Aequitas Consulting

Aequitas Consulting is a community advocacy and consulting practice for residents of Berkshire County. It exists to help you move through systems that are hard to face alone.

Most people come to Aequitas with one of a few situations. You are being treated unfairly in housing, at work, or by a public office, and you believe who you are has something to do with it. A criminal record is standing between you and a job, an apartment, or any other matter. There may be instances of harassment or threatening you and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Or a government agency has stalled, denied, or ignored you, and you cannot get a straight answer and need an advocate to take some of the pressure off. If your situation looks like any of these, or sits somewhere in between, it belongs here.

The work itself is practical and it is personal. It means getting your account down clearly and keeping it on the record, sorting out whether your situation is one that an agency such as the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination or the Attorney General can act on, or one better handled through mediation or a court order, and then moving on it. That can mean preparing the complaint, writing the demand and records-request letters that put an institution on notice, connecting you with a lawyer or legal aid when a matter calls for one, and standing with you in front of the landlord, employer, or agency involved, at the meeting or the hearing, not only on paper. Where the rules and standards are hard to read, I will do my best to make them plain, so you understand where you stand and what your options are.

Much of this work is for people the law does not fully account for. A criminal record, for instance, carries real protection in some settings and little in others. Where a protection exists, we use it. Where none does, we look for the best available path from what remains. The aim does not change: fair treatment, and someone in your corner while you pursue it.

The scope and limits of this engagement It is worth being clear about the boundary of this work. I stand with you as an advocate, and what I offer is an advocate's judgment, not the legal advice of an attorney. Aequitas Consulting is not a law firm, and nothing here takes the place of a lawyer where your situation calls for one. You keep the right to hire counsel at any point, and because the final decisions rest with agencies, courts, and the other parties involved, I cannot promise a particular outcome, only honest effort and a straight account of what is and is not possible.

Confidentiality and records What you tell me is kept in a confidential, dated file, so the record holds and can be handed to a lawyer or an agency if that ever serves you. Your information stays between us, and I will not share it, or reach out to your employer, your landlord, your family, or anyone else about your matter, without your written permission. The only exceptions are the ones the law places on anyone, such as a court order or a real risk of serious harm, and if either ever arose, you would hear it from me first.