Samantha Smart

Legal Advocate, Fair Housing Project

Samantha developed a passion for housing and eviction defense, particularly regarding the advocacy of lower-income tenants, after her summer internship with Pine Tree Legal Services in Lewiston, Maine, following her first year of law school. This led Samantha to take a position as a Fair Housing Fellow with the Suffolk University Law School Housing Discrimination Testing Program in the spring of her second year of law school.

In this role, she helped to design and conduct housing discrimination tests, recruit testers of color, and to research and suggest different housing units throughout the Greater Boston area to be used for testing. She also spearheaded a ‘Know-Your-Rights’ project within East Boston with the purpose of helping to educate Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole speaking residents about their housing rights and legal protections.

Following her second year of law school, Samantha worked as a summer intern with MetroWest Legal Services in Framingham, MA, within their Housing Unit. During her third year of law school, Samantha had the pleasure of serving as a SJC 3:03 Certified Student Attorney within the Family Advocacy Clinic, where she represented victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.