HEMPSTEAD, N.Y., Oct. 16 — One student walked out in protest, but the reception for Lynne F. Stewart, the radical lawyer convicted on charges of smuggling messages out of prison for a terrorist client, was generally courteous here on Tuesday as she addressed a Hofstra University Law School conference on legal ethics.
The Hofstra student newspaper last week condemned Ms. Stewart, 68, as “dishonorable,” and criticized the law school for including her among 20 speakers at the three-day conference entitled “Legal Ethics: Lawyering at the Edge, Unpopular Clients, Difficult Cases, Zealous Advocates.”
“How horrible does someone need to be, and what heinous acts must they commit, before it is O.K. to say that they should not be put behind a podium and given a microphone?” said the editorial in the Oct. 11 issue of the student paper, The Chronicle.
Plans for a protest by undergraduates were announced, but school officials said it did not materialize.
Most students seemed to view the visit as a kind of rerun of the recent free-speech debate at Columbia University. Columbia administrators drew sharp criticism last month for inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, to speak to students of international relations.
“This is Hofstra’s Columbia moment,” said Nathan Samuel, a second-year law student at Hofstra. “Columbia was able to take moral clarity down a notch, and now Hofstra is just jumping on the bandwagon.”
At midpoint in Ms. Stewart’s address, Mr. Samuel walked out, but he later returned to stand in line to ask a question.
Ms. Stewart, disbarred after her 2005 conviction on charges of perjury and providing material support to terrorists, addressed a standing-room crowd of 150 people, most of them law students. She defended her behavior as the court-appointed lawyer for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric convicted in connection with the 1993 Trade Center bombing, and urged students to vigorously defend such clients or be prepared to see the demise of “the First, the Fifth and the Sixth amendments,” the guarantees of free speech, legal procedure and public trial.
She admitted to having been “cavalier” in the way she followed certain regulations governing communications with her client, but argued that the human bond between a lawyer and client is critical to the lawyer’s role as legal adviser.
“I was representing a client, and I would do it again, but I would do it in a way that would better insulate me,” she said. Her main regret was having been unaware that the government was secretly taping her conversations with Mr. Rahman, she said.
Ms. Stewart is free on bail pending an appeal of her conviction, She was sentenced to serve 28 months in prison.
Joanna Grossman, a professor of law and associate dean at Hofstra Law School, said Ms. Stewart was invited “because her experience fit the theme of the conference.” Before being disbarred, she had a long record of defending unpopular clients, including members of the Weather Underground and Mafia figures.
“Most people believe that she did cross the line and was justly punished for it. She is a good person to invite to this conference. Some would say as a cautionary tale.”
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