Below is the full text of a Massachusetts Bar Association eJournal publication from 05/22/2025.
The Massachusetts Bar Association is excited to host the Access to Justice Awards Celebration on Thursday, June 5, from 5:30-8 p.m., at the Sheraton Framingham. The event will feature a keynote address by Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Serge Georges Jr.
Visit the Access to Justice Awards web page to register for the event or select from one of three sponsorship opportunities.
This week, we are proud to highlight three of the nine award winners who will be honored on June 5. Click here to read about the three honorees featured in the May 15 eJournal, and look for information on the remaining three honorees next week.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award
Caitlin Glass, Boston University School of Law
Caitlin Glass teaches at Boston University School of Law, where she directs the Antiracism & Community Lawyering Practicum. Beginning in the fall of 2025, she will direct the Racial Justice and Movement Lawyering Clinic, which will build on the practicum’s work engaging in legal projects that challenge racial subordination and other forms of social exclusion and marginalization. In her scholarship, Glass writes about criminal law and procedure, race and the law, participatory methods and movement law.
Before joining BU Law, Glass was the policy program director at the BU Center for Antiracist Research. Her previous roles included staff attorney at the Office of the Appellate Defender, assistant director of the NYU Law Clemency Resource Center, Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, and law clerk for Judge Ann M. Donnelly in the Eastern District of New York.
She received her law degree from NYU School of Law, where she was on the Review of Law and Social Change and participated in the Racial Justice Clinic and the Equal Justice and Capital Defender Clinic. She received her undergraduate degree in public policy from the University of Chicago.
Law School Clinician Award
Julie Dahlstrom, Boston University School of Law
Julie Dahlstrom assumed her role of associate dean of clinical & experiential education on July 1, 2023, after over 10 years teaching and supervising student attorneys in the experiential program at BU.
Dahlstrom began her clinical teaching career as the founder and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic, which was named one of the most innovative law clinics by preLaw magazine in 2014. In 2017, she became the director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program, where students represent indigent clients and engage with policy-related projects to address systemic injustice. At BU Law, Dahlstrom has been deeply committed to building community and resources for public interest students. She chaired the Public Service Committee, spearheaded efforts to develop the public interest concentration, and oversaw the creation of the public interest retreat.
As associate dean of experiential education, Dahlstrom views experiential programs as a powerful force in developing innovative responses to the most pressing legal issues of our time, including racial justice, climate change, immigrants’ rights, civil rights issues and other issues. She is committed to strengthening intersectional and interdisciplinary responses to systemic bias by encouraging partnerships among experiential programs and the broader university.
In 2022, Dahlstrom was awarded the Access to Justice Award by the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance, and in 2015, she received the Case Award from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for her legal representation of a survivor of labor trafficking. She has served on the U.S. Attorney’s Office Civil Rights Task Force, was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick to the Massachusetts Interagency Human Trafficking Task Force, and now is a member of the Commonwealth Anti-Trafficking Task Force. Dahlstrom has testified in support of criminal legal reform and critical legislation to improve the rights of immigrants in the commonwealth, and she co-counseled first-of-its kind litigation arguing that the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office cannot arbitrarily deny U visa certification to an immigrant detainee who was violently assaulted.
Dahlstrom served previously as a senior staff attorney at Casa Myrna Vazquez, where she represented survivors of labor and sex trafficking, and as managing attorney of the Immigration Legal Assistance Program at Ascentria Care Alliance, where she handled a wide range of humanitarian immigration cases. She founded the U and T Visa Working Group of the Immigration Coalition and is a member of the Human Trafficking Subcommittee of the Delivery of Legal Services Committee.
Pro Bono Publico Award
Michele Scavongelli, Committee for Public Counsel Services Youth Advocacy Foundation and EdLaw Project
Michele Scavongelli joined the EdLaw Project as an Equal Justice Works Fellow, sponsored by Bingham McCutchen LLP, in September 2012, and has continued as senior counsel until the present.
Scavongelli has successfully represented over 200 families in the past 12 years in both school discipline and special education matters, prevailing at administrative law hearings, in the Superior and federal courts, and in state complaints. She has built a pro bono panel for the EdLaw Project and has trained hundreds of delinquency, child welfare, firm, and in-house counsel, as well as parent and community groups in special education advocacy and school discipline rights. Through a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, she has created a statewide special education mentoring network to support youth-serving attorneys.
Scavongelli is also the executive director of the Youth Advocacy Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization attached to the state public defender office whose mission is to shut down the school-to-prison pipeline by ensuring that all court-involved kids have access to expert education advocacy. She is an adjunct professor at the Lynch School of Graduate Education of Boston College, where she teaches “Education Law & Public Policy.”
Scavongelli graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2012. During law school, she was a recipient of a Rappaport Fellowship at the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate and a recipient of a Hennessey Fellowship at the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee. She interned at the Lowell Juvenile Court as well as at the law firm of Kotin, Crabtree & Strong LLP with a particular focus on special education law. Scavongelli also assisted victims of domestic violence at the Dorchester and Roxbury municipal courts and at Boston Medical Center and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. She has served as a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) and as a special education surrogate parent.
Prior to attending law school, she spent 29 years as an actuary and executive in the life insurance industry. She earned her S.B. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. She is the mother of seven and grandmother of eight.
The other honorees are:
Legal Services Award
Daniel Daley, MetroWest Legal Services
Lifetime Achievement Award
Margaret Drew, UMass School of Law
Rising Star Award
Karen Bobadilla, De Novo Center for Justice and Healing
Court-Employed Attorney Award
Connie Mortara, Massachusetts Trial Court
Defender Award
Ivonne Vidal, Committee for Public Counsel Services
Prosecutor Award
Samuel Jones, Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office
Space is limited. Register by 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 29, to participate.
Questions? Email MBA Communications and Digital Marketing Manager Nicole Dowd at NDowd@massbar.org.