BATON ROUGE, La. — If you’ve ever known someone who couldn’t afford a lawyer, Southern University Law Center is stepping in to change that.
The university has received an $800,000 grant from the Louisiana Bar Foundation to expand its Clinical Law Program, a lifeline for low-income families who need legal help but can’t pay for it. The funding will underwrite legal fellowships, strengthen client services, and create an indigent client fund that covers costs for those most in need.
The initiative addresses what experts call Louisiana’s “justice gap” — the growing distance between those who require legal representation and those who can afford it. Louisiana continues to rank among the lowest states in the nation for access to legal-aid attorneys, particularly in rural areas and cities like Shreveport, where many face evictions, custody battles, or consumer disputes without legal counsel…