As a charter signatory to the Pro Bono Institute's Pro Bono Challenge, we devote 3% of our U.S. attorneys' billable hours to pro bono work. In the UK, Reed Smith is a signatory to the United Kingdom's Joint Protocol for Pro Bono Work and a founding member of Advocates for International Development. Our internal Pro Bono Committee sponsors numerous activities that provide Reed Smith attorneys the opportunity both to aid persons of limited means and to champion important legal rights.
Adoption Legal Services Project
Since 1996, Reed Smith has partnered with the family courts of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania to rescue hundreds of children stranded in foster care. The kids were removed from their birth parents by the county's child welfare agency and placed in foster care. Adoptive parents were available, and parental rights were set to be terminated without contest, but the child welfare agency needed more attorneys to represent it. More than 150 of our attorneys, law clerks and paralegals have stepped in to handle termination and adoption cases, and nearly 800 adoptions have been completed.
The firm received the "Champions for Children" award from the Homeless Children & Family Emergency Fund, in recognition of the attorneys' pro bono work through the Adoption Legal Services Project. Reed Smith was also honored by the Department of Health and Human Services with the Adoption Excellence Award, in recognition of the firm's accomplishments in creating permanency for children who wait in foster care. The Urban League of Pittsburgh had previously presented the firm with the Ronald H. Brown Leadership Award for Corporate Service to acknowledge our work through the Adoption Legal Services Project.
Advocates for International Development
Formed out of a growing sense among lawyers that there were real steps they could take to tackle world poverty, Advocates for International Development (A4ID) is now the UK’s premier international pro bono organization. Reed Smith Richards Butler remains at the forefront of its formation and its work.
The firm supports A4ID not only through the taking on of projects, but also by giving premises and staff time. A significant part of our London Pro Bono & Community Manager’s time has been given by the firm to his role as Chair of A4ID’s Board of Trustees and to developing its work. So, too, the firm has enabled one of our trainee solicitors to play a leading role on A4ID’s Board and in heading up its Media and Education teams.
Through A4ID, lawyers from across the firm have been engaged in working with developing countries and development not-for-profits. Projects have ranged from assisting on international debt issues, to reviewing tax law, to support remittances from the developed to the developing world, to working with local lawyers in Malawi, Pakistan and Tanzania on development issues.
For its leadership in promoting international pro bono work, A4ID received the highly acclaimed “Pro Bono Team of the Year” prize at “The Lawyer Awards” in London.
After Parents Killed, Children Reunited in America
A nine-year old girl from the Ivory Coast, orphaned at age five by political upheaval, has been reunited with her two brothers, political refugees who obtained asylum and now live in Lancaster, PA. The family reunion took place in November 2007, thanks to the efforts of Associate Sara Lima, Partner John DiNome and Associate Romola Lucas, all of Reed Smith’s Philadelphia office.
Ahmed and Mansourou Bamba were captured by the rebel forces that killed their parents in 2003 and forced to abandon their young sister Karidja. After imprisonment and torture, they managed to escape both the rebels and later the government military. Hiding aboard a Russian-manned cocoa bean ship leaving the Ivory Cost, they ultimately obtained political asylum in the US in September 2004 and now live in Lancaster.
Unaware of whether their sister Karidja was alive or not, the brothers worked with the International Red Cross “tracing program,” which helps reunite separated families. Once found, however, Karidja faced many obstacles to her entry to the US. The Bamba brothers sought legal assistance to file a petition for humanitarian parole—typically a last resort immigration mechanism for emergency situations—which is only granted in 20% of cases.
Sara Lima has worked with the Bamba family on a pro bono basis since June 2006. With John DiNome, Sara prepared a humanitarian parole petition and gathered collaborating evidence for the family’s story. The petition was filed in April of 2007 and granted in June.
Romola Lucas worked with international organizations to facilitate Karidja’s transit and Reed Smith provided financial assistance to the Bamba brothers for her travel expenses.
Karidja arrived in the United States on November 6th and was greeted by her brothers in a joyful reunion. They plan to obtain legal guardianship of her, obtain any necessary medical treatment for her, and determine whether they can enroll her in school.
However, Karidja still has hurdles ahead of her. Her visa is only valid for one year, so she must obtain permanent status in order to stay in the United States with her brothers.
Aiding Those Displaced by Hurricane Katrina
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was not only families that were forced to evacuate. The records of the city’s justice system were swept away, and 8,400 prisoners were evacuated under chaotic conditions and jailed in make-shift facilities to the north. For most, only the prisoners themselves knew where they were. Their families did not know if they had survived.
