Continued Commitment to Pro Bono Work

In 2008, Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers devoted more than 69,000 hours to public service, engaging in a broad range of pro bono activities. The Firm achieved results for diverse groups of individuals in need of legal representation and for legal, charitable and government organizations. S&C’s work included both individual pro bono initiatives undertaken by lawyers and ongoing S&C signature projects. The breadth of pro bono matters handled and the results achieved are representative of S&C’s depth of expertise across a range of practice areas, including General Practice, Litigation, Tax and Estates & Personal matters.

Individual Pro Bono Initiatives

Asylum
S&C lawyers successfully assisted numerous refugees from around the world in their efforts to obtain asylum from all nature of persecutions, including political, religious and gender-based persecution. S&C lawyers obtained asylum for immigrants from countries including Togo, Uzbekistan, Chad, Mali, Guinea and Nepal, among many others. Ongoing asylum matters include the representation of a Honduran LGBT women’s rights activist. The woman had been persecuted as a result of her sexual orientation and membership in feminist and gay activist groups and was forced to flee to the United States.

Constitutional Law
S&C lawyers joined with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to protect a student’s freedom of speech in support of equal rights. Following a two-day trial, the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida, ruled in favor of the student, finding that a student’s right to wear clothing or items demonstrating support of equal rights for gay and lesbian people is protected by the First Amendment.

Criminal Defense
S&C lawyers serve on the Criminal Justice Act Panels in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, where they represent indigent defendants in federal criminal cases pre-trial, at trial and on appeal. The Firm’s lawyers also represent pro bono clients around the country in various habeas corpus matters, in post-conviction death row proceedings and in federal narcotics prosecutions. In addition, S&C associates serve as Special Assistant District Attorneys in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office Appeals Bureau. Working under the supervision of a full-time assistant district attorney in the Appeals Bureau, the associates who serve as special assistant district attorneys represent the office in criminal appeals filed in the New York State Supreme Court, Second Appellate Division.

Domestic Violence
S&C lawyers advise battered women in conjunction with organizations such as inMotion, Inc., Sanctuary for Families and Refugee Assistance Center to help battered immigrant women and children gain legal residency under the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and provide representation in Family Court and in contested and uncontested divorce proceedings. Ongoing matters include representing a woman from Latvia in seeking to reopen deportation proceedings by filing a VAWA petition, representing a client in seeking the continuation of a protective order and sole custody of her son, and representing a victim of domestic violence in seeking an uncontested divorce.

Homelessness and Housing
The Firm’s lawyers are handling a corporate governance review for The Partnership for the Homeless, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides services to homeless persons in New York City and advocates for policies to help eliminate the root causes of homelessness. Through the Civil Court of the City of New York’s Volunteer Lawyer for a Day Program, teams of attorneys provide limited scope representation to self-representing tenants in nonpayment proceedings in housing court.

International Impact
The Firm’s lawyers handled the initial incorporation and organization of Rwanda Gift for Life, a nonprofit organization that supports women in Rwanda who were raped during the genocide and are now living with AIDS. S&C lawyers are also assisting the Public International Law & Policy Group’s Constitutional Committee in Baghdad on the drafting of a new constitution for Iraq. S&C lawyers also attended the World AIDS Conference in Mexico City, with pro bono client AIDS-Free World, to participate in a legal referral clinic interviewing people facing discrimination based on HIV/AIDS status.

Signature Projects

• Appleseed Teacher Housing Project, an exciting new initiative in which associates can work in collaboration with Appleseed, a nonprofit network of public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico, to provide affordable housing for New York City teachers. This project is an important way to support public education in New York City, which has difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers, in part because of the lack of affordable housing.
  
  
• NYC Law Department Deposition Public Service Program enables S&C associates who have completed the Firm’s deposition skills training program to take depositions on behalf of the NYC Law Department’s Brooklyn Tort Division.
  
  
• Sanctuary for Families’ U Visa Project, which assists immigrants, many of whom are victims of domestic violence and have cooperated with the district attorney’s office in a prosecution, with their eligibility for U Visas and work permits. S&C lawyers and legal assistants interview the applicants, gather all relevant documents and complete and submit the applications.
  
  
• The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund’s name change clinic, which services low-income members of the transgender community in New York who are seeking to change their legal name to conform to their gender identity.
  
  
• The Bet Tzedek Holocaust Reparations Project, which assists Holocaust survivors in preparing applications for a reparation payment from Germany.
  
