June 19, 2020

Local Attorney Selected to Chair ABA Committee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Thomas Navin, Development Director
Phone: (413) 727-7115
Email: tnavin@cla-ma.org

Claudia Quintero, a staff attorney at Community Legal Aid’s affiliate, Central West Justice Center, has been appointed as the Chair of the Minorities in the Profession Committee for the Young Lawyers Division (“YLD”) of the American Bar Association (“ABA”). She will serve as Chair for the 12-month period starting September 1, 2020.

As a member of the Young Lawyers Division, Ms. Quintero was selected to be in the 2019-2020 cohort of the YLD Scholars Program which is designed to encourage the participation of minority, solo/small firm, government, private sector, and military service attorneys in the ABA. As part of that program, Ms. Quintero was on the editorial board of the ABA’s print publication The Young Lawyer. She also wrote an article about her work at Central West Justice Center, which was published in the digital publication of the American Bar Association Young Lawyer’s Division Magazine, After the Bar.

Ms. Quintero joined the Central West Justice Center in 2017 as the staff attorney heading the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Project. Based in Springfield, she represents workers throughout Massachusetts and provides holistic representation to clients on a wide range of matters relating to immigration, labor and employment, housing, benefits, and family law. She also offers know-your-rights trainings to workers and community organizations.

Originally from Los Angeles, Ms. Quintero received her law degree, cum laude, from the Western New England University School of Law in Springfield. In law school, she served on the Law Review, led the school’s student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and founded the Latino/a Law Student Association. She earned a B.A. in Communication Studies with a minor in Music from California State University, Los Angeles, and a M.S. in Rhetoric from the University of Utah.

Ms. Quintero has been recognized by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts with the  Adams Pro Bono Publico Award for her work on behalf of immigrant populations, and by the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild as Student of the Year. Currently, she sits on the board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children and serves on the coordinating committee of the Immigrant Protection Project of the ACLU of Massachusetts. In 2018, she published an article on asylum law with the University of Massachusetts Law Review. In May 2020, Quintero co-authored an opinion piece urging greater protections from COVID-19 for farmworkers, which was published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.