In each edition of PILI's newsletter, we spotlight the pro bono efforts of law firms and corporations in Illinois.  The most recent spotlight is below and past spotlights follow.  If you are interested in having your firm or corporate pro bono program featured, contact PILI's Director of Programs, Michael Bergmann, by e-mail or at 312-832-5129.

February/March 2010 Pro Bono Spotlight: McDonald's Corporation

McDonald’s Legal Department has an award-winning, nationally recognized Pro Bono program. McDonald’s has a Pro Bono policy and an active Pro Bono Committee charged with identifying projects, increasing the Legal Department’s participation in Pro Bono work and administering the program. The Committee screens Pro Bono projects to ensure the opportunities are a match for the Company, and members of the Committee serve as lead lawyers for projects. In addition, McDonald’s encourages involvement on boards of public service and non-profit organizations.

Through its Pro Bono program, McDonald’s works to provide legal assistance to low-income individuals and to help elementary and secondary students from diverse backgrounds develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to serve their communities as active, responsible citizens. For its Pro Bono work, McDonald’s has partnered with organizations including Street Law, the Community Economic Development Law Project, the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago, the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Center for Disability and Elder Law and Chicago Volunteer Legal Services,

One of McDonald’s most successful Pro Bono projects and partnerships has been with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF), which provides free legal aid to the most vulnerable people in Cook County. McDonald’s Legal Department helped design and now runs the organization’s Pro Bono Medical Assistance Program. Through the program, attorneys and other members of the Legal Department work directly with low-income families to assist them with obtaining and retaining their Medicaid benefits. During its participation in this program, McDonald’s has helped over one hundred individuals and families retain their medical benefits.

In an effort to further increase Pro Bono work performed by members of the Legal Department, the Legal leadership team encourages Pro Bono work and allows employees to engage in Pro Bono projects on Company time and at the Company’s expense. In addition, Pro Bono opportunities are included on the agenda at Legal Department meetings, and the Pro Bono Committee has dedicated a section of the Legal Department’s intranet site to Pro Bono. All members of the Legal Department – from paralegals to administrative assistants to attorneys – are encouraged to be active participants in the Pro Bono program.

The Committee recognizes individuals who volunteer for Pro Bono projects by giving awards for their Pro Bono service. The Committee regularly hosts Pro Bono awards receptions. Leaders of the Legal Department’s partner public service organizations attend the receptions to thank McDonald’s staff for their time and effort dedicated to Pro Bono. Several members of the McDonald’s Legal Department have also received outside recognition for their Pro Bono work.

Pictured: Members of McDonald's Legal Department who are active in its Pro Bono Program.

November/December 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight: Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Kirkland & Ellis LLP was recognized at PILI's 2009 Annual Awards Luncheon with its Pro bono Initiative Award in recognition of the significant pro bono work of the firm.  Contributing to organizations that support local communities has always been a top priority at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Now more than ever, with the recent economic downturn, Kirkland — recognizing that the need for civil legal services is particularly acute— has refocused and reenergized its pro bono program, encouraging greater numbers of Kirkland attorneys and staff to serve more pro bono clients.

The firm views pro bono practice as an “opportunity” for its attorneys, and it offers this opportunity to share legal skills and talents to senior partners as well as to the newest associates, including summer associates. Time worked on pro bono matters is valued and evaluated the same as billable work. With outstanding pro bono projects such as a Special Education Clinic in coordination with Equip for Equality, a cross-collaborative Social Security benefits project, and its Ladder Up tax project on the far South Side, to name just a few, Kirkland is often found taking the lead to provide needed pro bono support to the clients of Chicago’s legal aid organizations.

PILI is also particularly eager to shine a light upon Kirkland’s strong and unwavering financial support of the public interest law community. The firm is a true philanthropic leader and the Kirkland & Ellis Foundation has helped hundreds of charitable efforts succeed each and every year since the Foundation’s creation in 1982. Kirkland has been the premiere and principal sponsor of post-graduate PILI Fellows—a distinction the firm has held for as long as the project has been in operation. And this past autumn, Kirkland launched the Kirkland PILI Network, to encourage former Kirkland PILI Fellows to maintain strong connections with their PILI organizations.

