Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

As a lawyer you may find yourself helping a domestic violence victim with
public assistance when something she says makes you realize the depths
of the fears she harbors about the man who should be paying child support.
Or, interviewing a woman about her immigration case, you may become aware
that your client’s biggest challenge is not getting a green card but staying alive.
You may begin to wonder what is going to happen to her when she leaves your
office — and what more you can and should be doing for her.
You can’t guarantee your domestic violence client’s safety, but neither do
you need to stand by helplessly. You can provide information, give advice, and
direct your client to resources, all steps that may better the odds of your client
avoiding harm.
Assessing Danger
3
Thinking About Danger and Safety
by Jill Laurie Goodman
No matter what the overt legal issues for which your domestic violence client
consults you, safety is on the agenda. Lawyers should ask intelligent questions
and keep alert for signs of danger as they counsel victims, even though assessing
the degree of danger in the lives of women who are victims of domestic violence
is difficult and predicting violence with any degree of certainty is impossible.
As you talk with your client in the process of gathering information for her
case, look for signals that suggest danger. Some of these signals have been
identified in research on the risks of lethal attacks on domestic violence victims. 1
At the top of the list of factors researchers have found correlating with femicides
by abusive partners are guns and death threats: women threatened or assaulted
with guns are twenty times more likely to be murdered by their abuser, and