On November 19, about a week after a devastating fire at the historic Castle at Keswick building that housed the Community Law Center, clients, staff, volunteers, and supporters representing a cross-section of Baltimore crowded into the back room of Guilford Hall Brewery. They came to share stories of how they learned about the fire — seeing smoke from their windows, getting calls from board members, and, for many onsite, watching the building burn after evacuating — and to celebrate the organization’s perseverance.
The nonprofit, which occupied the second floor of the Castle building, lost everything in the November 10 fire.
“We had a near total loss of our contents. We will have a projected $300,000 gap between what will be covered and what we lost. We will recover. We will be stronger,” Amy Petkovsek, the center’s executive director, told the roughly 100 people gathered. “Despite this fire, we haven’t missed a single client deadline or scheduled workshops.”
Community Law Center, Maryland’s only nonprofit law firm dedicated to providing free legal services to community organizations and nonprofits, was founded in 1986 by lawyers and community organizers to help Baltimore City residents advocate for their neighborhoods. For nearly 40 years, the organization has used the law to address problems ranging from abandoned properties and illegal dumping to environmental hazards and policy reform. The scope of CLC’s current caseload reveals the precariousness of Baltimore’s community infrastructure: They’re currently representing parents from shuttered Baltimore City elementary schools, working with 1,000 West Baltimore residents fighting the Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak, and handling zoning initiatives across the city. For small neighborhood associations, CLC is often the only legal backup available.
“We represent neighborhood associations across East and West Baltimore, through Park Heights, through Sandtown-Winchester,” Petkovsek said. “There is no one else filling that in.”
Within days of the fire, CLC had already conducted three previously scheduled workshops. They’ve been taking client meetings in donated office space at Open Works on Mondays and Wednesdays. The legal team is mobile now, working from laptops in borrowed rooms.
“A large part of our mission is to give a voice and legal representation for those who can’t afford legal representation otherwise,” Denice Ko, CLC’s deputy director and an attorney with the organization since 2017, said. The work includes holding workshops to help community groups navigate city processes like addressing problem bars and liquor stores and supporting Black-led nonprofits with grant management and board governance best practices — what Ko calls “neighborhood-led legal work.”
CLC operates through a network of over 600 pro bono attorneys who donate their expertise. In 2024 alone, they handled more than 50 cases worth well over $350,000 in billable hours. At the fundraiser at Guilford Hall Brewery, Ko stood with one of her clients, Cynthia Gross, president of C.A.R.E. Community Association. CLC supported the community association with legal representation and guidance as they appealed a city zoning decision to approve the creation of a 30-unit development that residents said would not be affordable to longtime residents in a neighborhood struggling with limited parking and space.
Gross said CLC helped residents navigate complex city processes and effectively protect their neighborhood’s interests.
“[CLC] are the only ones that will… fight for you, with you when you need it,” Gross said. “As far as I’m concerned, the state needs to just write CLC a check for all the work that they do, for all these communities that don’t have a voice.”
The fire comes during what Petkovsek described as a “brutal” year for nonprofits. At a time when the country’s biggest law firms are bending to the Trump administration, CLC lost $250,000 in federal grants after refusing to abandon its aim of serving communities that have been redlined and racially discriminated against. “We made the decision not to stray at all from our mission,” she said. “We would choose to lose the federal money.”
One of CLC’s current clients, Baltimore Green Justice Workers Cooperative, has also been hit by the loss of federal funding under the Trump administration. The small nonprofit works with 17 neighborhood associations across the city to bring clean energy to Black communities.
“They have been tremendously impacted by cuts in the federal administration, both diversity and equity cuts and environmental climate cuts,” Petkovsek said. “They are continuing that work in a really innovative way. And we are their lawyers.”
The Castle building is shuttered, but CLC is still taking cases, still meeting deadlines, and still showing up for Baltimore’s most vulnerable communities. They’re just doing it from borrowed desks and brewery backrooms — at least for now.
“My staff were in that building when that happened, and they have continued to show up to work every single day since,” Petkovsek said.
The organization is accepting donations towards its short term fundraising goal of $100,000 at communitylaw.org/donate.