Photo: (L to R) Partner, Terrence J. Dee, received the 2009 PILI Pro Bono Initiative on behalf of Kirkland & Ellis LLP from the Honorable Ruben Castillo, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Photo by: Angela B. Garbot, Photos by Garbot

September/October 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight: Accenture
A deep commitment to corporate citizenship is truly engrained in the culture of Accenture’s Legal Group. In 2004, Accenture established a Legal Corporate Citizenship Committee to impress upon Accenture Legal Professionals that their leadership recognized the importance of, and encouraged participation in, pro bono and other community service activities. The Accenture Legal Group also signed the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge, which encourages at least one-half of its Legal staff to support and participate in, as appropriate, corporate citizenship (pro bono) service. It also encourages the outside law firms with which it works to acknowledge publicly their support for pro bono by becoming signatories to the Pro Bono Institute's Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge.

During 2007 and 2008, Accenture employees company-wide contributed more than 120,000 hours of pro bono services to not-for-profit organizations. Accenture has a strong commitment to corporate citizenship, placing it at the heart of its business and using its skills and capabilities to create shared value with its stakeholders. In fact, its corporate citizenship theme, Skills to Succeed, focuses on building skills that enable people to develop themselves to participate in and contribute to the economy.

Accenture has actively partnered with the law firms that represent the company, both on global projects and local projects. This past year, a team of 50 Accenture lawyers and Baker & McKenzie lawyers from multiple countries wrote a comprehensive research memorandum for an NGO on “Inclusiveness in the Democratic Process in Nepal: A Comparative International analysis of Legal Mechanisms to Deter Discrimination, Foster Societal Inclusiveness, and Promote Education and Literacy.” The cross-border teaming of both Accenture and Baker lawyers is really cutting edge work that has not been done on this scale before. In 2008, Accenture partnered with DLA Piper to send lawyers from multiple countries to teach at the Addis Ababa Law School, the hub of Ethiopia’s legal community. Accenture lawyers taught courses in negotiations at the law school.

In Chicago, the Accenture Legal team has partnered with DLA Piper for the past four years to work with the students of Barry Elementary School in the Chicago Public School system, teaching a program called Lawyers in the Classroom, developed by the Constitutional Rights Foundation covering the basics of constitutional law. The lawyers have specially adapted the Constitutional Rights curriculum to the Barry Elementary students’ needs, and have learned that these fourth, fifth, and sixth graders can engage in these important legal issues and discuss how the law relates to them. Through this curriculum, the students not only further their understanding of the law but also improve their speaking and analytical skills. Since its inception, more than 25 Accenture Legal professionals have participated in this program. It has become so popular that Accenture is going to expand the program to another Chicago Public school this year and also is going to do the same type of program with Legal professionals in its Reston, Virginia office.

Accenture Chicago attorneys also participate in full-day pro bono activities by providing assistance at a senior citizen center, preparing living wills and powers of attorney for health care and property, and they provide legal advice at homeless shelters in Chicago. Accenture Legal professionals also mentor students at Crane High School in Chicago, which focuses on encouraging young minority students to consider entering the legal profession. Additionally, they are teaming on a Law School Externship Program with Chicago area law schools that provide minority externs with the opportunity to work half of the semester at Accenture and the other half at DLA Piper.

This is just a highlight of pro bono and corporate volunteerism in the Accenture Legal group. The group publishes a quarterly newsletter highlighting current Legal corporate citizenship activities and it has an internal website of all opportunities available and contact persons. Finally, the Legal group specifically recognizes the efforts of Legal professionals who volunteer in their annual performance appraisals.

July/August 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight:United Air Lines, Inc.

United has a proud tradition of giving back to the communities that we serve. As an airline, we strive to bring people together on a global scale. Through our diverse corporate sponsorships and community partnerships, we keep that sense of connection going long after our guests have reached their final destinations. Every year, United sponsors numerous organizations and events in our hometown of Chicago and in other cities across the country. During the holidays, United employees fill up multiple trucks with donated gifts destined for families in need. Pro bono legal work is a natural extension of this type of service and complements the work of United’s employees who tirelessly give back to their communities.

Three years ago, United’s law division had no formal pro bono policy in place and no process in place to track and recognize the pro bono work undertaken by United’s attorneys. After reviewing best practices at corporate legal departments around Chicago and nationally, and soliciting ideas from our outside counsel, United implemented a written pro bono policy. United believes that every member of the law division is in a position to make valuable contributions through our pro bono program, and therefore we have encouraged, but not required, all attorneys to provide between ten and twenty hours of service annually. Significant pro bono contributions earn recognition from law division leadership.

