August 13, 2020

Morales awarded fellowship to work at Community Legal Aid

BY Business Briefs: Aug. 14, 2020The Greenfield Recorder

Community Legal Aid, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to low-income and elderly residents of Western and Central Massachusetts, announced attorney Claribel Morales has been awarded the Bart Gordon Fellowship by the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp. (MLAC).

The fellowship will support Morales’ housing work in Western Massachusetts, where she will assist tenants facing homelessness or denied the housing of their choice for discriminatory reasons, according to a Community Legal Aid press release. She will be based in Community Legal Aid’s Springfield office starting this month.

A 2019 graduate of Western New England University’s School of Law, 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, N.J., she earned her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in 2008 and a master’s degree in public administration in 2014 from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

According to the release, Morales worked at the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for six years as a paralegal before moving to Massachusetts to attend law school. She then interned at the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center in Holyoke and the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities in Hartford, Conn. She also participated in the Legal Services Clinic, a partnership between Western New England University’s School of Law and Community Legal Aid, where she assisted tenants with eviction cases in the Western Housing Court.

“Even though she is just beginning her legal career, Claribel Morales has already demonstrated her strong commitment to ensuring that the most vulnerable people among us can live in safe housing,” said Lynne Parker, executive director of MLAC. “Her work is so needed during the COVID-19 crisis, when many people are at risk of losing their homes. I’m thrilled that MLAC can fund this essential work through the Bart Gordon Fellowship.”

Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp., reportedly the largest funding source for civil legal aid in Massachusetts, created the Bart Gordon Fellowship to improve access to justice for people who face linguistic or cultural barriers to attaining legal assistance, the release states. The fellowship funds positions for recent law school graduates at legal aid organizations. The fellowship is named in memory of Bart Gordon, a Springfield attorney and founding member of its board of directors.