Louisiana: legal help you can afford

There is no public defender for a divorce in Louisiana, or anywhere else — the right to a free lawyer is a criminal-case right, and a divorce is a civil case. What exists instead is on this page, with the link to each one. Start with the fee waiver and the question of whether your spouse can be made to pay your legal fees, because those two are the ones people never think to ask about.

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The five things to try, in this order

Ordered by how much they are worth relative to how hard they are, not alphabetically.

  1. Ask about the filing fee waiver. In Louisiana it is called In Forma Pauperis (IFP) Affidavit / ‘Fee Delayer’. Described by the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Law Library as delaying rather than fully waiving fees — ‘the IFP is not a fee waiver… you may still need to pay certain fees’ later in the case.
  2. Ask whether your spouse can be ordered to pay your lawyer. The court may award attorney fees and costs when it determines that either party has caused unreasonable delay, in actions under R.S. 9:374; a precise general statewide statute for ordinary divorce attorney-fee-shifting was not independently confirmed. (La. R.S. 9:374 (attorney fees related to use/occupancy of family home; interim allowances) — see also general community-obligation principles for pre-divorce attorney fees and costs)
  3. Check the statewide legal-aid portal. LouisianaLawHelp.org (includes the Louisiana Civil Legal Navigator / Louisiana Legal Navigator) lists the program that covers your county and what it takes.
  4. Use the court self-help service. Local district court Self-Help Resource Centers (e.g. 19th JDC Self-Help Resource Center, Orleans Civil District Court Self-Help Resource Center). In-person help with court forms for people representing themselves; availability varies by parish/judicial district.
  5. Try the bar referral service. Louisiana State Bar Association Lawyer Referral and Information Service. (800) 421-LSBA(5722) / (504) 566-1600; LSBA also runs a 24/7 legal-aid/pro-bono hotline at (888) 411-1333.

Legal aid in Louisiana

Legal aid organizations are funded to serve people under an income threshold, and family cases are one of the areas they most often take. Being turned down by one is not the end of it — the threshold, the caseload and the priorities differ by program and by month.

OrganizationWho it coversNotes
Legal aid providers via LouisianaLawHelp.org (e.g. Acadiana Legal Service Corporation, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Corporation)statewide, organized by region
A law school clinic here takes family cases

Loyola University New Orleans College of Law – Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic (accepts family law cases). Clinics are free, supervised by faculty, and the students have far more time for your case than a stretched legal aid lawyer does. They take few cases and they follow the academic year, so the answer depends heavily on when you ask.

Worth knowing about Louisiana

  • LSU Law and Tulane Law also run legal clinics; Tulane’s clinic requires referrals/appointments and does not take walk-ins.
The option almost nobody is told about

Limited scope representation. You hire a lawyer for one piece — one hearing, one document, a review of an agreement before you sign it — and do the rest yourself. It costs a fraction of full representation and it puts a lawyer in the two or three moments that actually change the outcome. How it works, and where it is permitted.

What we could not confirm for this state

Listed rather than filled in. Every one of these is something we went looking for and could not stand behind.

  • a single statewide fee-waiver form number, which in many states does not exist because each court uses its own

If you know one of these and we have it wrong or missing, tell us and we will check it and credit the correction.

Compiled 31 August 2026 from each organization’s own site, the state courts and the state bar. Legal aid funding and eligibility change, sometimes mid-year. Always check the link before relying on anything here. Corrections welcome.

Keep reading

Sources last checked2 September 2026
Page published2 September 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.