Today, over fifty percent of the attorneys at United have participated in providing pro bono service, each contributing an average of fifteen hours annually. One of our long-standing partners is the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, which offers the opportunity for our attorneys to participate in the Lawyers in the Classroom program. Several attorneys lead elementary and junior high school students, both in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, in meaningful lessons that introduce them to what it means to be a lawyer as well as in practical discussions about the Bill of Rights. Another organization where we concentrate our pro bono service is with Cabrini Green Legal Aid’s Expungement Help Desk at the Daley Center, where on any given morning you might find a United attorney helping someone to expunge or seal their record so they can pass a background check, qualify for a job, or rent an apartment. Finally, many of our attorneys provide valuable advice and counsel to non-profit organizations.

United has benefited from our association with PILI, through its Pro Bono Initiative, which has provided invaluable opportunities that have helped to establish and grow United’s pro bono program. We are excited by opportunities offered by our outside counsel at DLA Piper, Mayer Brown, and Seyfarth Shaw, and hope to leverage those opportunities in the future. For instance, one of our attorneys has partnered with lawyers at DLA Piper on a political asylum case, and has found that very rewarding. Later this year, we are planning to focus on a clinic model where the law division would partner with attorneys from an outside firm for a day to deliver tailored legal services here in Chicago. United is also considering working in tandem with our existing corporate partners to increase the value of those partnerships by delivering needed pro bono services.

May/June 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight:Seyfarth Shaw LLP

In 2007, Seyfarth Shaw’s management made a commitment to reinvigorating the firm’s pro bono program. Since then, the results have been dramatic. For example, in 2006, the firm performed 12,357 hours of pro bono work; that number increased 81% to 22,418 in 2007, and another 34% in 2008 to 30,106, for a two year total increase of 144%. In 2008, Seyfarth Shaw served approximately 580 pro bono clients, which was an increase of 32% over 2007.

The firm’s pro bono matters cover a wide range of topics and practices, including asylum cases, adoptions, divorces, guardian ad litem and other family law matters, prisoner’s rights cases, criminal appeals, intellectual property matters for artists, incorporating and counseling not-for-profit organizations in business, real estate, and employment issues, and staffing legal clinics and hotlines.
Seyfarth’s Managing Partner, J. Stephen Poor, has made clear that pro bono and community service are an important part of the firm’s identity and mission, and people across offices and departments have taken his message to heart and put the firm’s commitment into action. In addition, the firm’s written pro bono policy encourages attorneys to do pro bono and gives associates up to 200 hours of credit towards billable hour goals for pro bono work.

As part of the firm’s commitment, in 2007, the firm hired its first full-time Pro Bono & Philanthropy Partner, Allegra Rich, to manage the firm’s pro bono, charitable giving, and community service programs. Seyfarth forged new relationships with legal aid organizations with which it had not worked with in the past, and the firm also made an effort to strengthen relationships with its existing legal aid partners. Seyfarth also increased its charitable giving to legal aid and looked for creative ways to support organizations that provide legal services to the poor. Recently, in Chicago, the firm donated 22 computers to seven different legal aid providers.

The pro bono program at Seyfarth continues to increase not only in quantity, but in complexity and sophistication of the firm’s pro bono matters. In 2009, the firm submitted its first pro bono amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. The firm filed the brief on behalf of a consortium of Asian-American interest groups seeking to demonstrate that certain protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act are still necessary to ensure fair voting procedures. Also in 2009, the firm joined with the ACLU in Southern California to file a multi-plaintiff race discrimination/racial profiling complaint against a local police department. In Chicago, the firm became involved with the Seventh Circuit Pro Bono Program for the first time, and now has appeared in half a dozen pro bono appeals.

Pro Bono Partner Allegra Rich sums it up like this: “We are very proud of our accomplishments over the past several years and the recognition we have received for our progress, but we know that there is still more we could be doing, and we are always looking for ways to improve our program and better serve those in our communities who would not otherwise have access to justice.”