  
• Microsoft KIND, a pro bono project dedicated to representing children who have no families in the U.S. in need of representation in immigration matters.
  
  
• The City Bar Justice Center Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project (NELP), which provides free legal assistance to low-income micro-entrepreneurs in New York City who are interested in starting or are already engaged in a small business with fewer than five employees. NELP provides legal help on a variety of basic commercial legal issues, including formation of corporations and partnerships; review and negotiation of real estate leases; trademark and copyright protection questions; and sales and service contract questions.
  
  
• The Legal Aid Juvenile Rights Project, through which S&C lawyers provide representation for juveniles facing charges in Manhattan and Brooklyn Family Courts.
  

Ongoing Pro Bono and Community Projects

AIDS Clinic
2008 marked the 17th year that Sullivan & Cromwell has hosted a weekly legal clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Center for Special Studies and its Gay Men’s Health Crisis satellite location, in which the Firm’s lawyers provide valuable estate planning services to impoverished AIDS and HIV-positive patients. Since 1989, the Firm has dedicated more than 12,500 hours to this project.

Equal Justice Works
The Firm’s Equal Justice Works Fellowships Program creates partnerships among public interest lawyers, nonprofit organizations and law firm/corporate sponsors in an effort to provide underrepresented populations with valuable and effective access to the justice system. Under this program, the Firm supports a new lawyer in a two-year assignment at a nonprofit public interest organization where the lawyer implements projects that address critical community needs.
In partnership with AIG, S&C currently sponsors two Equal Justice Works Fellows: Alexis Kuznick, who works with the Domestic Violence Project at the Urban Justice Center, and Nicole Prenoveau, who works on the Green Building Project of the Community and Economic Development Unit of Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A.

Recognitions 

• In 2009, S&C was honored by the New York City Bar Justice Center for its long standing commitment to pro bono, and in particular for a variety of pro bono initiatives engaged in on behalf of individuals referred by the City Bar Justice Center in the areas of asylum, elder law, veterans rights and assistance to the previously incarcerated. 
  
  
• S&C was awarded one of the 20 coveted spots on The American Lawyer’s 2009 A-List. Sullivan & Cromwell once again earned a place among “the nation's elite law firms – those that are best at balancing a thriving business with their obligations to the profession.” The A-List comprises the top 20 U.S. law firms measured by their performance in four distinct areas: financial performance, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction and diversity among lawyers. 
  
  
• In 2008, the firm and 39 S&C lawyers earned the Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation. This award, given by The Committee on Capital Punishment of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, recognized attorneys and law firms who over the past 10 years have devoted pro bono efforts in post-conviction matters and cases in which the penalty is capital punishment.
  
  
• In 2008, Special Counsel John Fullerton was honored at the AMIT Annual Dinner for 10 years of outstanding pro bono work for the organization, a nonprofit whose mission is to enable Israel’s youth to realize their potential and to strengthen Israeli society by educating and nurturing children from diverse backgrounds within a framework of academic excellence, religious values and Zionist ideals.
  
  
• In 2008, Legal Services NYC honored S&C lawyers Karen Patton Seymour and Irvine Flinn, and former S&C associates Gerald Black and Erin Shencopp, for providing legal expertise and representation to LSNY over the past year.
  
  
• In 2008, Sanctuary for Families honored Jennifer Murray, Qian Gao and former associate Michelle Roberts at the 2008 Above and Beyond Pro Bono Achievement Awards and Benefit in New York. Hosted by the Sanctuary Associates Committee, the annual awards ceremony and benefit honors members of the legal community who have gone “above and beyond” by providing outstanding pro bono representation and advocacy on behalf of victims of domestic violence.
  
  
• In 2008, Am Law gave S&C a “tip of hat” for its successful representation of a “courageous high-schooler” against her school board, which tried to ban her from showing support for the equal treatment of gays, in violation of her constitutional rights.
  
  
• In 2008, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) announced that Special Counsel Marcia Levy won the Robert E. Oliphant Service to NITA Award 2007 for her dedication to promoting NITA’s public service programming.
  
  
• In 2008, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) named David Gilberg, Steven Holley and former associate Jason Padgett as 2008 Pro Bono Award Advocate Honorees for their pro bono work, at NYLPI’s First Annual Advocate Awards Breakfast.
  
  
• In 2008, S&C was named as one of only nine firms with more than 10 lawyers who qualified as 2007 Empire State Counsel Honorees, having provided at least 50 hours of pro bono service. The firm accepted the award at the Justice for All Luncheon, sponsored by the New York State Bar Association.