2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards
Honorary Alumnus • Hillar Moore III
District Attorney • East Baton Rouge Parish
When Hillar Moore III was lead investigator for the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office back in the early 1980s, he would regularly run the LSU Lakes with the late LSU Law Professor Cheney Joseph (’69).
“Cheney and I had become friends through his work at the DA’s office, and he was one of the people who was really encouraging me to go to law school at that time,” Moore recalls. “I didn’t really have any interest in going to law school or becoming a lawyer, but Cheney was someone who first planted that seed and made me believe that it was something that I could do.”
LSU Law barred first-year students from working full time as they studied, and Moore had no intention of leaving the job he’d had since earning his criminal justice degree from LSU in 1977. So, when he finally committed to pursuing his law degree in the mid-1980s, Moore enrolled at Southern University Law Center across town and earned his J.D. over the next three years as he continued to handle investigations for the DA’s office.
“It was a nightmare,” he says of working full time while attending law school. “My wife and I had young children at the time, too, and the stress was phenomenal.”
After earning his law degree in 1989, Moore ended his tenure with the DA’s office—temporarily, at least—and began practicing with LSU Law alumnus Tony Marabella (’73), for whom he had clerked as a law student.
“The day I graduated from Southern I became a full partner at his firm, and it became Marabella & Moore. I spent the next 16 years as a private lawyer, about half of which were with Tony. He has been one of the most influential people in my life, and I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in today without him. I know Tony nominated me for this award, and that means as much to me as actually receiving it.”
When he was first elected East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney in 2008, Moore turned to his old friend and running partner Cheney Joseph for help.
“I selfishly asked Cheney to take leave from LSU Law to help me get started as my first assistant DA, and he did it, which was an incredible honor because I consider him to be the godfather of criminal law in Louisiana,” Moore says. “He served for about six months to a year and helped shape the structure of how this office was run from the very beginning—and really, how it still operates today.”
Coincidentally, while Moore was busy setting up his office in 2008, a group of LSU Law faculty were finalizing a proposal to create a clinical education program at the Law Center. A year later, Moore’s office was among the first to partner with LSU Law and the Prosecution Clinic was born. Offered annually since, the clinic allows third-year law students to be sworn in and serve as special assistant district attorneys in Moore’s office, assisting with felony matters and prosecuting misdemeanors.
“It’s been an incredibly successful partnership,” Moore says. “Working with the law students is one of my favorite parts of my job. They get to experience what it’s really like to work as an attorney in this office, we get to see how they perform as attorneys, and the work they do is incredibly important. Over the past 15 years, we’ve gotten the chance to work with hundreds of LSU Law students and through that we’ve hired dozens of LSU Law graduates and helped start their careers here, and that’s also very rewarding.”
The success of the Prosecution Clinic led Moore to look for further opportunities to partner with LSU and Southern University on similar initiatives, through which students can earn course credits while working for his office.
“That helped us realize just what a huge engine the universities could be for our office,” he says. “We’ve added several similar programs since then, and we’re working on a new one right now that we hope to launch soon.”
In addition to his direct work with the Prosecution Clinic, Moore also helped establish the Parole and Re-Entry Clinic at LSU Law. He regularly serves as a guest speaker for clinics and classes at LSU Law and occasionally serves as a moot court judge. Back in his running days, he was a regular participant of the annual Race Judicata 5K—“because of Cheney,” he adds.
Through the years, Moore has been the recipient of many awards and honors. Among them, he was inducted into both the LSU Hall of Distinction and the Southern University Law Center Hall of Fame in 2010.
“So, this is a really big honor for me because it represents the final jewel in that crown,” Moore says of being honored as LSU Law’s inaugural Honorary Alumnus. “I bleed purple and gold, and so many of my friends and colleagues have taught at LSU Law, graduated from there, or worked there through the years, so I’ve always felt a very close connection to LSU Law.”
