June 3, 2020

Local Veteran Awarded Fellowship to Serve at Community Legal Aid

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

Community Legal Aid (CLA) is pleased to announce that Amanda Cooper has been awarded a Massachusetts Bar Foundation summer fellowship to serve as an advocate in CLA’s Veterans Medical-Legal Partnership. CLA is a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to low-income and elderly residents of Western and Central Massachusetts.

Medical-legal partnerships (MLP) are innovative collaborations between legal aid and medical providers that embed legal advocates into health care settings to address legal issues that can affect patients’ health. CLA’s Veterans MLP is the first in the Commonwealth to specifically serve low income and elderly veterans. During her fellowship term, Mrs. Cooper will work to expand the project, splitting her time between CLA’s Northampton office and doing outreach to veterans at Veterans Administration sites in Leeds (Northampton), Springfield, and Greenfield. Some of her responsibilities will include assisting veterans to upgrade their discharge status, secure reasonable accommodations for disabilities, and maintain stable housing.

Mrs. Cooper brings an impressive set of qualifications to this competitive fellowship. She is an Army combat veteran who served on active duty for eight years and in the Massachusetts National Guard for the following three years. She completed two combat tours in Afghanistan and one combat tour in Iraq. She believes it is this background that motivates her current dedication to legal advocacy. She explains, “My military service has been the defining work of my life, and I feel I am in a unique position to be able to understand my fellow veterans’ specialized legal needs and assist them in navigating the complex judicial and administrative frameworks necessary to vindicate their rights.”

Mrs. Cooper graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a B.A. in Legal Studies and is currently a law student at Western New England University School of Law. She has spent the past academic year as a legal intern at CLA and has already been honing her skills in its veterans law unit. CLA attorney Dan Bahls describes Mrs. Cooper’s background as “invaluable in this work.” He says that as a veteran, “she is able to quickly connect and build trust with both our clients and our community partners. Amanda has shown a rare talent of quickly and compassionately identifying the core of the legal issues facing our veteran clients.”

In announcing the award, Jonathan Mannina, CLA’s Executive Director, said, “We are thrilled that Amanda Cooper has been awarded the Massachusetts Bar Foundation fellowship to expand CLAs work with veterans throughout the Pioneer Valley. I cannot think of a more perfect candidate to take on this important work.” Law School Dean Sudha Setty added, “We appreciate the Massachusetts Bar Foundation’s support enabling Mrs. Cooper to continue her work with CLA’s innovative program to provide much needed legal services to local veterans, which is an issue of priority for the law school.”

About Community Legal Aid:

Community Legal Aid provides free civil legal services to the low-income and elderly residents of the five counties of Central and Western Massachusetts (Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, and Worcester). The organization maintains full-time offices in Worcester, Fitchburg, Springfield, Northampton, and Pittsfield. Community Legal Aid works to assure fairness for all in the justice system, protecting homes, livelihoods, health and families. For more information on Community Legal Aid please visit www.communitylegal.org.