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Our duty is not to see through one another but to see one another through.

— A quote from Leonard Sweet’s book “A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café,’’ taped to a book shelf in an office of Legal Aid of North Carolina in Greensboro.

For the past two months, Elon Law students have gotten an earful.

They’ve sat on the seventh floor of Greensboro’s Self-Help Center, and for two nights a week, in offices overlooking the expanse of North Elm, they’ve worked with nearly three dozen people living on the edge of our tough economy.

They saw all kinds — college students, retired teachers, dishwashers, health care workers, custodians, a stripper and even “a nice old lady,’’ the housekeeper with the broad smile.

These people all came for the same reason: They all needed help filing their taxes.

Elon Law students, with the help of Legal Aid of North Carolina, cranked up their first clinic to offer free tax assistance for the elderly, the disabled, the people barely scraping by.

We all know too many barely scraping by.

But would students at Elon Law?

Maybe you’ve seen them downtown — head down; backpack, briefcase over their shoulders; dressed in jeans or business suits as they booked toward their carrel-classroom universe on Greene Street.

There, inside that 84,000-square-foot building, they dive into the abstract concepts of law. They sit in spiffy classrooms, laptops in front of them, and listen to a professor interpret the labyrinthine arguments about Feiner v. New York.

Sit in one of those classrooms, with the staccato of laptop keyboards around you, and the seventh floor of the Self-Help Center — less than two blocks away — feels like it’s on the other side of the earth.

Yet, in its three years of existence, Elon University School of Law has encouraged its 313 students to embrace this intangible idea of leadership and community service, with the help of 50 local attorney mentors.

For the past three years, Elon Law students have volunteered 21,029 hours. This year, 18 students have volunteered 185 hours Monday and Friday nights on the seventh floor that overlooks Center City Park.

And there, along Legal Aid’s long hall, they met people like Lee Cude.

He washes dishes at the Marriott. He’s 51, divorced, makes $12,000 a year and pays $86 a week in child support. He used to work 40 hours. Now, he’s working just 18. To get by, he eats lunch at Greensboro’s homeless shelter.

“I hope something good comes out of this,’’ Cude told Elon Law student Andrew Ackley Monday night, two days before the April 15 tax-filing deadline. “I’m trying to survive. I hope it gets better.’’

Shequita Andrews waited up front. She’s 23, a UNCG junior from Wilmington, majoring in human development. She makes $10 an hour, spending 15 hours a week working with children with mental and physical disabilities.

She tried to finish her tax return. She just got confused, so she came for help.

In an office a few steps away sat Juanita Moore. She’s 66, a retired teacher. She lives on $28,000 a year, pooled from her Social Security and own retirement savings. She’ll tell you she’s living on a budget. And it’s hard.

“I need all the money we can get,’’ she told Elon Law student Mike Sprague. “I just wish they would give us that money instead of giving it to all those corporations. They’re just greedy.’’

And so it went. For two months.

Students like Sprague say they got into law through serendipity, happenstance, interest or heredity, and they’ve spent hours, days, weeks trying to understand something like “The Making of Modern Law.’’

All 140,000 volumes.

But on Monday and Friday nights, they sat across from people like Andrews, Cude and Moore and got real face time with the grist of real law.

“It’s the client contact,’’ said Sprague, 28. “It’s serving people in need.’’

Our D-Day — April 15, our tax-filing day — has come and gone. And for many of us, it’s a painful day. Yet, for Elon Law students, it’s a bit different.

They saved people thousands of dollars. But they also see faces.

Like Cude. He’ll get a combined $59 from his state and federal tax refund.

And like that “nice old lady.’’ She’s a grandmother in her 50s who cleaned houses, lived by herself and smiled from ear to ear.

That’s the way Steven Lucente remembers her.

“She saved more than $100, and when she shook my hand and said, 'Thank you very much,’ you feel like, 'That’s why I did this,’’ said Lucente, 25, a Page High and N.C. State alum who will graduate next month from Elon Law.

“People just like her. To make her day — that is why I went through the training and why I am giving my time. Moments like that.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com