Terry Lawson is a well-known leader in the immigration advocacy and anti-violence community, Terry has represented hundreds of people seeking safety for the past two decades. Her community lawyering approach to overcoming systemic barriers to self-determination coupled with her extensive experience providing and expanding access to direct legal services have inspired her to co-create Co-Counsel NYC.
Following law school, Terry was a litigation associate with Sidley Austin LLP, where she handled pro bono immigration and family law cases and externed with Her Justice, representing women in family law matters. She spent the next eleven years of her public interest legal career in the Bronx office of Legal Services NYC, where she led the Family and Immigration Unit for six years, supervising a team of fourteen lawyers, paralegals, and social workers. While at Bronx Legal Services, she chaired the Bronx Domestic Violence Roundtable and co-founded the Bronx Immigration Partnership, a consortium of community-based organizations providing legal and social services for Bronx immigrants, where she remains on the Steering Committee. Terry served for nine years on the New York State Unified Court System Advisory Council on Immigration Issues in Family Court before being appointed to the Permanent Commission on Justice for Families, where she now co-leads the Immigration Action Group. Through her work with the ICE Out of Courts Coalition and as the Supervising Policy Attorney at the Immigrant Defense Project, Terry championed the rights of immigrants to attend court without fear of being arrested by ICE and helped New York secure a court rule, a federal and legislation stopping the practice. Following passage of the Protect Our Courts Act in 2020, Terry served for three years as the Executive Director of UnLocal, where she oversaw approximately 2200 legal matters, 200 social work cases, and over 280 community events, reaching more than 40,000 people online and in-person. She also co-created the Pro Se Plus Project to assist recent arrivals through community education and pro se assistance. Terry is the recipient of the NYC Bar Association’s Legal Services Award and the Hostos Advocacy Award and has been recognized by the 15th Congressional District of the United States, the Bronx Borough President, and the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. She has authored and co-authored numerous publications, including Safeguarding the Integrity of Our Courts, Denied Disappeared and Deported and “More People to Listen”: Legal and Social Services Needs of Bronx Communities Affected by Intimate Partner Violence. A graduate of Yale College, Terry also has a Masters in Public Policy from from the Harvard Kennedy School and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.
