Greater Boston Legal Services
Boston, MA
Joey Michalakes was awarded the David A. Grossman Fellowship for Social Justice to work in the housing and employment units of Greater Boston Legal Services, where he will work in tandem with other staff attorneys as well as community organizations to develop strategies for combating displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods in Greater Boston, both through direct representation in eviction defense and affirmative employment litigation and community legal education.
At HLS, Joey served for two years as a student attorney at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB), where he worked primarily in the Housing and Wage and Hour practice groups. Joey also served for a year on the HLAB Board as its Outreach Director. In that capacity he helped expand HLAB’s longtime partnership with the housing justice organization City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) to its emergent East Boston site, and developed community partnerships with area immigration legal services organizations so that HLAB’s Family Practice could begin working on cases involving Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) adjudications in Probate and Family Court.
During law school, Joey also served as a student attorney and Immigration Services director with the Harvard Immigration Project (HIP), where he worked on green card and derivative asylee applications on behalf of immigrants recently granted asylum in the United States. He also worked at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) his 1L summer as the Cleary Gottlieb Fellow, and at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP) as an intern during his 2L summer. Joey holds an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.A. in Teaching from Cardinal Strich University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Between college and law school, Joey worked as a bilingual third grade teacher in Milwaukee through Teach for America. At his HLS graduation Joey was given the Andrew Kaufman Pro Bono award for completing the most pro bono hours of any graduating law student.