Module 8
Issue Spotting: When Might a Sexual Assault Victim Need Private Counsel to Navigate the Criminal Justice System?

Empowering the Legal Community to Represent Sexual Assault Victims

Many attorneys and legal services organizations shy away from victims’ rights representation because they do not have the subject matter knowledge to represent crime victims navigating the criminal justice system. Similarly, many attorneys do not have an accurate knowledge of sexual assault. All lawyers must take a requisite number of “continuing legal education” hours per year to maintain their active status. Advocates and their agencies can work with local bar associations and legal services organizations to put together training programs for local lawyers to provide them with the legal and sexual assault knowledge and encourage them to take on cases—at no cost or less than full cost—for victims navigating the criminal justice system. It is important to help community lawyers understand the need for victims navigating the criminal justice system simultaneously with civil or administrative systems (which will be discussed in Modules 9 and 12) to have consistent representation across all of those processes by a lawyer who understands how each system interacts and affects the others.

 

Next
Previous

This module will be available to you as soon as you complete Module 1. To complete a module, you must read each of the lessons and complete the review quiz at the end.

It is important to finish Module 1 so that you have sufficient context for the rest of the program. After that, you'll have full access to jump between lessons however works best for you.

Tip: In the left sidebar, you'll notice a vertical bar of squares. Each square represents a lesson in that module. You can see at a glance which lessons you've done (brightly colored) and which ones you have not (gray).

Return to Module 1