Housing Law Clinic

WilmerHale Legal Services Center
122 Boylston Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

617-522-3003

Clinic's Website

The Housing Law Clinic represents tenants who are facing evictions by private market and subsidized landlords. Students also have the opportunity to participate in the Housing Justice for Survivors Project which represents tenants facing housing instability as a result of domestic or sexual violence. The bulk of the clinic’s work consists of litigation in the Boston Housing Court, defending evictions and prosecuting counterclaims with the goal of improving housing conditions, enforcing consumer rights, supporting tenant organizing efforts, and preventing homelessness.

Students engage in:

  • client interviewing and counseling;
  • fact investigation;
  • pre-trial discovery (including taking and defending depositions), negotiation, and motion practice;
  • trying cases in court;
  • appeals.

Students also have the opportunity to engage in community lawyering and to work on legislative and other law reform initiatives.

This clinic is part of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC), a general practice community law office in Jamaica Plain. LSC’s diverse clinics provide clinical instruction to second- and third-year law students and serve as a laboratory for the innovative delivery of legal services. Students are taught and mentored under the supervision and guidance of clinical instructors and fellows in one of LSC’s litigation clinical practices.

How to Register

The clinic is offered in the Fall and Spring semesters. You can learn about the required clinical course component, clinical credits and the clinical registration process by reading the course catalog description and exploring the links in this section.

Meet the Instructors

Maureen McDonagh headshot

Maureen McDonagh

Managing Attorney; Director; Lecturer on Law

mcdonagh@law.harvard.edu

Maureen joined the Center in January 1998 as a Clinical Instructor in the Housing Law Clinic. Prior to her work at the Center, Maureen, for ten years, specialized in the representation of indigent individuals in criminal defense and child abuse and neglect cases. She served as a Mentor Attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services’ Children and Family Law Program, where she instructed attorneys who were new to practice in that area of law. Maureen has volunteered as a Citizen Teacher with the Citizen Schools program, mentoring Boston Public Middle School students in a Legal Apprenticeship Program that met at LSC. She is also adjunct faculty at the Urban College of Boston, which is affiliated with Action for Boston Community Development, Inc. Maureen received her B.A. from Suffolk University in 1980 and her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in 1987.

headshot of Julia Devanthery

Julia Devanthéry

Director, Housing Justice for Survivors Project; Lecturer on Law

jdevanthery@law.harvard.edu

Julia Devanthéry co-teaches the Housing Clinic and directs the Housing Justice for Survivors Project, which she founded in 2017. The Housing Justice for Survivors Project trains clinical law students to represent tenants who are facing housing instability due to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Students under Julia’s supervision provide direct client representation, develop and litigate impact litigation, conduct housing rights trainings for community members and advocates, and engage in local, state, and federal law reform efforts aimed at improving the housing rights of survivors. Julia and students in the Housing Justice project represented the tenant in BHA v. YA, 482 Mass. 240 (2019), in which the Supreme Judicial Court decided affirmed a domestic violence survivor’s right to raise the Violence Against Women Act defense to a non-payment of rent eviction. From 2018-2020, Julia was the Dignity for All Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Southern California where she worked to safeguard the civil rights of people experiencing homelessness and advance the right to safe, affordable housing for all. Julia received her juris doctor from Northeastern University School of Law and she graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Sociology.

headshot of Deena Zakim

Deena Zakim

Clinical Instructor, Housing Clinic and Director, Housing Medical Legal Partnership (MLP)

dzakim@law.harvard.edu

Deena Zakim co-teaches the Housing Clinic and runs the Housing Medical Legal Partnership (MLP). Through the MLP, students collaborate with the social care team at Mass General Brigham to obtain the best possible housing and health outcomes for patients facing housing instability and learn how to effectively and passionately represent these tenants in their court cases. Deena is a co-convener of the Eastern Housing Court Bench Bar and a repeat faculty member on several disability and housing related MCLE programs.

From 2015 to 2025, Deena was an attorney in the housing unit at Greater Boston Legal Services. There, she specialized in working with tenants who had disabilities and were facing eviction or subsidy termination from public and subsidized housing and she managed the housing unit’s MLP contract with a local hospital. Deena did direct service work as well as systemic advocacy. Her practice included administrative advocacy and representation in the trial and appellate courts. Before GBLS, Deena clerked for the Honorable Justice Gary Katzmann at the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Deena is the author of Reasonable Accommodation Issues in Housing, Residential and Commercial Landlord Tenant Practice in Massachusetts (MCLE Inc. 4th ed. 2022) and co-author of Housing Rights, Legal Rights of Individuals with Disabilities (MCLE, Inc. 3d ed. 2021). Deena graduated summa cum laude from Suffolk University Law School after graduating Clark University with a B.A. in Sociology (with a minor in Jewish Studies) and a M.A. in Community Development and Planning.

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