Several students at Franklin Pierce Law Center are getting an opportunity most don't, the chance to defend a real client in federal court. And it's not the professors doing all the teaching.

The client in this case is a Hudson mother accused in a federal lawsuit of illegally downloading music by Jay-Z, Lionel Richie and other artists. When a pair of professors at the law school agreed to take on the case, they began by asking their students to explain music file sharing, something this generation of students knows well.

They had a real expert in one of them, Harland Duncan, a second-year law student who previously worked in network security for Cisco Systems, a supplier of internet networking equipment. Duncan knew from his past career how one internet user can manipulate networking to not only cover his tracks, but to also make it look as if someone else's computer did the dirty work.

"I interviewed Harland for nearly two hours just to get up to speed on the technology," said professor Peter Wright, who oversees the school's clinical programs that take on real cases. "What I learned from him was that sometimes a dishonest person can use an (internet provider) address for masking . . . to make someone else's (internet provider) address be blamed for piracy. It's been helpful to have him as an expert inside the clinic."

Professor Ashlyn Lembree leads the other clinic working on the defense of Mavis Roy. Her students aspire to be entertainment lawyers once they graduate. So the chance to work on this case wasn't a hard one to sell. She underwent an education similar to Wright's.

"(This case) uses the experiences they have because they are computer savvy," she said. "They are just much more knowledgeable than I am."

Roy, who declined to comment through Wright, began this case in March representing herself. Although there had been news story after story about the music industry suing people suspected of illegally downloading music, Roy thought it was a scam when she was first accused of piracy in letters from the industry. She initially ignored the correspondence. But after Universal Music Group, Interscope Records, Motown Records and BMG Music sued Roy in U.S. District Court in Concord, she could ignore the demands no longer. She wrote the court a letter.

"I thought it was a scam and I was being pressured to send them money for something I have never done," her letter said. "I am at a loss regarding this issue. I have never downloaded nor do I even know where to go to download."

Roy asked the court for help, explaining she had no money for a lawyer. A court clerk responded, explaining that Roy was in default for not answering the lawsuit sooner and that the only thing left to decide was how much she owed the plaintiffs. The companies, which alleged that Roy had downloaded 218 files, were seeking close to $5,200 in damages, according to court records.

The court clerk enclosed in his letter to Roy a guide on representing herself in court.

Roy contacted one lawyer but couldn't afford the $1,500 requested to start the case, she told the court. Roy eventually called the law school for help and in July was connected with the clinics, where students offer legal help to indigent clients under a professor's guidance.

There are six clinics operating this semester. There's one for criminal cases, another for appeals, and one each for administrative law and international technology. The last two took on Roy's case: Lembree's intellectual property clinic and Wright's consumer and commercial law clinic.

The students and the professors interviewed Roy and learned her side of the story.

Roy told her new lawyers that she did not have a computer in her home between February and August 2007, the time she was accused of downloading music. Roy said her computer had stopped working in the spring of that year and that her brother took the computer to repair it, according to court records.

Roy's brother, who has some computer expertise according to court records, determined his sister's computer was infected with one or more viruses and replaced the hard drive. He recycled the ailing hard drive, according to court records.

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