Esme Caramello

Esme Caramello is a Clinical Professor of Law. Since 2015, Professor Caramello has served as Faculty Director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a role she now shares with Clinical Professor Eloise Lawrence.

While she has represented clients in litigation on wide range of subjects—including workers’ rights, immigration, criminal defense and systemic reform, and intellectual property—and served for 8 years on the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission, Professor Caramello has devoted the majority of her career to housing justice. She has successfully defended many tenants against eviction, brought suit to enforce tenants’ rights, and engaged in appellate advocacy to vindicate important fair housing, consumer protection, and access to justice principles. She co-led the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission’s Housing Committee through its first five years, which included the Covid-19 pandemic, and served on both the Commission and its Executive Committee. She published a toolkit for combatting tenant blacklisting, co-led early efforts to pass an eviction sealing law in Massachusetts, and served as Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s Study Committee on the Use of Tenant Information in Rental Decisions. She has served as a Trustee of the Boston Bar Foundation and a longtime member of its Grants Committee. During a two-year leave of absence from July 2024 to June 2026, Professor Caramello served as the inaugural Director of the Housing Affordability Unit at the Office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. In 2018, Professor Caramello was named one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s Top Women of Law. In 2026, she received a Robert Terrell Fair Housing Award from the Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA).

In her role as Faculty Director at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the nation’s oldest student-run legal aid organization, Professor Caramello supports student leaders as they learn to represent clients in a variety of high-stakes civil matters and run an organization that advances broader justice for HLAB’s clients and their communities. In addition to her clinical work, Professor Caramello teaches courses in housing law and policy, legal ethics, and lawyering in the public interest.

Before joining HLAB, Professor Caramello held clinical teaching roles at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and at Suffolk University Law School; represented commercial clients as a litigation associate at two large law firms; and completed a two-year pro bono fellowship at Holland & Knight, LLP. She clerked for the Honorable Charles P. Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She is an honors graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College (’94) and Harvard Law School (’99) and the proud mother of two sons, Liam and Oliver.

Clinic Work

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau is a student-run civil legal aid organization committed to providing free representation to low-income and marginalized communities in the Greater Boston area. Students and staff aim to provide these services in a way that responds to the systemic racial, social, and economic inequalities that are the causes and consequences of poverty. To that end, the Bureau trains its student attorneys to advocate vigorously for their clients, create enduring community partnerships, and become socially conscious leaders.

The Bureau's tight-knit community includes 30-40 law students who commit to spending at least 20 hours per week during their 2L and 3L years reporesent=ting low-income clients in civil cases and policy and outreach projects and running the organization, along with a staff of experienced lawyers and educators who guide the students' work.  Founded in 1913, the Bureau has always been run by its student members.  Students may apply for HLAB membership during the spring of their 1L year.