The Maine Association for Public Interest Law (MAPIL) auction is a time honored Maine Law tradition, one that has been going strong for 37 years. Students, alumni, and friends of Maine Law gather, as they did this year in late March to shout their bids for a variety of curated experiences. Many of these auction items include outings with professors or local getaways. Proceeds from the event, including online and silent auction components, go towards funding student fellowships in public interest law.
An integral part of this tradition is also the presentation of the Excellence in Public Service Award, conferred to a Maine Law alum who has dedicated their career to lawyering in the public interest.
This year’s recipient, Victoria Morales ‘05, currently serves as Executive Director of Quality Housing Coalition, a Maine-based nonprofit devoted to tackling the many facets of the affordable housing crisis in the state.
Before her current role, Morales served as Representative to the Maine Legislature, representing House District 33, from 2018-2022. Prior to her foray into politics, she worked as Staff Attorney for the City of Portland, focused on urban development and planning initiatives.
Morales said she became invested in public interest law through her clerkships during and after law school where she saw examples of “compassionate justice,” where justices sought to not only identify underlying issues in a defendant’s life but help solve them as well. Individuals often have a better relationship with the law, Morales intimated, when their basic needs are met. To Morales, and many others in the nonprofit sector, the most basic and essential of those needs is housing, one that intersects not only with the legal system but with many systemic societal issues in Maine and around the county. Morales said she knows Maine Law students, past, present, and future, are integral to addressing these concerns.
“Justice is like a garden, we have to tend it, water it, care and monitor it at all times,” she said. “I hope all of you current Maine Law students will be thinking about how to do this, some of the changes we need to make in Maine and how you can be a part of it.”