Reed Smith was the sole non-Louisiana firm to provide lawyers on the ground in Louisiana to help the shattered prison system recover. Ten Reed Smith attorneys immediately went to Louisiana and worked pro bono, interviewing and cataloging the displaced prisoners. Many of those in the New Orleans jails had been there on misdemeanor charges (e.g., public drunkenness) or for lack of $50 bond, and were due for release the morning (or shortly) after the day they were suddenly all evacuated from the city; others were serving short sentences that had in the interim been completed; still others were awaiting hearings and trial for adjudication of their cases. In short, many of those then in the prisons had not even been charged, let alone convicted, and many more were due for immediate release—but all were swept up in the emergency and essentially “lost” in the system (i.e., unable to contact their counsel or family members, or to be contacted by them). Working with wardens, prison guards and others dealing with the crisis, the Reed Smith lawyers flew in from both U.S. coasts, and put in long days and nights to help the judicial system struggle to recover. As a complementary effort, our Washington office conducted call-a-thons contacting next-of-kin of those in the jails, to let them know their loved ones were safe and where they were.
These efforts in Louisiana and Washington received national coverage, with articles in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Legal Times and the Financial Times, with additional coverage by National Public Radio and the Pro Bono Institute at Georgetown University.
Amnesty International USA Secures the Right to Protect Its Sources
Attorneys from Reed Smith represented Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) and won a victory in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. At issue was the organization’s right to protect its confidential sources and investigative research under the federal journalist’s privilege.
The ruling, by U.S. Magistrate Judge Viktor V. Pohorelsky, occurred in pending litigation brought by attorneys of the Legal Aid Society of New York (LASNY) against certain former officials of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (MDC). The Legal Aid Society attorneys alleged that the officials monitored confidential communications between the attorneys and their clients, who had been incarcerated at the MDC in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11. In response, MDC officials asserted that the LASNY attorneys knew, or should have known, of any monitoring. The MDC attorneys then sought to obtain information from AIUSA, a non-party, regarding the results of confidential interviews that AIUSA had conducted with various sources regarding the conditions at the MDC.
Wallace Neel, an associate in the New York office, and Elizabeth Abrams, an associate in the Philadelphia office, represented Amnesty International USA on a pro bono basis in this matter.
According to Wallace, the ruling represents the first time that a court in the United States has recognized Amnesty International’s ability to protect the sources of its information.
“This ruling will greatly aid Amnesty International in its mission to expose human rights violations, because its sources are often the direct victims of those violations,” said Wallace. “Victims cannot always safely come forward unless their confidentiality can be protected.”
“In this ruling, the court soundly rejected a vigorous challenge to Amnesty International’s entitlement to the protections of this important First Amendment-based privilege,” Liz said.
The significance of this ruling can be gauged by the fact that more than 80 news organizations reported the decision, from New York and Philadelphia to New Zealand and Austria.
Asylum Achievements
Attorneys in our Oakland and other California offices have had a string of recent successes in pro bono asylum cases:
- After Felix U. witnessed his Christian father, sister and daughter killed during Muslim riots in his hometown of Kano, Nigeria, he fled to the United States and applied for asylum. After two days of going up against Reed Smith associate David de Jesus in court, the government dropped its challenge to Felix's claim and the immigration court granted relief.
- Farah T. fled the Darfur region after being tortured on account of his political opinion. After his lawyer lost three rounds of legal battle (in the immigration court, before the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Ninth Circuit), Ray Cardozo and Jayne Fleming of Reed Smith took over the case and filed a petition for rehearing. The Ninth Circuit withdrew its original opinion and published a new decision granting relief.
- Reina G. fled Guatemala after military soldiers gang-raped her on account of her imputed political opinion. The government argued she was not entitled to asylum because the rape was merely an act of "carnal desire." Jayne Fleming and Ray Cardozo of our Oakland office set the record straight and secured a published Ninth Circuit opinion recognizing that rape is frequently used in situations of armed conflict as a weapon of war. The court held the sexual violence against Reina provided a basis for asylum.
- When Silvia M.'s brother formed an independent political party in El Salvador, radical opponents attacked Silvia and her children. Silvia was granted asylum after associate Rosemary Luzon stepped in to represent her in immigration proceedings.
Clemency Granted for Death Row Client within 24 Hours of Scheduled Execution
Kudos to Bill Thomas, Lane Kneedler and others in our Virginia offices for their work resulting in a last-minute clemency being granted to our client, death row inmate Robin Lovitt. The clemency changed Lovitt’s sentence to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Among the errors alleged as a ground for clemency was the admitted fact that key DNA evidence that was used against Lovitt at trial had been illegally destroyed by a court deputy clerk – over the objections of subordinate clerks. This destruction made effective habeas corpus review impossible, given Lovitt’s contention that modern testing of the destroyed DNA evidence would have proved his innocence. Bill and Lane were asked to participate in Lovitt’s representation in 2005 by his long-time counsel, former federal Special Prosecutor and U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr.
Conserving Public Lands
When the Park District in York Township, Ill., needed help to acquire 6.5 acres of land next to an existing park, Trust for Public Land (TPL) stepped in. TPL is a national conservation nonprofit that, aided by attorneys acting pro bono at Reed Smith Sachnoff Weaver (Chicago), works to improve urban parks. With the help of these counsel, TPL purchased the land and conveyed it to the Park District, saving it from developers and allowing the township time to obtain state grant monies to improve the property. When finished, the 20-acre recreational area will provide soccer fields, a fishing pond, a sled hill, gardens, bike paths, a fitness trail, and athletic space. Dan Slattery is the attorney from our Chicago office who led the team of Reed Smith Sachnoff Weaver attorneys handling the real estate transaction that made this transformation possible. This is one of a number of pro bono matters the firm continues to handle for TPL – both in the Chicago area and in California – in its ongoing efforts to conserve public lands and build sustainable parks.
Court Grants Relief Reinstating Student Rapper to School in Free Speech Case
In the largest settlement of a student free speech case in Pennsylvania, Kim Watterson of our Pittsburgh office obtained relief reinstating to public school our client, 14-year-old student rapper Anthony Latour. In April 2005, Latour was arrested for several rap songs he composed on the charge that his lyrics constituted “terrorist threats.” He was then expelled from his public school for two years. Working with the ACLU, Kim brought suit in federal court in Pittsburgh, pro bono, and sought a preliminary injunction against the school district to rescind the expulsion so Anthony could return to school. Based on evidence presented at the hearing, including the testimony of an expert on rap music, the court concluded that Latour’s songs, while violent, had been composed at home with full knowledge of his parents, were never used at school and had created no problems there, did not amount to “terrorist threats,” and were, therefore, protected by the First Amendment. A preliminary injunction was granted. The school district later settled, agreeing to pay $90,000 in compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees, and Anthony returned to school.
Death Penalty Litigation
A team led by Christopher Walters, our Senior Pro Bono Counsel, has for five years been representing Pennsylvania's death row inmate Bradley Martin. In 2004, the President Judge of the Lebanon County Court of Common Pleas accepted our argument that the death penalty was unconstitutionally imposed, finding that Mr. Martin's trial counsel had failed to investigate and present compelling evidence that Mr. Martin was suffering from two major mental illnesses at the time of the crime. A new sentencing hearing was ordered.
Defending Public Housing Tenant in Criminal Matter
Efrem Grail, a partner in our Pittsburgh office, represented one of three family members charged with serious felonies arising out of a confrontation with police at a public housing project. The lead defendant in the case is a community activist who served as head of the tenants council for the housing project and who had previously served as named plaintiff in a federal class action that resulted in consent decrees involving the city and its police department. The defense contended this prosecution was "pay-back."
As trial was beginning, with all of the defendants' eight witnesses lined up and ready to testify, the prosecution offered to take a plea from each of the defendants on a single count of disorderly conduct as a summary offense, from which no criminal record would result. The trial judge accepted the pleas, did not fine the defendants, and waived the assessment of court costs.
Family Law Partnership
Our Princeton office has established a program similar to the Adoption Legal Services Project in Pittsburgh, whereby Reed Smith lawyers represent adoptive parents in uncontested termination of parental rights cases. Christina Manuelli, counsel in our Princeton office, heads that aspect of the project.
Building on this start, we are working with Judge Lee Forrester, Presiding Judge of the Chancery Division, Family Part, in the Superior Court of Mercer County, and the Women's Law Project, to structure a program in which Reed Smith litigators will help clear the court's backlog with restraining orders/spousal abuse actions, and Reed Smith non-litigators will mediate family crisis situations. The program would result in each lawyer in the Princeton office spending one day per year on some aspect of the program.
Fighting for Kids with Diabetes
While some public schools provide kids who have diabetes with a medically safe school environment by testing blood sugar and administering insulin if needed, many California school districts had adamantly refused to do so.
