After leaving the army he was determined to become a lawyer and defend the rights of those who had been taken advantage of by the justice system. He attended Western Reserve University and Cleveland Marshall College of Law, and began practicing law in 1953. In 1962 Louis’s brother Carl joined him at his law firm Stokes, Stokes, Character, and Terry. In 1967 Stokes argued the historic case Terry v. Ohio, commonly known as the “Stop-and-Frisk“ case, in front of the Supreme Court. This case set a precedent for police search and seizure procedures, and a number of Supreme Court cases that followed. By the time he ran for Congress in 1968, Louis Stokes was the most prominent civil rights lawyer in Cleveland