Lissette Ortegon is a Staff Attorney at CDEL. Her role is focused on leading CDEL’s program with the Illinois Department of Health to offer free advanced planning legal services for individuals living with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Lissette is fluent in Spanish and supports CDEL’s Spanish-speaking clientele, while improving her sign language skills to better serve Deaf clients.

Lissette joined CDEL in December 2021 under a grant from the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation. Prior to joining CDEL, Lissette was a personal injury attorney and volunteered with the Chicago Legal Clinic (now the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic) supporting applicants for expungements and/or sealings of their felony records at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse.

Lissette earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2014. During law school, Lissette was a long-time intern at Disability Rights Wisconsin where she worked on cases representing persons with disabilities facing housing issues and discrimination within the prison system.

Lissette received her Bachelors of Science in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008. Afterwards, she taught English in the public-school system of Daejeon, South Korea for two years.