Vermont Legal Aid welcomed Mairead C. O’Reilly on August 16 as the 2016 Vermont Poverty Law Fellow. The two-year fellowship is supported by generous donations from Vermont lawyers and law firms to the annual Vermont Bar Foundation Access to Justice Campaign.
Fellowship projects are designed to address serious unmet legal needs of Vermont’s low-income community. O’Reilly will spend the next two years exploring the opioid epidemic that has profoundly impacted Vermont families and added stress on the courts, state agencies and schools. The epidemic has also dramatically increased the number of legal problems that affect Vermonters in the areas of housing, education, and health care.
O’Reilly’s work will include identifying, developing, and implementing solutions, including systemic reform initiatives, that will help addicted and recovering clients get their lives on track so that they can contribute to their communities once again.
“We are very pleased to have the opportunity to both mentor and learn from Mairead during her tenure as Vermont Poverty Law Fellow,” said Eric Avildsen, executive director of Vermont Legal Aid. “Mairead’s distinguished law school performance and her strong commitment to social justice leave no doubt in my mind that she will have a lasting impact on Vermont, our organization, and the low-income citizens we serve, like the Poverty Law Fellows who have come before her.”
“Many thanks are due Vermont lawyers who volunteer their time to the Access to Justice Campaign and to the numerous lawyers and law firms who donate to the Campaign that funds this important program,” noted Teri Corsones, executive director of the Vermont Bar Association. “We look forward to welcoming Mairead and to assisting her as she undertakes this especially critical work.”
A 2016 graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, O’Reilly was a Full Tuition Merit Scholar and president of the Women Law Students’ Association.
While in law school, she worked with Greater Hartford Legal Aid first as a summer policy intern, researching and writing on Paid Family Leave and Trauma Informed Legal Advocacy, then as a full-year legal intern through the University of Connecticut’s Poverty Law Clinic, where she focused on family violence and housing cases. She also spent a summer as a law clerk for the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project in Washington D.C.
During her final year, she served as a legislative policy clerk for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, where she provided research support and written testimony for several coalitions working to enhance domestic workers’ legal protections, develop more robust domestic violence policies, and monitor Connecticut’s certificate of need process.
The Vermont Poverty Law Fellowship was launched in 2008 to help expand the reach of Vermont’s existing legal services providers. It is funded through generous contributions from more than 300 individual attorneys, law firms, corporations and organizations. The Fellows are talented young lawyers committed to making the justice system accessible to low-income Vermonters.
The Vermont Bar Foundation was created in 1982 when the leaders of the Vermont Bar Association established a non-profit fund-raising organization to help ensure equal access to justice for all Vermonters.
Vermont Legal Aid (VLA) is a non-profit law firm that provides legal advice and services to individuals and families throughout Vermont who are facing a civil legal problem that threatens their rights, shelter, job, health or well-being. VLA began serving clients in 1968.