Last semester I participated in a law school clinic in which we represented local college and graduate students receiving public assistance. Most of our clients were women, and most were mothers who were balancing going to school, raising children, and struggling to meet the workfare requirements mandated by the 1996 changes in welfare law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act). This summer, I work at a clinic representing women in family court with domestic violence–related cases. Our clients are typically women seeking family court orders of protection against an abusive intimate partner or former intimate partner, and if they have children with him, we may help with their custody, visitation, and/or child support issues.

I have relatively little experience in these fields, and yet I am struck by how both the welfare and the family court systems oppress women, especially mothers. As a legal intern, the public assistance cases I worked on were never-ending battles against the bureaucratic machine that is the welfare system. In domestic violence cases, the battle is against both the family court legal process and a manipulative batterer at the other end, who has driven our client to court through his abusive power and control.