Tamara Serwer Caldas leads the firm's attorneys in providing pro bono legal services to low-income clients, community groups and nonprofit organizations.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Caldas served as Deputy Director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation (AVLF) since 2011. She worked with AVLF in a number of capacities since joining in September 2005, including serving as Managing Attorney since 2007. At AVLF, she developed civil pro bono projects that met the personal and professional needs of lawyers while advancing the ideals of justice and fair treatment of all people in the legal system. Prior to joining AVLF, Ms. Caldas was an attorney in the Atlanta office of a Georgia-based adoption and assisted reproductive technologies law firm, where she handled adoptions, guardianships and legitimation and custody proceedings. Previously, Ms. Caldas served as a Senior Staff Attorney for the Southern Center of Human Rights. Among other duties, she recruited and worked with pro bono counsel to support large-scale civil rights litigations and served as lead or co-counsel for civil rights actions in federal and state trial and appellate courts challenging unconstitutional conditions of confinement on behalf of people incarcerated in Alabama and Georgia.
After graduating from law school, Ms. Caldas served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Nashville, Tennessee. While attending law school, she clerked for the Honorable Bea Ann Smith of the Third Court of Appeals of Texas and led the school’s Women’s Law Caucus and Public Interest Law Association. She also spent several months at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, assisting with civil rights lawsuits on behalf of immigrants, prisoners and death row inmates.
Ms. Caldas has received numerous awards and recognitions over the years. In 2013, she received the Rita A. Sheffey Public Interest Award from the Atlanta Bar Association and the EPIC Inspiration Award: Unsung Devotion to Those Most in Need awarded by Emory University. In 2008, Ms. Caldas was a recipient of the Harold Keller Public Service Leadership Award by the Stennis Center for Public Service Leadership. In 2003, she was recognized as a Georgia Lawyer “On the Rise” by the Fulton County Daily Report. Ms. Caldas is a certified mediator.
