2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards
Dean’s Philanthropic Award • Russell “Rusty” Stutes Jr.
Class of 1991
Managing Partner • Stutes & Lavergne
Growing up in Lake Charles in the 1970s, Russell “Rusty” Stutes Jr. remembers watching in awe as his father tirelessly worked two full-time jobs to support him, his mother, and three sisters.
“When I tell you that my father worked extremely hard, I mean that he would put in 80 to 90 hours a week,” Stutes Jr. says. “I remember the days when he would work at the refinery overnight from 11 to 7 and then immediately roll onto a construction job for the day. He would come home at about four in the afternoon and sleep for a few hours in my bedroom while my sisters and I did our homework, and then he’d clock in at the refinery that night and do it all over again.”
By the mid-1980s, Russell J. Stutes Sr.’s hard work was beginning to pay dividends. His name had become synonymous with top quality construction and his namesake business was rapidly growing, allowing him to eventually quit his second job at the refinery.
“By the time I started at LSU Law, he had grown Russell J. Stutes Construction into the most successful contracting business in Lake Charles,” says Stutes Jr., a commercial litigation attorney and managing partner of Stutes & Lavergne in Lake Charles.
Ensuring that his son and three daughters had the opportunity to earn a college degree was among the senior Stutes’ highest priorities. That was at least partially due to the fact that he had been forced to withdraw from Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute (known as the University of Louisiana Lafayette today) after just one semester in 1956.
“He had grown up in what can only be described as serious poverty in nearby Crowley, but he was a very bright guy and he always wanted to go to college and earn a degree,” his son explains. “Unfortunately, his mother became very sick, and it tapped out the money the family had to spend on my father’s education, so he had to drop out after his first semester.”
As a first-generation law student at LSU Law in an era when one-third of first-year law students failed out of school, Stutes Jr. would often find much needed motivation by recalling the long days he spent working alongside his father.
“I remember a number of times that I was still at the Law Library at 10 p.m. and being really tired but also knowing that I needed to put in a few more hours of study to really get something down,” he recalls. “And I would just think, ‘This is nothing compared to being drenched in sweat on a jobsite at three in the afternoon in August,’ and it would
give me the energy to stay at the library until it closed.”
A few years ago, Stutes Jr. and members of his family began exploring options to honor the memory of his late father, who passed in December 2015.
“This country is built upon American Dream stories, and my father represents one of those stories,” he explains, “so I wanted to attach my father’s name to something that would provide others with the opportunity to pursue their own American Dream.”
In late 2023, LSU Law announced the creation of the Russell J. Stutes Small Business and Community Development Clinic, which would be funded with a gift of more than $500,000 from Stutes Jr. and his mother, Cissy.
The clinic began operations this spring semester, with eight upper-level students working with about one dozen Louisiana small businesses and nonprofits. Under the supervision of llicensed faculty, sudents assist clients with business formations, tax exemption applications, bylaws, operating agreements, intellectual property issues, regulation compliance, and other important legal issues.
The clinic is designed to assist fledgling businesses and nonprofits that would not otherwise be able to afford legal services. Stutes Jr. says his father would have certainly fallen into that category when he was building Russell J. Stutes Construction, which remains a family-owned and operated company today.
“It’s something that I think he would have been proud of,” he says of the clinic, adding it aligns with one of his father’s core principals to “leave one’s family and community better than you found it.”
Along with his desire to honor his father, Stutes Jr. is committed to supporting LSU Law because it provided him with an incredible education at an unbeatable value.
“At the time I went to LSU Law, we were stealing those educations,” he says. “I’ve always believed that I got way more out of my LSU Law education than I was required to pay for it, and I haven’t forgotten that. I love Louisiana. I love LSU and the Law Center, and I treasure my parents, and so to me it’s only fitting that I stay engaged and give back, because I wouldn’t be the lawyer I am today without my parents’ sacrifice and tutelage, or the training I got at LSU Law.”