Until Reed Smith's Jim Wood (Oakland) and Ken Philpot (San Francisco) stepped in. They brought an unprecedented pro bono class action on behalf of all California public school children with diabetes. When, after two years, the California Department of Education relented and settled, assuring that kids disabled with diabetes would receive medical care in the public schools, one grateful parent wrote:
"I am the parent of a 7 year old girl who was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when she was 4.
"We had to pull Elizabeth out of public school when she was in kindergarten because our local district had virtually no policies to assist a diabetic child. To the extent that other parents sent their diabetic kids to school they did so at great risk. I think your settlement will change that for parents up and down the state. That's quite an accomplishment, and you should be proud.
"It's a shame that it took getting a firm with your resources to donate $1.5 million in attorney time to get the State to meet its responsibilities. But I am grateful beyond words that Reed Smith and your team stepped in and made it happen."
Fighting Homelessness
Coordinated by Melissa Geist, a partner in our Princeton office, Reed Smith works with the HomeFront Organization to end homelessness for families in Mercer County, N.J. We provide year-round pro bono legal services to families in the program, and participate in special events such as home furnishings and food drives. The lawyers, paralegals, and support staff from our Princeton office who volunteer with HomeFront have committed to relieving the pain of homelessness and easing the transition to independent living in their communities.
Getting a Fair Shake for Combat Veterans
Sergeant Joe Baumann of the California Army National Guard, wounded and permanently disabled during his unit’s deployment to Iraq, was returned home, separated from his unit, and denied disability benefits. Another soldier, recovering from combat injuries at Walter Reed Army Hospital, learned that his “fiancée” had absconded with his savings and had then obtained a restraining order to prevent their recovery. In both cases, Reed Smith’s San Francisco tax attorney Jesse L. Miller came to their rescue, dissolving the restraining order in the second case and fighting on appeal for Sgt. Baumann’s disability rights in the first. Sgt. Baumann’s struggle caught the eye of the media, when it was spotlighted as front-page news by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Meanwhile, far from the media spotlight, we are proud that veterans fighting to secure fair treatment by the Army and Veterans Administration are being represented by Reed Smith lawyers from no less than four of our East Coast offices, as well as our San Francisco office.
Liberty
Leading the promotion and protection of human rights in England & Wales since its birth as the National Council of Civil Liberties in the 1930s, Liberty has a strong profile both in campaigning and in taking test cases on privacy, asylum, equality and free speech.
Reed Smith Richards Butler has carried on and developed the special relationship that Richards Butler had with Liberty for many years. Working in partnership with its Advice & Information (A&I) and legal teams, lawyers from across the firm draft responses to all types of queries and volunteer on Liberty’s telephone Advice Line. The firm also supports a secondment to the A&I team.
Each fortnight, lawyers from the firm, often working with local law students, review and draft letters of advice on areas as diverse as environmental law, the rights of prisoners and judicial review.
Volunteers participating in the Advice Line receive an equally wide range of queries. They provide immediate advice to callers who come from across the UK. As well as providing a valuable source of advice, they act as referral point for many other human rights organizations.
The firm’s partnership with Liberty has also led to Rekha Kuna and Michael Skrein writing a chapter on the subject of privacy and the media in a book, which Liberty is launching in 2008.
Preserving History through Pro Bono Work
Beginning in 1998, Reed Smith donated thousands of hours in legal services to recover a vast collection of irreplaceable photographic negatives made by legendary photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris. Harris was the main photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black weekly newspaper, for almost 50 years, and photographed politicians, athletes, entertainers, and ordinary life. A local businessman took advantage of Teenie's illiteracy to deprive him of royalties and possession of the negatives. At the end of the two-week trial, Pittsburgh partners Cindy Kernick and Donna Doblick secured a jury verdict that allowed the Harris family to recover the precious negatives. The family has since transferred the one-of-a-kind collection to the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh for restoration and display.
Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre
Partnering with students to help them develop the skills they need to enter into the legal profession is a core aim of Reed Smith Richards Butler’s pro bono programme. Also at the heart of the firm’s goals is enabling local communities to have access to legal advice.
We are advancing both of these goals by working with law students from Queen Mary, University of London. Under the arrangement now in place, our lawyers work to help Queen Mary students give advice to residents and businesses in east London. The firm is a core supporter of the advice clinic, providing lawyers each week to assist in its staffing.
With initial responsibility for information-gathering from clients and preparing a letter of advice, the clinic has given students real exposure to what it is like to work as a lawyer. It has also enabled those who would not normally come to see a lawyer to have access to high-quality advice on property, employment, litigation and commercial issues.
