Bernadette Stark Named New Director for Student Legal Services

Bernadette (Bernie) Stark joined Student Affairs and Campus Life on Monday, July 22 as director of the Student Legal Services Office (SLSO). In this position she provides administrative oversight of the office, as well as representation to students in the areas of family law, estate planning and immigration.

Stark previously worked for SLSO from 2008 to 2010 as a senior staff attorney. She then became a founding partner of the law firm Dinsmore Stark. Prior to SLSO, she worked as a staff attorney at Western Massachusetts Legal Services, where she represented low-income survivors of domestic violence.

Stark earned her juris doctorate from Cornell Law School in 2001. In 2007 Cornell Law School awarded her the Sarah Betsy Fuller Social Justice Award for distinguished alumni. “Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly” honored her in 2008 as both a “Diversity Hero” and “Woman of Justice.” In 2010, she received the “Gideon’s Trumpet Award” from Senior Partners for Justice, in honor of her “extraordinary commitment to access to justice for all.” She was named a “Super Lawyers Rising Star” for New England every year from 2012 through 2016 and in 2016, she was recognized in “Top Attorneys: Massachusetts’ Outstanding Young Women Lawyers” by “Boston Magazine.”