Taylor James is a staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society’s Community Development Project (CDP). Taylor offers legal services to nonprofit organizations, small business owners, and unincorporated community groups on projects that revitalize low-income communities. She is passionate about utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach to client representation focusing on a community lawyering model. Before coming to CDP, Taylor was a staff attorney in The Legal Aid Society's Housing Help Program, working to preserve affordable housing by providing legal representation to low-income New Yorkers facing eviction, which included litigation of rent overcharge claims, sub-standard living conditions, and drug-related evictions. In her advocacy with the Right to Counsel Coalition, Taylor testified before the New York City Council in favor of Universal Access, which passed in August 2017, codifying a right to counsel in Housing Court eviction defense proceedings and representing a historic expansion of legal representation for tenants in New York City Housing Court. Taylor received her AB in Government at Dartmouth College and her JD from the University of Maryland School of Law.