The Domestic Violence Institute, founded by Professor Clare Dalton and directed by Clinical Professor Lois H. Kanter, is an education, service and research organization dedicated to combating partner abuse and sexual assault. The institute's special role is to provide legal advocacy services to victims of intimate partner and family violence. It does this by training lawyers and other professions to meet the unique challenges of working with battered clients. It also fosters interdisciplinary relationships and model programs designed to make the legal system work better for women seeking assistance.

Integral to the Institure's mission is a commitment to empowering clients and client communities so that they can articulate and advance their own legal strategies and resolutions -- both in their individual cases and in the advocating for changes in the legal system that will benefit all victims. We do this by making our faculty staff and students available to support clients in a wide range of community based advocacy groups and institutions -- offering basic abuse prevention services to individual clients, expedited referrals of community group members to cooperating lawyers for legal representation in more complex matters, assistance in securing institutional and financial support and the opportunity to participate in collaborative research and demonstration grants.

Students can participate in the work of the Domestic Violence Institute beginning in their first year by enrolling in a unique interdisciplinary collaboration with the Boston Medical Center, which places law students in the Adult and Pediatric Emergency Department to interview women patients and assist in identifying victims in need of services. Students with prior domestic violence advocacy experiences act as team leaders in this program, assisting inexperienced students in their efforts gain information and experience interviewing patients, and providing direct legal advocacy services to patients who identify as battered. Upper-level students may enroll in an intensive, six credit abuse prevention clinic that places students at the Dorchester Municipal Court, advocating on behalf of victims seeking restraining orders. Upper-level students also have the opportunity to apply to an array of coop placements among legal services organizations with whom the DVI has traditionally coordinated its work. And, most recently, the DVI has become a partner in a new sexual assault initiative: Northeastern University's Campus Center for Violence Against Women. Students may now be offered clinical, volunteer, work study or co-op opportunities to support the activities of this new center. Finally, students at all levels are urged to propose work study, independent study, or co-op projects that advance the goals of the DVI, including research into the rights of battered women in the criminal justice system, in securing legal immigration status, for priority housing, medical care and mental health services and to ensure that they have the income to support themselves and their children.