After her first year at Harvard Law School, Sarah Mattson Dustin (’06) completed a summer internship with New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA), a nonprofit law firm that provides free advice and representation to low-income and elderly residents in civil legal cases.

Twenty years later, Sarah serves as the organization’s executive director. “I’ve been an intern, staff attorney, policy director and now, for the last five and a half years, ED,” she says. “I’ve held nearly every possible job.”

Sarah grew up in central New Hampshire, about 45 miles from NHLA’s Concord head-quarters. “I always knew this was where I would make my life and that I wanted to do public interest work,” she says. As an intern, she was immediately taken with NHLA’s mission and moved by the potential power of legal intervention for a person in crisis. “It was clear to me that I could contribute here right away,” Sarah says. “I was given the chance to work directly with clients, review pleadings for a major lawsuit and work on a Supreme Court brief. As a law student, it was incredibly appealing.”

At the end of the internship, NHLA’s director told Sarah that the organization would love for her to return and suggested she apply for a Skadden Fellowship. “The internship was my first stroke of incredible luck, and the Fellowship the second — it set the trajectory for my life,” she says.

Sarah’s Fellowship focused on predatory lending and medical debt collection, which required significant policy work — something she found surprisingly satisfying. “By chance, my Fellowship took place at a moment when there was a political opportunity to make real progress on payday and car title lending in New Hampshire, both of which impose deceptive and unfair terms and often position borrowers in a cycle of debt,” Sarah explains. “Ultimately, the car title loan cap was repealed, but the payday loan cap has stuck, which is why you don’t see payday lenders on every corner in New Hampshire like you do in many other places.”

With five offices across the state and a staff of 45, NHLA is a full-service legal services provider. “We handle everything from representing individual clients in court to New Hampshire Supreme Court appeals and federal class actions, as well as policy advocacy,” Sarah says. The majority of the organization’s work falls into three categories: housing, including eviction, foreclosure and fair-housing work; domestic violence and domestic violence-related family law; and access to public benefits, from disability to town and city welfare programs. Sarah and her team also take on a number of special projects, including many related to aging, youth and immigration law.

Sarah is especially excited about a pilot project that enables NHLA paralegals to represent clients in court, with attorney supervision, in certain domestic violence, family law and housing cases. The project is presently in three courts, and legislation, just signed by the governor, will expand it to all state courts and extend it for another five years.

“We have been working on this since 2019, when only a handful of states were doing it,” she says. “Now it’s catching fire across the country.” Sarah describes the program as a “natural progression” for NHLA, whose paralegals regularly represent clients outside of court — in, for example, food stamp and Social Security disability appeals, and certain immigration proceedings. “There had always been this invisible line around the courthouse,” Sarah says. “To be able to leverage the skills of paralegals in these areas of incredibly high need is huge. It is cost-effective and an amazing way to expand the diversity and language skills of our staff, because the hiring pool is so much broader with non-attorney hiring.

Outside the office, Sarah heads for the air of her gardens, where she grows vegetables, herbs and flowers. “I live with my family in a somewhat rural part of my town,” she says. “I feel very lucky to be here.”