Niamh Gibbons

My practice involves assisting clients in all three of Zalkind’s practice areas: criminal defense, employment, and higher education.

As an associate at Zalkind, my goal is to provide skilled, dedicated representation and achieve the best possible outcomes for clients confronted with legal challenges. My practice includes both State and Federal criminal cases, employment litigation, and a range of academic misconduct proceedings. In my pro bono practice, I assist clients in obtaining restraining orders in domestic violence cases and provide other litigation assistance to legal services organizations.

• Won reversal of academic misconduct charges in multiple cases, leading to clients resuming their education and removal of disciplinary notices from their records.
• Successfully negotiated settlements for clients in cases involving race, gender, national origin, disability, and age discrimination, retaliation, and Wage Act violations.
• Represent clients seeking expungement and sealing of criminal records, including winning complete expungement of two-decade-old criminal record for client.
• Guided multiple clients through pre-arraignment diversion programs and achieved dismissal of criminal charges against them.
• Drafted amicus brief on individual liability for sexual harassment in education programs, an issue subsequently taken up by the Supreme Judicial Court.
• Won multiple restraining orders and extensions of orders in domestic violence cases.
• Represent clients in litigation before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, Massachusetts District Court and Superior Court, and federal district courts in multiple states.

I joined Zalkind as an associate in 2023 after a clerkship at the Massachusetts Appeals Court. During law school, I interned for the Honorable Juan R. Torruella at the First Circuit Court of Appeals and at an employment law firm in Boston, where I was involved with litigation in trade secrets and noncompete-related disputes. I also managed programs at a university-based research center focused on the humanitarian aid sector and worked for international non-profit organizations supporting people affected by humanitarian emergencies and human rights violations.

• Super Lawyers
  • Rising Stars, Massachusetts (2025)
• Best Lawyers in America
  • Ones to Watch (2025)

• Boston Bar Association—Public Interest Leadership Program (PILP), 2025-2026; Criminal Law Steering Committee (PILP liaison)
• Women’s Bar Association
• Massachusetts Employers Lawyers Association
• Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

• Co-author, “Sealing State Criminal Records: A Practitioner’s Guide,” Boston Bar Journal, Spring 2025.

I went to law school after several years as a human rights practitioner, where I focused on improving access to justice and effective remedies for victims of human rights abuses. I became a lawyer because I wanted to build skills that would allow me to be a strong advocate for individual rights, whether that means ensuring due process protections are afforded to a client accused of wrongdoing, tackling workplace discrimination, or providing guidance during university hearings.