Ellen Hemley
Executive Director
Ellen Hemley brings over 25 years of experience in the equal justice community to her role as CLAE's first Executive Director. An experienced legal educator and organizational consultant, Ellen knows that legal aid attorneys and paralegals need professional development at every stage of their careers. Through CLAE, Ellen’s goal is to harness the full power of legal aid to improve the lives of people within our society who are low-income, vulnerable and marginalized. Under Ellen’s leadership, CLAE reduces isolation and promotes an expansive vision of equal justice work. CLAE’s students emerge with new tools, mentors, networks, and ideas. Most importantly, they learn to hold themselves to the highest standards of quality, efficiency, effectiveness, and partnership. Ellen is leading CLAE to support the legal aid community's ongoing commitment to its founding goals of equal justice for all.
Prior to launching CLAE, Ellen was Director of Training at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute where she oversaw CLAE’s predecessor, the Legal Services Training Consortium of New England. As an independent consultant, Ellen’s clients included the American Bar Association, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Florida Bar Foundation, the Washington Access to Justice Commission, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants, and scores of other legal aid networks, bar foundations and justice-related programs across the country. She is a 1981 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law.
Ellen’s work as a consultant and trainer has been featured in many publications, including Management Information Exchange, the Shriver Center’s Poverty Law Manual for the New Lawyer, the Legal Services Corporation’s Equal Justice Magazine, Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly, the American Bar Association’s Dialogue Newsletter, and various law review journals.