Professor Kondkar Honored with ABA Award for Advocacy Work

Tulane Law Professor Becki Truscott Kondkar, a nationally recognized clinical educator and advocate for survivors of gender-based violence, has received the American Bar Association’s Sharon L. Corbitt Award.

The national award recognizes lawyers who demonstrate exceptional service and leadership in improving the legal response to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Kondkar is a clinical professor of law who chairs Tulane Law’s clinical programs and directs the Domestic Violence Clinic and Women’s Prison Project. For more than 26 years, Kondkar has devoted her career to advocating for survivors, 20 of those at Tulane where she educates and mentors law students through direct representation of these clients.  Her clinical teaching spans the civil and criminal legal systems, giving students experience handling complex cases while learning survivor-centered approaches to advocacy.

Over the course of her career, Kondkar has represented hundreds of survivors of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking, while training generations of Tulane Law students to become thoughtful and effective advocates. 

“Professor Kondkar challenges students to become excellent advocates while also understanding the enormous responsibility that comes with representing people at some of the most difficult moments of their lives,” said law Dean Marcilynn Burke. “She is an extraordinary professor whose impact can be seen not only in the lives of the clients she has served, but in the generations of Tulane lawyers she has trained. We are incredibly proud to see her work recognized with this national honor.”

Since joining Tulane’s clinical faculty in 2006, Kondkar has worked with students on cases that span protective orders and child custody issues, civil appeals, criminal defense, post-conviction proceedings, clemency and parole. 

Her work expanded significantly in 2019 when she raised funds for and founded the Women’s Prison Project, an innovative clinical program representing women whose incarceration is connected to histories of abuse and coercion.

The project bridges two areas of legal practice that have traditionally operated separately: survivor advocacy in civil courts and criminal defense. Its clients include women serving lengthy sentences for defending themselves against abusive partners and women whose involvement in crimes occurred in the context of abuse and coercion. In its first five years, students and faculty working in the project won freedom for 16 women who had collectively served 279 years in prison.

For Tulane Law students, the work provides an unusual opportunity to see how gender-based violence can intersect with family law, criminal law and incarceration, and to develop the legal skills necessary to advocate for clients navigating those systems. Formerly incarcerated survivors help shape the clinic’s curriculum and workshop with students, bringing critically important perspectives and experience into students’ legal education.

Beyond the classroom and her work with individual clients, Kondkar has helped shape policy and professional practice at the state and national levels. She has served on the ABA Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence, Louisiana Supreme Court Protective Order Registry Steering Committee and New Orleans Fatality Review Board, among other leadership roles. She also has trained attorneys, judges, criminal defense lawyers and other professionals across the country.

Her work has included challenging the use of debunked psychological theories in child custody cases, providing legislative testimony on issues affecting survivors and helping lawyers better understand how gender-based violence can shape women’s pathways into the criminal legal system.

The reach of Kondkar’s teaching can also be seen in the careers of her former students. Graduates of the clinic have gone on to lead domestic violence units at legal services organizations, work as prosecutors and defense attorneys, provide national technical assistance and serve in other roles addressing gender-based violence and systemic inequities.

"Becki insists that survivors' voices be heard over the narratives that distort and harm them — she does this through her cases, in the systems she works to change, and through the lawyers she sends into the profession to do the same,” said Kesana Durand, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Domestic Violence Clinic and the Women’s Prison Project.

The Corbitt Award adds to a growing list of national and state honors for Kondkar and the programs she leads. She received the Association of American Law Schools’ Pro Bono Access to Justice Award in 2024, while the Women’s Prison Project has received honors from the National Conference on Crimes Against Women, Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and American College of Trial Lawyers.