Abbott comes to Hilltop to give funds for law clinic (Photo by John Schreiber, The Daily Campus)

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was on campus Thursday afternoon to present a check for more than $360,000 to the Dedman School of Law.

The money will be used to create a Consumer Advocacy Project as part of the Civil Clinic, one of the law school’s five legal clinics that provide representation to low-income members of the Metroplex community.

John Attanasio, dean of the Dedman School of Law and the William Hawley Atwell Professor of Constitutional Law, said second-year law students staff the clinics and use the experience to gain legal experience and develop a sense of public service.

Abbott called the clinics, which have been a staple at SMU for over 55 years, a “terrific contribution to legal education here.”

The Consumer Advocacy Project will focus its work on helping Spanish-speaking consumers who have been swindled and scammed out of money.

Abbott said that while his office handles numerous consumer protection cases every year, there are too many smaller cases that his office and private lawyers cannot handle but that still deserve attention.

“There are so many consumer complaints where consumers get ripped off for a small amount of money and private lawyers won’t take the cases because they can’t make any money off of them,” Abbott said.

He added that the law clinic will give low-income consumers an opportunity to get help with their complaints.

The Consumer Advocacy Project will entail hiring a full-time staffer to work as the administrator of the project, as well as to be a part-time lawyer and interpreter for this portion of the clinic.

Associate professor of law Mary Spector said the project will give 20 to 30 more students the opportunity to work in the clinic each year, as well as increase the number of cases the clinic can accept.

Spector said the five clinics receive over 1,200 applications each year, and at any one time students are working on over 50 open cases.

Students who participate in the project will not have to be bilingual, and currently, there is not a required foreign language component to the law curriculum. It is estimated that in this year’s class of 18 first-year law students, four are bilingual.

Yesenia Cardenas is a recent law school graduate who is bilingual and worked in the civil clinic for one year as a student attorney and chief council while she was a student. Cardenas she said she found the experience of working at the clinic invaluable, and her bilingual skills were crucial.

“It was important we communicate clearly,” she said. “This grant is important because it will help us better serve the Hispanic community.”

Cardenas cited a landlord/tenant dispute she handled for the tenant, who did not speak English. Cardenas said knowing how to speak Spanish helped her better represent her client.

The funds used for the grant were part of the liquidation of Mark Nutritionals, Inc., a San Antonio company that is currently in Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. The company sold the “Body Solutions” weight loss product before going bankrupt.

Abbott sued the company in December 2002 for its deceptive marketing practices, which included the use of testimonials from radio personalities and claims that users of the supplement could lose weight in their sleep.

In a press release Abbott also said, “It is appropriate that we are helping Texas consumers with money we won in court from a company that defrauded consumers.”

Abbott said this program was unprecedented in that the “money was based on a court award and provided a benefit not heard of anywhere.”

Abbott, whose wife and in-laws are from Mexico, said preventing companies from taking advantage of Hispanics who do speak English is a personal mission of his.

“My office has been fighting scams targeting the Hispanic community since I took office in December 2002, and this development we are announcing today with the law school will enhance those enforcement efforts,” he said in the press release.In addition to Thursday’s grant announcement, Abbott’s office filed a lawsuit against Twin Tax Service, a tax preparation company that inflated its customer’s tax refunds and stole the extra money.

Abbott said the company targeted Hispanics and his office had a dozen complaints so far, and the investigation was ongoing.

He added that this was the first time action has been brought against a tax preparation company in Texas and called it “one of the hallmarks of my administration.”