Attorney Carol Richards Tusa, a Board Certified Family Law specialist, has announced her candidacy for Division L, one of the two new divisions of family and juvenile law in the 22nd Judicial District Court for St. Tammany and Washington parishes.

Richards Tusa, 55, grew up in Baton Rouge and graduated from Broadmoor High School in 1970, where she was a National Merit Finalist. She received a Bachelor of Sciences degree in General Studies with a concentration in Romance Languages from LSU in 1974. She earned a Master of Arts in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 and a Juris Doctorate cum laude from the Tulane University School of Law in 1982.

During law school, Richards Tusa was research assistant to Professor A. N. Yiannopoulos. She was acknowledged for her assistance with the Louisiana Civil Law Treatise on Property (2d ed.), the Louisiana Civil Law Treatise on Personal Servitudes, and three editions of the Louisiana Civil Code.

Richards Tusa

After being admitted to the Louisiana State Bar in 1982, Richards Tusa began practicing in the greater metropolitan area, and she has been in business for herself since 1986. She has had an AV rating (the highest available) from Martindale-Hubbell from 1988 to the present. Martindale- Hubbell is the only nationwide service of attorney ratings by other attorneys and judges.

In 1989 Richards Tusa was appointed by the Chief Justice to the Louisiana Supreme Task Force on Women in the Courts, which body rendered its final report in 1992. She is a past chair of the Family Law Section of the Louisiana Association of Justice. Richards Tusa is past-president of the Association for Women Attorneys, and she was awarded a lifetime membership for service to that organization. For the last two years, Richards Tusa has been on the Louisiana State Bar Association Ethics Advisory Service Subcommittee, as well as on the Louisiana State Bar Committee for Continuing Legal Education.

Richards Tusa was named one of the top 50 Family Law practitioners and a Louisiana Super Lawyer in 2007 and 2008. In 2007, she was named one of the Top 25 Women Lawyers in the State of Louisiana, another Super Lawyer award.

Richards Tusa has experience litigating cases in 14 parishes, four of the five courts of appeal in Louisiana, as well as in the state Supreme Court. Before law school, Richards Tusa worked as an English instructor at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and as a legal secretary in Texas and in Louisiana. While in graduate school, Richards Tusa and other volunteers established the first Battered Women’s Shelter in Austin. Richards Tusa did telephone crisis counseling and in-person counseling with shelter residents.

Since 1990 Richards Tusa has practiced law with her husband, Alan B. Tusa. Their law office, Tusa & Richards, LLC, is located in Covington.

Richards Tusa and her husband have resided in Abita Springs since 1995. They have four children and two grandchildren.