American Bar Association Recognizes Outstanding Contributions to Volunteer Legal Services with 2009 Pro Bono Publico Awards

CHICAGO July 17, 2009 – The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service will recognize two individual lawyers, one law firm, a government entity and a public service project with its 2009 Pro Bono Publico Awards on Monday, Aug. 3, at its Awards Assembly Luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, during the ABA Annual Meeting.
 
ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. will present the 2009 awards. “The recipients of the 2009 Pro Bono Publico Awards demonstrate the highest levels of commitment and service offered by the legal profession,” said Wells. “These individuals, firms and organizations represent the hundreds of thousands of lawyers in this country who without charge provide millions of hours of legal service to the disadvantaged, delivering on the promise of equal justice for all.”
 
The 2009 honorees are:
 
Hope Olsson of Olsson & Feder in Rochester, N.Y., who developed a three-part pro bono debt clinic model used by the Volunteer Legal Services Project in Monroe County, N.Y., to expand service to more low-income people in need of credit counseling while personally assisting 348 client over the past few years.  A member of the board of the Farmworker Legal Services of New York, she has also served as a volunteer with the Rochester City Landlord Tenant Court;
 
Gordon P. Erspamer of Morrison Foerster in San Francisco for his pro bono work on behalf of disabled veterans and veterans’ groups, including representing a group of veterans from the 1950s and 1960s who learned they had been used as human guinea pigs only when they began having health problems later in life and for bringing the impacts of post traumatic stress syndrome to public attention. He is also a member of the board of directors of Swords to Plowshares, a national organization for veterans helping each other;
 
Weil, Gotshal & Manges made pro bono work a firm wide priority in 2004, nearly tripling the hours of service by firm members from 27,600 in 2003 to 87,486 in 2006. Today it continues that commitment having appeared in the top 25 of the AM-Law A-List for at least five years in recognition of work by the firm’s lawyers and partners in pro bono impact litigation and advocacy, individual litigation, transaction work, and under such general headings as election law and civil rights research.  The firm is known across the United States and around the world for pro bono work by its staff members who on average contribute more than 80 hours each to pro bono endeavors;
 
The Federal Government Pro Bono Program at the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies, which supports such organizations at Legal Aid of the District of Columbia, Neighborhood Legal Service Program of Washington, D.C., and Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division of DC Superior Court as well as such Chicago-based agencies as Cabrini-Green Legal Aid Clinic, the Center for Conflict Resolution, Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation, the Constitutional Rights Foundation Lawyers Committee for Better Housing and Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago; and
 
The Holocaust Survivors Justice Network, which has grown from a pilot project in Los Angeles to a program operating in more than 30 locations in the United States and Canada in less than one year.  The HSJN produced templates for forms, developed a history of reparations programs, created training materials, established a web site and coordinated activities by pro bono lawyers.  The network works with local social services agencies – traditionally the first line of contact for assistance by survivors, and helps survivors prepare reparations claims.  The network has recorded nearly 35,000 hours of pro bono service at the end of 2008, trained more than 2,600 volunteers, screened more than 4,000 survivors for German Ghetto Work Payment eligibility and placed more than $1 million in the hands of survivors, all of whom are elderly and most of who are low-income.
 
More information on the Pro Bono Publico Awards and the 2009 recipients is available at http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/probono/nav_awards.shtml.
 
With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world.  As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

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