Behind every legal aid attorney is a fascinating story of what brought them to a career in civil legal services. Maria A. Smith, housing attorney at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, is no exception. The recipient of the Foundation’s 2025 Denis J. Murphy Award for outstanding leadership and advocacy at Ohio’s legal aids, Smith has spent her career — and all aspects of her life — fighting for those less fortunate.
A Missouri native and a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, Smith came to Cleveland after law school, drawn to the city by her Catholic faith.
“My plan was to be a contemplative nun,” she said. “When you apply to those communities, you have to be able to establish that you can live in community. So basically, I came to Cleveland because I wanted to know how to live in community.”
But while faith would remain a central tenet in her life, becoming a nun was not her ultimate path. Instead, Smith became heavily involved with various grassroots organizations in Cleveland, working to fight poverty and injustice. She spent years in both Nicaragua and Brazil, working as a missionary with her husband. After she returned from Brazil, she served as a magistrate in Housing Court; however, it was The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland that would ultimately become her home, where she has been a sought-after attorney and housing expert for decades.
Underpinning all her work at legal aid is Smith’s unwavering commitment to justice and a steadfast dedication to securing the best outcome for her clients. Her deeply networked connections with organizations throughout the city, combined with her background as a generalist, make her adept at exploring every possible legal solution.
“Clients don’t come in and say, I have this particular legal issue,” Smith said. “They have like a whole bathtub of things bouncing around in there. In the housing group, we see an eviction complaint, but there are a lot of other drivers that led to that one legal problem.”
In addition to solving legal challenges and ensuring that her clients can access safe and affordable housing, Smith’s work has established legal precedents that have benefited hundreds of Ohioans. In 2019, she and her colleagues persuaded the Eighth District Court of Appeals of Ohio that a three-day notice to vacate a property must include the name of the plaintiff-landlord. Since then, hundreds of tenants have been saved from eviction when landlords failed to comply with the Eighth District’s DeCarlo holding.
“It makes it a lot fairer,” Smith said of DeCarlo. “It really helps level the playing field.”
With decades of service comes the reward of seeing clients’ lives come full circle. Smith tells a story about a time shortly before the pandemic when she came to work feeling a little down. A woman came through the front door and remembered that Smith represented her in bringing a posthumous paternity case when her son was a baby.
“She tells me her name, and she says that now her son is graduating from Shaker High School,” Smith said. “That was an affirmation that I’m in the right place.”
The Ohio Access to Justice Foundation annually presents the Denis Murphy, Elam, Presidential, Rising Star, and Voice of Justice awards to outstanding leaders. Learn more about the Foundation’s awards.