By Ted Kleine
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“We’re not operating on a shoestring,” Haas says. “If you’re successful in civil rights litigation, you can be compensated. It’s not an easy way, though. One of the ways we’ve been able to survive economically, we have no secretaries here. Everybody does their own computer work.”
In the early 1970s the staff posed for a New York Times story about their “law commune.” Two of them were barefoot. Another was holding a guitar. Haas wore love beads over his dress shirt. Today, at 57, he’s just as casual, though in a This Old House sort of way. The other day he showed up for work in a red polo shirt and jeans, looking like he was ready to put up drywall. His rhetoric hasn’t changed much since 1969 either.
The “movement” is mostly a thing of the past, but the police will always be with us, and if you believe Haas, most of them “feel they can crack heads pretty much with impunity.” The People’s Law Office offers itself as the answer to the old Roman question “Who will guard the guardians?” Its lawsuits contributed to the firing of notorious police commander Jon Burge amid allegations he’d tortured suspects during interrogation. They also forced the police department to set up a counseling program for officers who slapped around their wives and girlfriends.
Dozens of lawyers have passed through the People’s Law Office. Among those expected at the reunion are a public defender from Washington, D.C., and an alumnus who’s arguing civil rights cases in South Carolina. Not many are working on LaSalle Street or going to court on behalf of insurance companies.
