May 15, 2015
Jane Edmonstone Honored by Mass. Lawyers Weekly for Excellence in Law
Jane Edmonstone, Staff Attorney with Community Legal Aid, was honored May 14th 2015 at the Mass. Lawyers Weekly Excellence In The Law event as an “up and coming” lawyer. Jane is described as an attorney with “smarts and heart”, who zealously represents her most disenfranchised clients. Here is the interview:
Q. What do you consider your biggest achievement as a lawyer to date?
A. I litigated a case on behalf of a tenant who was being evicted because his landlord discovered he was HIV-positive. After a trial, the court found the landlord’s conduct was illegal and awarded a large amount of compensatory damages.
Q. What’s the most satisfying case or matter you’ve worked on so far?
A. A federal case on behalf of three couples with children who had attempted to use a real estate agency to find apartments. When the agent discovered they each had a child under 6 they steered them away from apartments that might have had lead paint. We settled the case for money for each of them. We established a relationship with the real estate agency where they refer us on their own initiative to other instances of discrimination in the rental market.
Q. Professionally, what keeps you up at night?
A. I work in legal services where many of the clients are at a crisis point in their lives. I tend to take their stories home with me.
Q. If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what field would you have entered?
A. I would go into social work.
Q. How many hours a week do you work? Did you anticipate it was going to be that much?
A. 50-60. It’s not an unreasonable amount.
Q. Is there a practice area you would like to expand into at some point?
A. Within my field I would like to do more appellate work.
Q. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made professionally?
A. Especially in the beginning I had a tendency to overpromise.
Q. What’s the toughest part of your job?
A. Balancing the responsibilities of mentoring new attorneys and serving the number of clients I have.
Q. Is there anything about practicing law that’s surprised you so far?
A. How much I love litigation.
Q. Would you tell someone about to graduate from college to pursue law school?
A. I would recommend it only if they were entirely sure they want to be a lawyer and know which field to practice in.
Q. What advice would you offer new law school graduates?
A. Go into a field that you love and work that you love.
Q. What is the trait you most dislike in yourself?
A. I can be easily distracted. If a new client or crisis appears, I tend to immediately start working on that issue before finishing what I was doing.
Q. What’s one thing about you that might surprise people?
A. I took a year off before college and lived in the Dominican Republic.
Q. Describe yourself in one word.
A. Compassionate.
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