorney must know the whole situation, even the bad parts, to help you.
3. Our services are free, but you are responsible for all filing fees, fines, and court costs associated with your case.
4. Be prompt for scheduled appointments and court hearings.
5. Advise us of any changes in your mailing address, email, or telephone number as long as your case is being handled by our office.

We offer an array of document preparation services. We can draft simple wills, powers of attorney and living wills, and we can help students complete paperwork such as expungement petitions.

Student Legal Services offers presentations for students groups on a variety of topics, like landlord-tenant law, police encounters, and spotting scams. Learn in an interactive format in-person or virtually. Email PennStateSLS@psu.edu to learn more.

Notary services are free to Penn State students. 

• HUB Notary Services: Limited services are available at the HUB-Robeson Center by appointment weekdays between 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Students can request an appointment by emailing hubnotary@psu.edu.
• Student Legal Services: Fill out our intake form to get started. After your intake, we will contact you to schedule a notary appointment. Appointments are required for notary services so that we can ensure we have sufficient time to meet your needs.

Information about Notary Services

You should complete any required information (except signature) on the document prior to the visit to the notary. Enter N/A where not applicable.

• DO NOT sign nor date the document prior to the visit to the Notary. This is very important! The notary MUST witness your signature on the document.
• The notary is not responsible for the legality or accuracy of the document’s content and cannot offer legal advice.
• Notaries may decline to complete any transaction that falls outside the scope of their authority, training, and/or comfort level.

What to Bring

Please be prepared to show current photo identification. Examples of acceptable forms of identification include:

• Driver’s license from the United States
• State-issued identification card
• U.S. Passport
• Passport issued by a foreign government (must be stamped by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service or the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)
• U.S. military identification card with the required photo, personal description, signature, and identification number (Note: Some military identification cards do not contain all the required information.)

Documents We Cannot Notarize

Please understand that the notaries may not be able to notarize your document(s) due to various reasons, restrictions, limitations, or unavailability; the decision to notarize a document is solely at the discretion of the notary and the notary reserves the right to refuse to notarize a document for any reason. Some examples of documents that cannot be notarized by these offices are as follows:

• Vehicle titles. These documents may be presented to AAA or Tri-County Tag in State College.
• Real estate closing, mortgage, or refinancing documents due to the volume and time associated with processing these documents.
• Wills. Student Legal Services may notarize wills on a case-by-case basis.
• Penn State diplomas or transcripts. Certified copies of these documents must be requested through the Registrar’s office [LINK].
• Other diplomas or transcripts. Certified copies of these documents can be requested from the issuing institution.
• I-9 or other citizenship or immigration documents.
• I-20. Copies can be obtained at the Global Programs office.
• International documents will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
• Documents that require preparation – the notary will not draft documents or provide documents to be notarized. Students may contact Student Legal Services to inquire whether an attorney can assist with document preparation.
• Vital documents such as birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, and adoption certificates. Official copies of these documents can be obtained from the vital records office from the county where they were filed.

In some situations, our office can only provide referrals to other attorneys or services. These include matters where there is a conflict of interest, where the issue falls outside the capability, qualifications, or experience of our attorneys, or where the matter would overwhelm our capacity and reduce the availability of services to many students.

Student Legal Services can provide in-court representation for certain criminal and civil matters that arise out of Centre County. In-court representation is not available outside of Centre County. 

Before Student Legal Services can represent a student, all must enter into a written representation agreement that defines the terms and scope of the representation. The written agreement explains what Student Legal Services can and cannot do for you, so everyone is clear about the services provided. It helps avoid confusion and protects your rights. Like all of Student Legal Services support services, representation is free. 

A conflict of interest occurs there are two different parties whose interests are adverse and we have a relationship with both parties.

When we analyze conflicts, we have to treat all students who qualify for our services the same. That means that if we can't advise or represent all of the students involved in a given dispute under our ethics rules, we can only provide referral information to all of them.

We can't change it by assigning a different Student Legal Services attorney to each of two students in a dispute. If one attorney from our office has a conflict of interest, we all have a conflict of interest.

We also have a conflict if the University is a party with interests adverse to those of the student contacting us.

A small percentage of our intakes are identified as conflicts of interest, but the conflict determination can mean that the individual student loses 100 percent of their options for free legal representation. For this reason, we make conflicts determinations carefully, while also working to develop alternative resources for students in conflicts situations.

We can only help with matters for which we're qualified to give advice, or for which we have enough knowledge and information to provide competent advice.

We are not qualified to give advice or represent students in matters outside of Pennsylvania. All of the Student Legal Services attorneys are only licensed to practice in Pennsylvania. We do not provide in-court representation outside of Centre County.

