Jones Day Launches Pro Bono Fellowship Program

The Jones Day Pro Bono Fellowship Program places a newly hired associate at a legal services agency for one year, allowing the new attorney to gain valuable experience while helping ensure equal access to justice. The Jones Day Pro Bono Fellowship Program is modeled after a similar program instituted by Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in 2004.

Rather than take her new office at the firm, Emma opted to participate in the Jones Day Pro Bono Fellowship Program and spend her first year of practice with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Over the next year, Emma will be working primarily in LAF's Family Law practice and on their Disability Project. As a family law attorney, Emma represents low-income clients in cases involving divorce, custody, orders of protection, and child support. Through her work with the LAF Disability Project, she represents foster children in Cook County who are in need of special education services or are being expelled from public schools.

Lee Ann Russo, Partner and Pro Bono Coordinator at Jones Day, explained how Jones Day’s Pro Bono Fellowship Program came about and what the firm was hoping to achieve:

“We owe our decision to offer the fellowship to PILI's Pro Bono Initiative. Several years ago, I was a member of a PILI Pro Bono Initiative working group exploring ways to increase pro bono involvement by Chicago lawyers that learned of a model employed by Philadelphia law firms like that now used by Katten and Jones Day. The group promoted the model to PILI. Katten was the first to offer the fellowship, Jones Day the second, and we hope there will be many others.

We view the fellowship as a way to expand the Jones Day Chicago office's pro bono commitment, to increase the awareness among our Chicago lawyers of the need to volunteer pro bono legal services, and to assist wonderful public interest organizations like LAF in meeting the overwhelming demand for their services.”

Diana White, Executive Director of the Legal Assistance Foundation had this to say about the Jones Day Pro Bono Fellowship Program:

“Both of Emma’s supervisors praise her initiative, determination, creativity, and hard work. She is co-counseling several divorce cases, and handling others on her own. In the special education arena, she recently talked a Chicago charter school out of expelling a child with epilepsy and obtained 3,000 minutes worth of compensatory services to make up for the excessive number of days the student had been suspended.

LAF is grateful to Jones Day for making it possible for Emma to spend a full year with us – and to PILI for promoting the idea of such firm-sponsored internships.”