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When President Donald Trump introduced his Supreme Court pick on live television last week, he said Neil Gorsuch had “demonstrated a commitment to helping the less fortunate” by working in the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project and the Harvard Defenders.

His affiliation with these volunteer programs - which offer law school students real-life legal experience representing prison inmates and the poor - helped give Mr. Gorsuch’s deeply conservative résumé a personal touch, and the groups were highlighted in news reports about his nomination.

In PLAP, students represent inmates at disciplinary and parole hearings. Defenders provide representation to indigent defendants. In both cases, students are guided by more experienced students and by supervising attorneys. PLAP and Defenders are volunteer programs and students don’t earn credit, so participation isn’t reflected on Harvard’s transcripts.

But roughly 3 dozen students who participated in the 2 programs while Mr. Gorsuch was at Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991 said they have no recollection of his involvement.

Two people who broadly oversaw the students during this period said they had no memory of Judge Gorsuch’s involvement, a 3^rd third one declined to say, and a 4^th died in 1998. Other Harvard classmates and friends of Mr. Gorsuch say they have no recollection of him discussing either program.

According to the White House, Mr. Gorsuch said he participated in PLAP his first year of law school and the Defenders during the latter part of his time there. The White House referred The Wall Street Journal to Chris Edel, a New York County prosecutor who said he attended a few weeks of training for the Defenders program with Judge Gorsuch in either 1990 or 1991. They also lived together and were members of the Lincoln’s Inn Society, a social club.

Mr. Gorsuch didn’t appear in any of the yearbook photos for either of the groups during his three years at Harvard, nor was he listed among other students as “not pictured.” Still, other students active in the groups sometimes didn’t appear in the photos, and PLAP and Defenders are clearly informal in many ways, with no official archives.

Memories can fade over 25 years, and the programs demanded no specific time commitment.