The clinic has given equal opportunities to those in the firm, from the UK Managing Partner to trainees, to get involved either as supervisors or advice givers.
Rebuilding Communities
One of Reed Smith’s signature pro bono projects is helping rebuild blighted neighborhoods through our work with LISC (“Local Initiatives Support Corporation”). LISC’s mission, which it pursues in many areas where Reed Smith has offices, is to raise money from the private and public sectors and invest it in low-income neighborhoods to promote community development. Through its advice, training, management analysis and operational support, LISC helps to develop not just buildings but whole communities as well.
Currently, we are planning on closing a series of LISC Louisiana Loan Fund transactions that will funnel support to the rebuilding of Louisiana communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Our legal work for LISC is varied in nature and far-flung in geography. We have done labor litigation and given construction law advice in New York (Cindy Minniti, Neil Rosolinsky, and Jonathan Young), handled lease negotiations in San Francisco (Sherry Geyer), done real estate work in Pittsburgh (Ron Krasnow and Ron Hartman), provided corporate governance advice in Philadelphia (Michael Pollack), given employment counsel in Los Angeles (Hardy Murphy), and helped with intellectual property issues in Philadelphia (Tamara Yorita).
Representing Guantanamo Bay Detainees
Reed Smith represents detainees imprisoned without charges at Guantanamo Bay in a fight to afford them counsel and fundamental due process rights. Partner Doug Spaulding of our Washington office, a former Marine Corps officer whose father – also a Marine – was killed in Vietnam, has been leading a team from the Washington office since 2005. They are representing three detainees – one from Russia, one from Tajikistan, and one from Saudi Arabia.
Happily, success was achieved for our Saudi client when, after five years’ imprisonment, he was suddenly released in mid-2007.
Our Chicago office is also representing Guantanamo detainees: a Palestinian from Gaza, a Syrian and another Tajik. Partners Lowell Sachnoff and Matt O’Heara are leading our Chicago team. Both of these Reed Smith teams – accompanied by translators – have made several visits to their clients in Guantanamo in the course of these representations.
Serving Health Care Needs of Northern Virginia Communities
A team of attorneys in our Falls Church office assists medically underserved communities in Northern Virginia through the Northern Virginia Area Health Education Center (Northern Virginia AHEC), a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to optimize access to quality health care through community-academic-educational partnerships that emphasize primary health care. The AHEC sponsors cross-cultural educational programs and offers health interpreter services to foster and promote access to primary health care services to underserved populations. The firm provides corporate pro bono counsel to the AHEC's executive director and board of directors. Our partner, Tom Greeson, is past chair of the board and currently serves on its board of directors.
Under One Roof
At Stevenson Court, a 16-unit, low-income condominium complex built by the Robert Pierce Johnson Housing Development Corp. (RPJ), nearly all of the units are now occupied—thanks in large part to the work of Mike Dingman and Bob Diamond, partners in our Falls Church office. Although construction on the complex had been completed on schedule, the city had deemed the building unfit for occupancy because of several structural problems.
Mike was able to convince the insurance company that had posted a bond for the project to undertake the repair work for the complex. Mike met with attorneys from the insurance company at the project site on several occasions to negotiate and oversee the repair work. Because of the extent of the repair work, RPJ could not sell any of the units in time to pay off its loan. Therefore, while Mike oversaw the repair work, Bob persuaded the lending bank and the city not to foreclose on the project and also obtained an extension of the special financing necessary for the would-be owners of the condominiums to purchase their units. Our lawyers were recognized as "Consultants of the Year" by the Housing Association of Non-profit Developers (HAND) for their work on the project.
The Women's Center
Our Falls Church office attorneys assist the Center by counseling its staff and board of directors on a variety of issues. For these efforts, The Women's Center acknowledged Reed Smith with a special award at its 2005 leadership conference to recognize the firm's pro bono efforts on behalf of the Center. The Women's Center has provided educational and support programs to women and their families in Northern Virginia for more than 25 years. Despite its regional status, The Women's Center is known outside the region as an innovator in community support programs that have helped thousands of women achieve economic self-sufficiency for themselves and their families. Each year, the Center holds a national leadership conference that has attracted high-profile national and international speakers who offer their support and encouragement for its ongoing good works. Among its many awards, The Women 's Center is a recipient of the Outstanding Human Services Agency in Northern Virginia from the Human Services Coalition of Northern Virginia.