The School of Law at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a two-year, $435,000 federal grant to continue offering free legal services for lower-income residents of Yolo County who are victims of domestic violence.

The grant supports the Family Protection and Legal Assistance Clinic, and is provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Established in 1999 and based in Woodland, the clinic is managed by a clinical staff attorney and trains 12 law student interns each year. The program handled 62 cases last year and is expected to serve about the same number of women this year.

Under the supervision of attorney Sarah Orr, second- and third-year law students represent women who are victims of family violence in issues of child custody and support, separation and divorce, property division, family mediation and contested restraining orders.

The clinic also employs a half-time advocate to assist clients with non-legal needs, such as safety planning, access to community resources and to accompany them to mediation.

The Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center of Yolo County works closely with the law clinic to help local women, many of whom are immigrants and Spanish-speakers.

The center, in fact, hired one of the graduating UC Davis interns, Nicole Ford, to direct its legal services program.

"The importance of having free legal services for women who are controlled and isolated is just huge," Ford said. "It's been shown that women who have access to legal recourse are far more likely to break the cycle of violence and not enter it again or entrap their children in the cycle."

The UC Davis law clinic is the only entity in Yolo County that provides free representation to low-income victims of domestic violence. Nearly one in five of Yolo County residents -- 18.4 percent -- lives below the federal poverty level.

This percentage was higher than the average for both California (14.2 percent) and the United States (12.4 percent). During 2004, 329 Domestic Violence Prevention Act cases were filed in Yolo County.

At the beginning of each year, the law clinic's students and staff attend a 12-hour domestic violence training class, facilitated by the Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center of Yolo County. The training includes presentations by center staff on domestic violence and safety planning, workshops on client interviewing, and presentations by Victim Witness, the District Attorney's office, the presiding judge of the Yolo County Unified Family Court, and others.

The supervising attorney continues the clinic's classroom component each year with 15 two-hour seminars throughout the academic year. Each spring, the clinic hires two law students to aid the attorney in maintaining the caseload over the summer.