A dozen law students from the University of Manitoba are travelling to First Nations across the province to help former residential school students understand the details of a financial agreement over compensation for their treatment.

Calla Coughlan, one of the co-ordinators of the Manitoba chapter of Pro Bono Students Canada, says many elderly former students need help understanding the document's complex language.

The students will simplify the deal using plain language, posters and interpreters for those who can't speak English.

"We had a lot of communities saying there was confusion about the opt-out form and what it meant to opt out," she told CBC News.

"We had heard some issues about people sending in forms perhaps without understanding what all the choices were before they sent them in, and just things surrounding that."

The law students have already held sessions on the Roseau and Peguis First Nations. They plan to head to Cross Lake, Norway House and Lynn Lake later this week.

The former Liberal federal government announced a $2-billion compensation package to about 80,000 residential school survivors in late 2005.

The "common experience payment" section of the agreement would see aboriginal people who lived in residential schools receive $10,000 for their first year of attendance in the schools and $3,000 for every subsequent year.

Acceptance of the agreement releases the government of further liability relating to the residential school experience, except in cases of sexual abuse and serious incidents of physical abuse.

If former students opt out of the agreement by Aug. 20, they won't receive the compensation, but will maintain the right to sue the federal government on an individual basis.

If fewer than 5,000 affected people opt out of the deal, then the settlement will be considered binding and compensation money can be paid.

Aboriginals spent decades fighting to have the government recognize abuses in the school system that Ottawa supported financially between the 1870s and 1970s.

Tens of thousands of First Nations young people were taken from their families for months at a time and deprived of their culture. Many say they were sexually or physically abused by school staff.