September 15, 2020

Claribel Morales awarded Bart Gordon Fellowship to work at Community Legal Aid

BY The Republican and MassLive

Community Legal Aid, a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to low-income and elderly residents of Western and Central Massachusetts, announced that Attorney Claribel Morales has been awarded the Bart Gordon Fellowship by the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation.

The fellowship will support Attorney Morales’s housing work throughout Western Massachusetts, where she will assist tenants facing homelessness or who have been denied the housing of their choice for discriminatory reasons. Attorney Morales is based inCommunity Legal Aid’s Springfield office.

A 2019 graduate of Western New England University School of Law, Attorney Morales joined Community Legal Aid in the summer of 2019 as an AmeriCorps Legal Advocate serving in the organization’s Civil Legal Aid for Victims of Crime and Housing Units. A native of Trenton, New Jersey, Attorney Morales earned her Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice in 2008 and Masters in Public Administration in 2014 from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Attorney Morales worked at the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for six years as a paralegal before moving to Massachusetts to attend law school.

While attending law school, Attorney Morales interned at Mass. Fair Housing Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities in Hartford, Connecticut. She also participated in the Legal Services Clinic, a partnership between Western New England University Law School and Community Legal Aid, where she assisted tenants with eviction cases in the Western Housing Court.