National Crime Victim Law Institute (NCVLI)

Background

The National Crime Victim Law Institute (NCVLI) began in 2000 as a project of the Lewis and Clark Law School. NCVLI incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2003. It continues to be supported by administrative, accounting, and other services from Lewis and Clark College. Meg Garvin, NCVLI’s Executive Director, is a Lewis and Clark Law School professor. ^{3 2}

NCVLI receives significant grants from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) which comprised “approximately 70% and 85% of total revenues for the [fiscal] years ended May 31,

2022 and 2021, respectively.” These grants fund demonstration projects to launch and oversee a nationwide network of eleven pro bono legal clinics dedicated to ensuring protection of victims’ rights and technical assistance to victims’ rights advocates. ²

Activities

National Crime Victim Law Institute works to guarantee crime victim participation in criminal proceedings and to secure court-ordered payment from criminals to victims for costs resulting from the crime. ^{4 1} It asserts that it is the only national organization seeking to guarantee victims’ rights. ^{5 2 6}

To these ends, it provides crime victim law skills training and legal technical assistance to attorneys, victim advocates, law students, judges, and members of the public through the Crime Victim Litigation Clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School, an annual Crime Victim Law conference, technology-assisted training, membership in a national alliance overseen by itself, a law library, a Rights Enforcement Toolkit, and a Victims Resource Database linking crime victims to agencies providing information and support. Military victims’ rights, child victims’ rights, and sexual assault and domestic violence victims’ rights are major areas of focus. ¹

NCVLI’s activities include submission of amicus curiae (”friend of the court”) briefs on victim-law issues in state and federal trials and appellate cases throughout the nation. ² Through a DOJ-funded demonstration project carried out in partnership with Equal Justice Works, a nonprofit focusing on left-of-center advocacy careers for attorneys, it embeds attorneys and law students at legal organizations in communities of color to help ethnic minority crime victims. It trains police agencies in ways to eliminate gender bias and to implement victim-centered, trauma-informed procedures as well. ^{7 1}

The RAND Corporation, a public policy think tank, evaluated NCVLI’s federally funded state clinics. The researchers concluded that “while their primary focus has always been on addressing violations of clients’ legal rights, most of the clinics have developed a focus that includes addressing all of victims’ crime-related needs, either directly or through referrals to other service providers.” ⁸

In December of 2025, NCVLI was listed under OpenAI Foundation’s People-First AI Fund grant list. This fund consisted of $40.5 million granted to 208 nonprofits in the United States. ⁹

People

Meg Garvin is the executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a Clinical Professor of Law at Lewis and Clark Law School. She serves on the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces and on the Victims Advisory Group of the United States Sentencing Commission. Garvin practiced law in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and clerked for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Puget Sound, her master’s degree in communication studies from the University of Iowa, and her law degree from the University of Minnesota. ¹⁰