Ariel Nelson

Staff Attorney

Ariel Nelson is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) focusing on credit reporting, tenant and employment screening, consumer protections for renters, and consumer issues affecting justice-involved people and their families. She directs NCLC’s Criminal Justice Debt & Reintegration Project.

She is a co-author of NCLC’s Fair Credit Reporting treatise and a contributing author of Collection Actions. Ariel’s other NCLC publications include: Digital Denials: How Abuse, Bias, and Lack of Transparency in Tenant Screening Harm Renters; Too Damn High: How Junk Fees Add to Skyrocketing Rents; Commercialized (In)Justice Litigation Guide: Applying Consumer Laws to Commercial Bail, Prison Retail, and Private Debt Collection; The High Cost of a Fresh Start: A State-by-State Analysis of Court Debt As a Bar to Record Clearing; and Broken Records Redux: How Errors by Criminal Background Check Companies Continue to Harm Consumers Seeking Jobs and Housing.

Prior to her working at NCLC, Ariel investigated and litigated administrative and environmental law cases as a staff attorney/clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and to the Honorable Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Education: 

J.D. Harvard Law School, cum laude

LL.M. Georgetown University Law Center

B.A. University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude