While growing up in Alaska, Arinda Brooks knew from an early age that she wanted to be a lawyer. By the time she graduated from Southern Oregon University in 2006, she had set her sights on Boston as the place where she wanted to make that happen. She’d developed an affinity for the city during numerous trips to visit a brother who had located there.

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Brooks went on to get a J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2009. During her final two years at BU, Brooks began clerking for the Boston law firm of Landman Akashian. She joined the firm as an attorney after law school, focusing her practice on workers’ compensation cases.

 

Although she loved her work there for seven years, Brooks felt the time had come to venture out on her own. The result, in 2013, was the creation of Brooks Law. Continuing to concentrate her practice mostly on workers’ comp and SSD, Brooks built the firm and would later add more attorneys, Jennifer Gesualdi.

 

Brooks’s own practice is a very busy one. She represents clients before the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents in downtown Boston several times a week — a demanding schedule that she relishes. But even more than her work in the administrative court, her greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that she’s making working people’s lives better.

 

“For me,” she says, “the highlight of my career is being able to help working people and getting to represent the underdog against the big insurance companies.” Under Brooks’s direction, the firm has developed a strong reputation working on behalf of the area’s Spanish-speaking and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking communities. The firm works closely with the Brazilian Workers Center in Allston, an immigrant assistance organization.

 

Brooks is a member of the Workers’ Compensation Section of the Massachusetts Bar Association and is also a member of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. Brooks and her husband and young son are residents of Somerville.