Courtesy of Kyle Encar

Two law students work at the Loyola law school for the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center. The center provides free legal aid to individuals in need.

The Gillis Long Poverty Law Center has been a hallmark institution of social justice on Loyola’s law campus for more than 30 years.

Created through a congressional endowment to Loyola named in the wake of representative Gillis Long’s passing, the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center has been fulfilling the social justice mission of Loyola for decades by providing free legal services to those for the New Orleans community who are most in need.

The center has also successfully provided real world experience for law students who seek to make a difference in others lives, such as third year law student Alex Barrow.

“I was drawn to the mission of the clinic, which is basically to give access to justice to members of the community who otherwise would be foreclosed from accessing justice because they don’t have funds,” Bellow said.

Director of the center Davida Finger described part of the work they do as providing law students with funding to work with local civil legal services.

“This past summer, we funded and paid 40 law students to work with legal services organizations, primarily around the state,” Finger said.

Bellow received funding to work with the Jefferson Parish Public Defenders Office, and the work he did confirmed that this was something he wanted to do in his professional career.

“[The job] allowed me to see the inner workings of how to offer effective assistance of counsel to indigent defendants. That was critical for me because that’s my goal- that’s the work that I want to do when I graduate next year,” Bellow said.

Bellow wasn’t the only one who praised the program and its benefits. Recent Loyola Law graduate Jessi Dominique enjoyed the community built around the program and how it encouraged her in her career.

“It put me where I needed to be. It was so beneficial to be able to meet the people that I needed to meet,” Dominique said.

Dominique credited the people who advised her in the program with their assistance in helping her discern where she wanted to work.

“The people who are over it are just amazing,” she said. “They put you where you need to be and that part is what’s so beneficial to your community because people that are placing you are listening to you, and they know that you care, and they want you to be placed somewhere where you care.”

In a report to their advisory board, the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center funded 40 civil positions in 2023. Since 1991, they have funded over 1,100 positions, totaling more than 4.2 million dollars.

During its time, other programs have emerged from the center. Most recently, the March with Gillis program launched last spring, which provided a month of social justice programming to the law school.

According to Finger, each program in the center remains true to its mission of helping people and educating law students who want to do good in the world.

“It really provides them with a glimpse into the world of social justice lawyering, and so many of our students want to do that as a career,” Finger said. “It’s a huge benefit and a way to really engage with experiential learning.”