School Board to seek local law firm

LAFAYETTE — Within the next few weeks, the Lafayette Parish School Board will advertise for a law firm from the “Lafayette region.”

The board’s executive committee met Friday afternoon to discuss information to include in the advertisement, such as specifying that the law firm be able to handle a variety of issues from workers’ compensation and employment and labor law to education law and tort litigation.

The committee expects to make a recommendation to the full board for a law firm to hire by its Dec. 5 meeting, said Hunter Beasley, board vice president and committee member.

At its Oct. 3 meeting, the School Board voted to end its contract with a law firm based in Monroe that it had retained as special counsel in September in order to hire a local firm.

“We want someone who is personally accessible,” Mark Allen Babineaux, past board president and committee member, said following Friday’s meeting.

Board President Shelton Cobb is also a member of the three-person executive committee.

Superintendent Pat Cooper had recommended that the board consider hiring its own staff attorney and paralegal to handle day-to-day legal issues and retain special counsel on a contractual basis, as needed for highly specialized situations, but the concept has not been reintroduced to the board.