The St. Joseph County courtroom moves fast during an eviction proceeding. In five minutes, sometimes less, a tenant stands before the judge. With often no lawyer, they have two minutes to explain why they couldn’t pay rent this month. The gavel comes down: two weeks to vacate. Next case.
That’s the reality of the nearly 3,000 St. Joseph renters who face eviction each year. Indiana has the third highest eviction rate in the nation; with an average household size of 2.5 people, the number of Hoosiers facing court-ordered eviction each year is so large that, together, they would make up the third largest city in the state.
“I don’t know that people really appreciate how common an issue this is,” David Pruitt, associate clinical professor of law, said.
Pruitt directs Notre Dame Law School’s Eviction Clinic. Housed in a small, unassuming townhome on Howard Street, I met him there on a Monday afternoon, where he and his students are working to fight South Bend’s eviction crisis. Sitting in his office, he tells me just how deeply this crisis is felt by the community.
evicted from their homes with little notice, rarely represented by attorneys during rushed court proceedings, and, once evicted, given only a couple of weeks to find new housing.
“[You might have] a single parent [who’s] being forced to find a new place and trying to work while this is all going on. If they miss work to attend a hearing, they may lose their job. And you’ve got kids that are potentially having to move schools and friends. It’s a very, very intrusive process.”
Identifying a need for better tenant representation in St. Joseph County, Notre Dame opened an Eviction Clinic in the 1960s. Since 1990, more than 2,000 Notre Dame Law students have participated. Today, law students work under the direction of Pruitt to continue helping local renters handle eviction defense, monetary damages claims and proceedings to terminate voucher assistance.
The experience is transformative for both parties. “These are real clients with real problems,” he said. “They tell our students [that] for the first time, ‘I feel like I’ve been heard. And for the first time, somebody really fought for me and listened to me and tried to get the best possible outcome for me.’”
Noah Jeffcoat, a client who won compensation with the clinic’s help, put it this way in a feature for the clinic: “‘The Notre Dame Law Clinic saved me from being run over, and gave me the courage to stand up and start a new career and finish the race.’”
For Nate Barry, the law student who represented Jeffcoat, their success was equally moving. “‘Through this case, I saw the good in what I was doing, and it made me excited to be a lawyer in a way that law school hadn’t,’” he said.
Individual cases like Jeffcoat’s are the focus of the clinic, but Pruitt and his students have recently turned their attention toward the system itself to shape state-level policy as well.
Over the course of three semesters, Pruitt and his class collaborated with the Indiana Justice Project to get Indiana Senate Bill 142 passed. Prior to the bill, the record of an eviction filing could remain visible, even if the cases was dismissed or the tenant prevailed. This “red stamp” made it very difficult for renters to find new housing — often leading to automatic rejection by landlords or forcing them into units that failed to meet basic habitability standards.
Effective as of July 2025, Senate Bill 142 provides for automatic sealing when an eviction case is dismissed. It also clarifies that tenants who pay off judgments in their eviction cases are eligible to have those cases sealed.
Getting the bill passed required students to talk to legislators, develop a whitepaper and testify before the Indiana Senate. The process showed Pruitt’s class that real policy change is possible, but requires both sides of the aisle to sit down in conversation with one another.
“It was a good reminder that … most of the time, people come to the situation in good faith. [Remembering that] leads to better advocates and better outcomes,” Pruitt said.
This kind of lesson — learning how to advocate and compromise for real change — is exactly what the Law School hopes its clinics will teach. As a part of the Law School’s mission to “educate a different kind of lawyer,” all ten of their clinics provide students with the opportunity of hands-on work, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge learned in the classroom and the practical realities of the job.
“A big piece of this is to really empower the students to think like a lawyer. Clinical legal education forces you to really learn when it's your responsibility and you're the one coming up with the solutions,” Pruitt explained.
Perhaps more importantly, Pruitt’s students are learning how to be good neighbors. Their work exemplifies how students should strive to be engaged citizens of South Bend during their four years here.
“Poverty and its effects on people are less than a mile from the front gates of campus,” Pruitt points out. “We have the ability to make a difference here locally, [and] there’s no shortage of opportunities. Don’t worry about not knowing all the answers … Just lead with your chin and give it a chance.”
Allison Elshoff is a senior business analytics major with minors in the Hesburgh Program of Public Service and impact consulting. Her top three things to exist are hammocks, outfit repeating and mini spoons. You can reach her at aelshoff@nd.edu.
