Iris Eileen Coloma-Gaines is an attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI). She has practiced law on behalf of low income or disadvantaged people for more than 30 years in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. She joined MLRI in May 2018 as the attorney for the Health Starts at Home Project, a collaborative research initiative of immigrant families served by Boston Children’s Hospital’s Martha Eliot Health Clinic. In May 2019, she became MLRI’s statewide Language Access Attorney.
Ms. Coloma-Gaines began her career at Southeastern Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (now, South Coastal Counties Legal Services) primarily practicing family law and landlord-tenant law. After relocating to Philadelphia, she joined Philadelphia Legal Assistance where she launched and led a migrant farmworker law practice where she fought for workers’ rights. There she litigated individual and multiplaintiff cases in federal agencies and courts. She also partnered with Philadelphia area law schools and colleges and directed a longstanding immigrant-focused tax law clinic. After assisting Pennsylvania’s farm workers for seventeen years, Ms. Coloma-Gaines returned to her native Massachusetts and joined Greater Boston Legal Services’ Employment Law Unit, representing low wage immigrant workers in tax matters. Ms. Coloma-Gaines is fluent in Spanish and is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants. She completed her undergraduate degree at Boston College and earned her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School.