March/April 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight: Jenner & Block

Jenner & Block continues to demonstrate a strong commitment to pro bono service. 100% of Jenner & Block associates and approximately two-thirds of partners devoted at least 20 hours to pro bono work in each of the past two years. In 2008, the Firm’s attorneys contributed over 70,000 hours to pro bono service, and The American Lawyer recognized Jenner & Block as the #1 law firm in the country for pro bono service on its annual “Pro Bono Honor Roll.” Jenner & Block does not concentrate its pro bono work in pre-selected areas, but rather performs a wide range of pro bono work driven by the interests of its lawyers. Below are several noteworthy matters handled by the Firm in the last year:

• Last summer, a team from the Firm led by Partner Lisa T. Scruggs filed a groundbreaking lawsuit on behalf of the Chicago Urban League against the State of Illinois and the State Board of Education, challenging the State’s method for raising and distributing education funds to local school districts and the Illinois State Board of Education’s implementation of the system. The Urban League asserts that the State’s public school funding scheme disparately impacts racial and ethnic minority students who attend Majority-Minority Districts in violation of the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 2003, violates the Uniformity of Taxation provision of the Illinois Constitution, violates students’ rights to attend “high quality educational institution” guaranteed by the Education Article under the Illinois Constitution, and violates students’ right to equal protection under the Illinois Constitution. Ms. Scruggs argued before the court in February 2009 in a hearing to consider the defendants’ motion to dismiss. A ruling on the motion is expected soon.

• In a significant criminal justice victory, Associate Brian J. Fischer and Partner Richard F. Ziegler helped obtain an appellate court reversal in a criminal contempt conviction of a public defender who had refused to defend his client at a criminal trial on a half-day's notice. State of Ohio v. Brian Jones, 2008 Ohio 6994 (2008). The attorneys presented oral arguments in the case and authored an influential amicus brief on behalf of the Fordham Law School's Louis Stein Center for Ethics and Law and numerous other national organizations. The court’s opinion drew considerably from the arguments presented in the Firm's amicus brief in reinforcing important ethical safeguards in the criminal justice system.

• In January 2009, Associate Lindsay C. Harrison had her first argument ever in any court — an argument before the United States Supreme Court in a pro bono asylum case that Ms. Harrison and the Firm had agreed to handle. After Mr. Jean Marc Nken from Cameroon was denied political asylum, Ms. Harrison agreed to handle his appeal to the Fourth Circuit. While that appeal was pending, Ms. Harrison sought a stay of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ order requiring Mr. Nken’s deportation. The Fourth Circuit denied the stay, using a standard of review that Ms. Harrison identified was in conflict with the standard employed in other Circuits. With substantial support from Partners Ian Gershengorn and Jared O. Freedman, Ms. Harrison sought a stay in the Supreme Court, in conjunction with an emergency petition for a writ of certiorari. The Supreme Court granted the writ and the stay, and ordered briefing and argument on an expedited basis. The Supreme Court has not yet issued its decision. The case remains critically important for Mr. Nken, but it now also may affect many other persons who face removal to their countries of origin, often to face persecution or even death, while their cases are pending judicial review in the United States.

Pictured above: Jenner & Block Associate Lindsay C. Harrison on the front steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after her pro bono argument.

January/February 2009 Pro Bono Spotlight: Caterpillar, Inc.

Building upon an 80-year tradition of corporate volunteerism and public service, Caterpillar Inc.’s Legal Services Division recently launched a program that made pro bono activity a permanent part of their corporate culture. Two years ago, Caterpillar established a pilot program after carefully assessing community need, exploring other strong corporate pro bono efforts, and identifying pro bono benchmarks. With this groundwork accomplished and with a pro bono policy and coordinator in place, Caterpillar began implementing three initiatives: a clinic providing living wills and powers of attorney; court representation in family law matters; and counsel for a nonprofit. Immediate and widespread interest emerged at the corporate and community levels, and the enthusiasm of the volunteers exceeded all expectations.

Now, two years after Caterpillar’s Pro Bono Program graduated from its pilot status, the company has successfully replicated its clinic model several times and has developed pro bono service delivery partnerships with numerous outside counsel such as Baker & McKenzie, Howrey, Seyfarth Shaw and Sedgwick Detert, among others. These partnerships have engaged volunteers in pro bono matters nationwide.

On a statewide advocacy level, Caterpillar worked with others in the pro bono community to propose Illinois Supreme Court rule changes, implemented in July of 2008, that permit inactive or retired lawyers, or lawyers admitted as house counsel to provide pro bono legal assistance. Today, other local and national corporate programs look to Caterpillar, as the company shares its experiences in developing as successful pro bono program.

Pictured above: On December 4, 2008, Caterpillar Inc's Chris Dekker accepts 2008 PILI Pro Bono Initiative Award from Allegra Rich, Seyfarth Shaw LLP at the 2008 PILI Annual Awards Luncheon.