Carol T. Richards is recognized as a Board Certified Family Law Specialist by the Louisiana State Board of Legal Specialization.

She received her Juris Doctorate cum laude from the Tulane University School of Law in 1982 and was admitted to the Louisiana Bar the same year.  During law school, Carol Richards 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.

Her undergraduate degree is from Louisiana State University, and she also has an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in Linguistics.

Carol has had an AV rating from Martindale.com from 1988 through the present.  She has been AV Preeminent for more than 10 years. 

In 1989 Carol Richards was appointed to the Louisiana Supreme Court 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 and a past-president of the Association for Women Attorneys in New Orleans.  She was awarded a lifetime membership to the AWA for service to that organization.  For many years, Carol Richards has been a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association Ethics Advisory Service Subcommittee, as well as the Louisiana State Bar Committee for Continuing Legal Education. 

Carol Richards has been named one of the top 50 Family Law practitioners and a Louisiana Super Lawyer for the years  2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. In 2007, she was named one of the Top 25 Women Lawyers in the State of Louisiana, another Super Lawyer award. In 2009, New Orleans Magazine named her one of the Top Lawyers in the New Orleans area in the field of Family Law. Carol has been a member of the Louisiana State Law Institute Committee on Child Custody since 2009.  She is also a member of the Louisiana Association for Justice and the 22nd Judicial District Court Bar Association, its Family Law Section, as well as the Rules Committee of the 22nd Judicial District Court for St. Tammany and Washington Parishes. She is a member of the 22nd Judicial District Inn of Court.

Her interests include reading, movies, travel, animal welfare, her grown children, her family of pets, and conversational French, Spanish and Italian.

From 1990 through 2017, Carol Richards practiced law with her former husband, Alan B. Tusa.  Their law firm, Tusa & Richards, LLC, was formed in New Orleans, and later moved to Covington, La. in 2002.

Admission Details

• Admitted in 1982, Louisiana
• 1982, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana
• 1982, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

Law School Attended

• Tulane University of Louisiana Class of 1982, J.D. cum laude

University Attended

• University of Texas M.A.
• Louisiana State University and A. and M. College, B.S.

Birth Information

• Born in 
• Teaneck, New Jersey

Languages

• Spanish