Harvard Legal Aid Bureau

Esme Caramello is the Bureau’s Faculty Director and a Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where her research, teaching, and advocacy focus on affordable housing, access to justice, public interest lawyering, and legal ethics.  After graduating from HLS, Esme spent a year in San Francisco as a litigation associate at Baker & McKenzie and a year in her hometown of Chicago as law clerk to the incomparable U.S. District Court Judge Charles P. Kocoras. She then served for five years as a Chesterfield Smith Community Service Fellow and litigation associate in the Boston office of Holland & Knight, where her work ranged from challenging the conditions of confinement on death row to drafting a consumer protection law to representing refugees seeking political asylum and tenants fighting eviction and disability discrimination. Hooked on housing, she taught in the Housing Unit at HLS’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center and in Suffolk Law School’s Housing and Consumer Protection Clinic before coming to the Bureau in 2009. Esme is a member of the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission and serves as a co-chair of its Housing Working Group and a member of its Access to Attorneys Committee.  She is also a Trustee of the Boston Bar Foundation and a longtime member of its Grants Committee.  She is a graduate of Harvard College (Social Anthropology ’94) and Harvard Law School (’99).

Eloise Lawrence is the Deputy Faculty Director and Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at HLS. She is also the faculty supervisor for the HLS Student Practice Organization “Project No One Leaves.” In her role as clinical instructor, she supervises student attorneys who represent tenants and homeowners who are in the eviction process. In her role as lecturer, she co-teaches Housing Law and Policy on a biennial basis and is a member of the HLAB teaching team for courses specifically geared towards HLAB student/ attorneys. Prior to her current role, she started at HLAB in 2011 as a staff attorney responsible for representing hundreds of families and individuals who were facing eviction due to a foreclosure on their home and working with local organizers to advocate for policy changes. Previously, she was a staff attorney in the Consumer Rights Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services, where she brought affirmative suits on behalf of mortgagors against loan originators, servicers and foreclosing entities. Prior to the foreclosure crisis, she was an attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, and started her legal career as a Skadden Fellow in Chicago representing public housing residents in civil rights class actions. Before attending law school, Eloise was high school history teacher. Eloise received a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2002 and a B.A. from Stanford University in 1995.

Patricio has been a Clinical Instructor at HLAB since 2011. Before that, he was an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. From 2004 to 2008, he worked in the Housing Unit of Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn, Massachusetts, first as a Berkeley Law Fellow then as a Staff Attorney. Patricio graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2003. After graduating, he completed a one-year clerkship with the Massachusetts Superior Court in Boston. Patricio graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a degree in history.

Stephanie Goldenhersh joined the Bureau as a full-time clinical instructor in August 2007, supervising students in the Bureau’s domestic relations practice, and is now a Senior Clinical Instructor.  She has been the Assistant Director for the Family Practice since September of 2016. Prior to joining the Bureau, Stephanie practiced for six years at Community Legal Aid–Worcester, handling all manner of domestic relations litigation and 209A abuse prevention orders. Stephanie was also the project manager for the unit’s U.S. Department of Justice grant under the Violence Against Women Act, which partnered with local domestic violence service providers to ensure continuity of legal services to domestic violence survivors. Prior to entering legal services, Stephanie worked at the law firm Foley Hoag, LLP, where she participated in environmental litigation and pro bono advocacy for survivors of domestic violence. Stephanie received a B.A. in Sociology, Politics and Women’s Studies from Brandeis University and her J.D. from University of Michigan Law School. In law school, Stephanie was a Project Coordinator of the Family Law Project, a provider of student representation for domestic violence survivors seeking protective orders. Stephanie was also an editor of the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, and team-taught the undergraduate course “Women in the Law.”

Pattie is a clinical instructor and Lecturer on Law who joined the Bureau in 2006. She supervises students in the Bureau’s housing practice, and has a particular interest in cases involving reasonable accommodation in housing and Section 8 voucher terminations.  In addition to supervising student attorneys, Pattie coordinates the Bureau’s participation in the Attorney for the Day Program in Boston Housing Court, where students provide assistance to unrepresented tenants facing eviction from their homes.  Pattie holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. Prior to coming to the Bureau, Pattie was a fellow and clinical instructor at the HLS Legal Services Center practicing in the areas of housing law and consumer bankruptcy, and was an associate at the Cambridge law firm of Pressman & Kruskal, where she worked on matters involving residential real estate, estate planning, and lead paint litigation.