Oren Sellstrom

Oren joined LCR in 2015 as Litigation Director. In that capacity, he oversees the organization’s litigation and advocacy work in all areas including education, economic justice, employment, police accountability, immigrants’ rights, and voting rights.

Prior to joining LCR in Boston, Oren worked for 18 years at the Lawyers’ Committee affiliate in San Francisco, first as a staff attorney and then as the organization’s Legal Director. He has litigated numerous civil rights cases in federal and state court, including lawsuits aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline; cases to ensure equal voting rights for communities of color; and lawsuits successfully challenging restrictions on subsidized housing and healthcare for immigrant families. Oren has also helped promote and defend a wide variety of programs to ensure equal opportunity for minority-owned businesses, including arguing and winning a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit preserving the California Department of Transportation’s contracting equity program.

Prior to his tenure at the Lawyers’ Committee affiliate in San Francisco, Oren worked as a legal services attorney; in private practice at a firm specializing in environmental and whistleblower litigation; and as a law clerk to the Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He is a 1992 graduate of Harvard Law School.

An award-winning attorney, Oren was featured as “Lawyer of the Year” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in 2019.

Oren received the Justice in Action Award from the Harry H. Dow Memorial Legal Assistance Fund for his landmark victory in Huot v. City of Lowell, a major voting rights case successfully brought on behalf of Asian-American and Latinx voters to dismantle the at-large electoral system in Lowell, Mass.

Oren received the prestigious President’s Award from the Boston Bar Association for his groundbreaking work at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Savino v. Souza, the first class action filed in the country to secure the en masse humanitarian release of civil immigration detainees.

Boston Magazine featured Oren in its list of “Top Lawyers” for 2021.