A right is a fine thing to have. A lawyer who can help you use it is another matter.
Dannelly Rodriguez has worked on both sides of that gap: defending Queens tenants facing eviction, then representing people in Manhattan Criminal Court as a public defender with The Legal Aid Society. Different courtrooms, different laws. In each, someone’s future depends on getting a chance to answer the case against them. [2]
At Queens Legal Services, Rodriguez’s practice included Housing Court and Supreme Court litigation, rent and repair disputes, and work with tenant unions. Those last two words deserve attention. A leaking ceiling may begin as one apartment’s problem. Organizing asks how many neighbors have been living under the same conditions—and what they can do together. [2]
The work makes an unglamorous demand of the law: follow through. A protection written into a statute has to survive the trip through a complaint, a court filing, an argument, and a decision. Somewhere along that route, a person still needs the heat fixed or the eviction stopped. Knowing the rule is the beginning of the job.
Rodriguez made that point concrete in September 2024, when New York’s Good Cause Eviction law was beginning to face courtroom tests. Speaking to City Limits about discovery, the process of obtaining information relevant to a case, Rodriguez pushed back against the idea that tenants’ requests should be treated chiefly as a delay. [3]
“It’s a fundamental right for anyone in America facing legal proceedings,” Rodriguez told the publication. [3]
Thirteen words, with very little room for ceremony. Before a court accepts one side’s version of events, the other side needs a meaningful opportunity to examine it. That opportunity can be especially consequential for someone who lacks the money, records, or familiarity with the system that an opponent brings into the room.
A CUNY School of Law graduate and a director of the Dominican Bar Association, Rodriguez brings organizing experience into a career built around representation. The association’s 2026 biography places the current practice in Manhattan criminal defense. The stakes there include a person’s liberty; the everyday work still requires close attention to facts, procedure, and the person whose name is on the case. [2]
Public legal education belongs in that picture, too. In the AWS conversation Housing Court Explained, Rodriguez helped bring the language and workings of the court to people outside it. For a tenant trying to understand an unfamiliar process, a clear explanation can make the next question possible. [1]
That is no substitute for having counsel beside you. It is a way to make the system less obscure before someone has to navigate it under pressure. A courtroom should not be the first place a person hears the vocabulary being used to decide what happens to them.
The through line in Rodriguez’s work is practical: give people room to contest what is being done to them. Ask for the records. Examine the claim. Make the argument. Those are ordinary acts of lawyering until you consider what hangs on them.
A home. A fair hearing. The chance to leave court with more than the feeling that the outcome had been decided before you arrived.
