Jennifer Prusak

Biography

Jennifer Prusak directs Vanderbilt's Housing Law Clinic, in which she and her students represent tenants facing eviction proceedings, advance Fair Housing Act claims on behalf of disabled clients, and advocate for affordable and accessible housing. Professor Prusak previously directed the Nonprofit Legal Clinic at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, a transactional clinic which she created and managed for six years, and served as faculty supervisor of Maurer’s Tenant Assistance Project, through which law students met with and counseled pro se tenants immediately before and during their eviction hearings in Monroe County, Indiana. In 2011, she taught a Disability Law Clinic as a member of Maurer’s adjunct faculty.

Before joining the clinical law faculty at Maurer, Professor Prusak was a staff attorney and an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Legal Fellow at Indiana Legal Services, where she worked with local nonprofit agencies on projects aimed at preventing homelessness in southern Indiana and defended eviction actions brought against Section 8 tenants, public housing residents and tenants renting from private landlords in Southern Indiana courts. Her work also included negotiating with public housing authorities and private landlords on behalf of tenants at risk of eviction, helping disabled clients advance Fair Housing Act disputes, and bringing actions against landlords for breaching warranty of habitability.

Prusak earned her law degree at the University of Michigan and then spent seven years in private litigation practice, focusing on disability and employment discrimination law, before joining Indiana Legal Aid. She joined Vanderbilt’s clinical faculty in summer 2020.