Julia E Devanthéry
Lecturer on Law
2024-2025
Julia Devanthéry joined the Legal Services Center in 2013. She co-teaches the Housing Clinic and directs the Housing Justice for Survivors Project, which she founded at the Legal Services Center 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. In the Spring of 2023, Julia and two 3Ls successfully litigated a jury trial in the Eastern Housing Court, securing a total of $110,000 in damages for the tenant (a survivor of near-fatal domestic violence), the right to remain in her home, and over $100,000 in attorneys fees and costs. Julia and students in the Housing Justice project represented the tenant BHA v. YA, 482 Mass. 240 (2019), in which the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts 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 by challenging criminalization policies and improving conditions within emergency shelters. She developed strategic litigation to attack sexual abuse within county-funded homeless shelters; she was class counsel charged with enforcement of a settlement ensuring that people with disabilities had equal access to city-funded homelessness services; she protected the First Amendment rights of citizens who share food with the homeless and hungry; she sued the City of Los Angeles for unconstitutional towing of vehicles as a means of debt collection against homeless Angelinos; and she led a state-wide integrated advocacy team to plan a campaign advancing a right to housing and increase access to affordable housing for low-income and homeless Californians.
Education
- J.D. Northeastern University School of Law, 2009
- B.A. Brown University, 2004
Bar Admissions
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States (2010)
- United States District Court of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States (2014)
- California, United States (2019)
Board Memberships
- Member of the Board of Trustees, Boston Bar Foundation (2015 - Present)
Massachusetts - Co-Chair of the Community Re-entry Education Committee, Boston Bar Association (2014 - Present)
Massachusetts - President, Board of Directors, Respond, Inc, (2013 - 2015)
Somerville, Massachusetts
Honors and Awards
- Excellence in the Law, Up & Coming (Awards)
Massachusetts Lawyer's Weekly, May 2014 - Boston Bar Association Public Interest Leadership Program (Awards)
January 2014 - Top Women of Law (Awards)
Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly, 2022
Recent Publications
- Julia Devanthéry, Dan Daley & Lisabeth Jorgensen, Boston Housing Authority v. Y.A., 482 Mass. 240 (2019): SJC Clarifies VAWA Defenses in Eviction Cases, 64 Boston Bar J., Winter 2020.
- Maureen McDonagh & Julia Devanthéry, Evictions, in 12 Legal Tactics: Tenant's Rights in Massachusetts 251 (Annette R. Duke ed., Mass. Law Reform Inst. 8th ed. 2017).
- Julia Devanthéry, The Supreme Judicial Court’s Decision in Beacon Residential v. R.P. Gives Survivors of Domestic Violence Their Day in Housing Court, 61 Boston Bar J., Fall 2017.