The Equal Justice Coalition is managed by its Legislative Committee, comprised of staff and attorney representatives from the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation and the legal aid organizations it funds, as well as other attorneys in private practice.
Louis Tompros, Chair
Partner
WilmerHale
Louis Tompros is a partner at WilmerHale whose practice focuses on intellectual property litigation. He has represented clients in patent disputes involving a variety of technologies, including first-chair trial experience and multiple arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Pro bono representation is also an important part of Louis’s practice. In 2004, he represented a group of gay and lesbian service members in one of the first challenges to the constitutionality of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, in association with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Through the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, he has represented an artist whose artwork was damaged on loan to a museum, a disability rights author and advocate in a copyright dispute with her publisher, and a prominent literary journal in a copyright dispute with an electronic database service. He has also represented local Boston schools, employees in unemployment insurance claims and appeals, public housing tenants facing eviction, and public advocacy groups submitting amicus briefs on criminal defense and electronic privacy issues.
Louis is a Lecturer on Law at the Harvard Law School, where he teaches a course on patent trial advocacy. He has also been a guest lecturer at the Harvard Law School on the topics of discovery and civil procedure, and at the Harvard Business School and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth on the topics of intellectual property, non-disclosure agreements, and non-competition agreements. Louis received his B.A. in English from Yale University in 2000, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2003. Following law school, Louis clerked for the Honorable Robert J. Cordy of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and for the Honorable Richard Linn of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Laura Booth, Director
With over two decades of work dedicated to advocacy for low-income residents in the Boston area, Laura Booth brings expertise in public policy, program design and civic engagement, honed in her positions at the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee, the office of former State Senator Anthony Galluccio, Women’s Lunch Place, Heading Home, Inc., and a host of volunteer and community affiliations. Laura has long held working alliances with Greater Boston providers of community-based legal services to ensure that individuals are accorded access to legal resources and, in this, a voice in their own circumstances.
Since the late 1970’s, Laura has participated in a variety of progressive organizing initiatives at community, regional and national levels including establishing women’s international peace camps, protesting strip mining, advocating for incarcerated individuals and their families, securing rights for immigrants and promoting LGBTQ rights, among others. She also joined with disabilities activists nationwide to call on congressional leaders to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act.
An important quality that characterizes Laura’s work is her consistent focus toward gaining social and economic justice by increasing community participation through access and education. To this end, she has organized regular forums to provide community members opportunities to interact directly with elected city and state officials so that they can impact decisions and programs directly affecting them.
Laura completed post-graduate studies in the Women in Politics and Public Policy Program at the University of Massachusetts and earned a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.