There are areas of the law that require special qualifications, or in which we have no experience, or which were set out as areas in which we are not permitted to practice when Student Legal Services was formed. These include, but are not limited to:

• Taxes
  Penn State VITA offers free tax preparation assistance for students
• Patent or Trademark
  Penn State Law offers a free Intellectual Property Clinic
• Copyright
  Penn State Law offers a free Arts, Sports and Entertainment Clinic, which provides some copyright assistance
• Felony criminal charges
  Students can apply for a public defender
• Contested divorce or custody
• Class action lawsuits
• Medical malpractice or personal injury

We are required to be available to the largest possible number of students and are not able to take a case that will disproportionately use our time for a single student, at the expense of many others. This sometimes means we won't take entire categories of cases--such as felony criminal charges, medical malpractice, and personal injury cases. Sometimes it means we'll take certain cases, but only on a limited basis, such as divorce cases so long as they are uncontested, but not if they become contested; or first-offense misdemeanors through the ARD process, but not if ARD is revoked.

We run a conflicts check on every intake. If we identify a conflict, we'll do our best to get referral information to the affected student. We typically send it by email so we don't waste the student's time by making that student come in to an appointment to get the referral list.

Sometimes we aren't able to spot a conflict until the initial meeting. If that happens, we'll provide referral information when the conflict is identified.

Unfortunately, no. We are subject to strict rules about attorney client privilege, and sometimes those rules prohibit us from explaining the reason for the conflict.

Yes, students are welcome to schedule an appointment after a conflict is identified if they have questions, or if they want to provide additional information they think would prove helpful in our analysis of the conflict determination. A meeting can be useful if there are follow up questions regarding the referral information provided.

Often a meeting is not helpful to a student after a conflict decision is made because:

1. The attorney is not permitted to provide legal advice -- student often ask for 'information' or 'help' with the matter. We can't disguise legal advice as something else just by changing what we call it. If the student needs an attorney to be able to get the questions answered, the answers are likely legal advice.
2. We won't debate or negotiate the conflict decision. It is critical that we all retain our law licenses to be able to continue to provide this service.

Students are entitled to use our services to get help for their personal legal issues; however, students do not have the right to decide whether we provide referrals, advice or representation in any given case. The Student Legal Services office can't exist unless the attorneys make that decision.

We only assist students with their personal legal issues. We don't help students with their friend's legal issue or their family member's legal issue. We don't assist students as business owners. The entrepreneurship ecosystem at the University provides free legal assistance and other services for students who are launching businesses.

It is easy to understand that we can't sue the University. This proscription is more broad than that though. For example, we will only provide referral information in:

• A student's dispute against a professor
• A student's employment dispute against the University
• A criminal action where the student is alleged to have damaged University property

On the other hand, if the other party works for the University, but the action is unrelated to their professional role, we typically can help. So if a student has an issue with the landlord, and the landlord works for the University, Student Legal Services can usually still help that student because the issue is entirely with the landlord acting in a private capacity, not in the scope of his or her employment with the University.

With so many students living so close together -- much of the conflict that occurs here is between students. We have to be equally available to all students, and we can't pick which student to help based on who is 'right' and who is 'wrong' or who is the alleged perpetrator and who is the alleged victim. All students deserve the same right to representation, and often that means we can't help either student.

There is a narrow exception for situations where we would not be obligated to represent the other student, such as where the student is acting in their capacity as a for-profit business owner.

Common student-student conflict situations include:

• roommate conflict
• theft of another student's property
• fights between students
• car accidents where both drivers are students
• one student defaults on a joint and several lease where another student is also a tenant

Professional conflicts can occur even when it may not seem like there is any actual conflict between the students. Here are a couple of examples:

• Furnishing/underage charges. We often get two students who are close friends where one was charged with furnishing, and the other with underage possession. This presents a conflict for us, even though the friends both want us to help them both. To give complete advice, we'd have to advise one student of an option that could hurt the interests of the other student. Even if both students agree they don't want to take any action that would harm the other, our ethics rules don't allow us to take that friendship into account -- our zealous representation of one student could harm the interests of the other. We can only provide them with referral information.
• Drafting a sublease agreement. One student wants to sublease an apartment from another. Both students want us to help draft a sublease contract. The students may have the same goal, but when they are on opposite sides of a contract, their legal interests are different. We can only provide them with referral information.

Cases where another student is involved in an adversarial way

Conflicts of interest often extend to situations where another student is involved in an adverse capacity to another student, even it they are not directly involved in the charge, lawsuit, or conflict. The most common example of this is where a student receives a charge related to a fight. Often the fight was witnessed by other students. We couldn't represent the student who received the criminal charge because we could not cross-examine the students who were witnesses to the fight.