[en] As part of the design effort for a free electron laser driven by the Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA), the author reports studies of bunch-length compression utilizing the existing infrastructure and hardware. In one possible version of the NLCTA FEL, bunches with 900-microm FWHM length, generated by an S-band photo-injector, would be compressed to an rms length of 60--120 microm before entering the FEL undulator. It is shown that, using the present magnetic chicane, the bunch compression is essentially straightforward, and that almost all emittance-diluting effects, e.g. wakefields, chromaticity, or space charge in the bending magnets, are small. The only exception to this finding is the predicted increase of the horizontal emittance due to coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR). Estimates based on existing theories of coherent synchrotron radiation suggest a tripling or quadrupling of the initial emittance, which seems to preclude bunch compression during regular FEL operation. Serendipitously, the magnitude of the predicted emittance growth would, on the other hand, make the NLCTA chicane an excellent tool for measuring the effects of coherent synchrotron radiation. This will be of considerable interest to many future projects, in particular to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). As an aside, it is shown that coherent synchrotron radiation in a bending magnet gives rise to a minimum possible bunch length, which is very reminiscent of the Oide limit on the vertical spot size at the interaction point of a linear collider