SU Law Center awarded $25,000 grant to fight domestic violence

The Southern University Law center has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to support an initiative in the fight against domestic violence.
The funding will enhance Southern University Law Center’s clinical program and add a new area of clinical training by creating a Domestic Violence Clinic. The Law Center Clinical Education Program will maintain its present Administrative Law Clinic, Juvenile Law Clinic, Criminal Law Clinic, Elder Law Clinic, and Low Income Tax Payer Clinic which already handle an array of cases.
“The grant is the first step in the Law Clinic’s efforts to lead the fight against domestic violence and will serve as the building blocks for educating law students, faculty, and the Baton Rouge community about domestic violence issues,” said Donald W. North, director of the Law Center’s Clinical Educational Program.
The funding will be used to hire a part-time managing attorney to operate the Domestic Violence Law Clinic, the sixth clinic to be added to the Clinical Education Program.
According to North, the primary goals of the new program is to train future lawyers to be more sensitive to the needs of victims of domestic violence, to impress upon the faculty the need to integrate such training into the curriculum, and to provide critical legal services to combat domestic violence.
The clinic will train law students to intervene in domestic violence matters, as part of a court-ordered program, to draft temporary restraining orders/complaints, to prepare domestic violence witnesses for hearings and trials, and to provide appropriate mediation.