Neighbors Link :: Neighbors Link Community Law Practice

Neighbors Link Community Law Practice

Neighbors Link recently merged Pace Community Law Practice (PCLP) into the organization. Lead attorneys, Karin Anderson Ponzer, Esq. and Elizabeth Mastropolo, Esq. will become Neighbors Link staff and their legal services will be provided under the new name Neighbors Link Community Law Practice. Neighbors Link has partnered with PCLP since 2014, with PCLP completing applications for US naturalization and deferred action as well as a variety of other immigration services during the legal clinics offered every week at Neighbors Link. The partnership between Neighbors Link and PCLP has been very successful: over the past 2 ½ years, PCLP conducted initial consultations at Neighbors Link with over 250 people seeking legal assistance; most of those cases were immigration matters, including family based petitions, visas, travel documents, asylum, and renewal of Legal Permanent Resident Cards (LPR). The merging of PCLP into Neighbors Link will allow the center to expand legal services to integrate and support Neighbors Link's overall operations and mission to strengthen the whole community by actively enhancing the healthy integration of immigrants.

Information on obtaining legal services through Neighbors Link Community Law Practice available here.

Staff Bios

Karin Anderson Ponzer is the Director of Neighbors Link Community Law Practice. From 2015-2017, she served as Executive Director of the Pace Community Law Practice and was previously the Assistant Director/Supervising Attorney at the PCLP from its September 2012 opening. Prior to joining the PCLP, she worked as an immigration attorney at Catholic Migration Services of the Diocese of Brooklyn, where she focused on removal defense and complex motions to reopen, and as a Policy and Training Associate at the New York Immigration Coalition, where she coordinated efforts to provide legal resources to individuals subjected to post-9/11 enforcement actions by DHS. She has been recognized by Maryland State Senate, the Mid-Shore Council on Family Violence, the Nassau County Executive, and the National Lawyers Guild for her legal and advocacy work on behalf of immigrant communities. She earned a J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law and a Ph.D. in Politics and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research. She is a Member of the Bar of the State of New York and of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, as well as of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the New York State Political Science Association, the New York City Bar Association, Immigration & Nationality Law Committee, and Westchester County Bar Association.

Elizabeth Mastropolo is the Assistant Director of Neighbors Link Community Law Practice. Previously, she was Assistant Director of the Pace Community Law Practice. She graduated from Siena College in 2010 and went on to get her J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law in 2013, graduating in the top 12% of her class. After law school, she was named the Westchester County Bar Association Foundation Fellow and placed at the Pace Community Law Practice serving the immigrant community in Westchester County, specifically at Neighbors Link in Mount Kisco. She was admitted to the bar in New York (2014) and New Jersey (2013).