MANY YEARS FROM A BUST TO STATE BAR

Even lawyers who used to be crooks deserve a second
chance.

Convicted perjurer and suspected Soviet spy Alger Hiss got
one.

So did Billy Cintolo, convicted of obstructing justice while working
for mob boss Gennaro J. Anguilo.

Ditto for convicted arsonist Dennis F. Liakos, cocaine dealer John H.
Quirk and client swindler James C. Corcoran Jr., a former state legislator.

All were disbarred lawyers who got another chance to practice law. Now
it's Harvey Prager's turn.

After a seven-year battle, Prager has been admitted to the
Massachusetts bar.

It's been an uphill battle.

That's because Prager, 55, made some bad choices as a graduate student
at Harvard University in the 1970s - choices that eventually led to a
career as a drug smuggler, a career that brought him $2 million in
profits.

He was arrested in 1988 in London on charges he smuggled 11 tons of
marijuana from South America up to Maine and other East Coast ports.
His arrest came five years after he fled the country, hiding out in
London, Paris and the Caribbean with different identities.

And that's where things began to change for Harvey Prager. Owning up
to his crimes, he pleaded guilty and received a five-year suspended
sentence in exchange for setting up an AIDS hospice in Portland.

He also entered law school at the University of Maine, making the
dean's list and clerking for a judge on the state's highest court.
After moving to Massachusetts, he graduated from Northeastern
University Law School in 1994.

When he applied for admission to the Massachusetts bar in 1996, he
even had support from the former federal prosecutor who tried his
case. Joseph H. Groff III wrote in a June 8, 1994, letter to the Board
of Bar Examiners that Prager had "paid dearly" for thinking
smuggling marijuana was no worse than importing "Scotch during
Prohibition."

While the Board of Bar Examiners supported Prager's bid to join the
ranks of Bay State attorneys - including the ex-cons - the Supreme
Judicial Court did not, saying Prager had not demonstrated he was a
rehabilitated criminal.

But he was allowed to reapply in five years, which he did, convincing
the SJC he is a changed man.

Prager, who is in France and gearing up for a job search in Boston
when he returns, was proudly sworn into the Massachusetts bar just a
few weeks ago.

"There is no crime that forever disbars you from being a lawyer, and
we have a tradition here in Massachusetts of forgiveness," said
Prager's lawyer and a fierce advocate of his since 1996, Michael E.
Mone Sr.

"If we as a profession believe that people can be rehabilitated, then
we ought to believe it about ourselves."