In our newsletter, Pro Bono Net profiles individuals, law firms and organizations that are changing the face of pro bono through their use of new technology and resources and by taking on exciting projects and doing great work to help those most in need.
Recently Pro Bono Net staffers Pam Weisz and Karin Romans had a chance to sit down at Bingham McCutchen’s New York office with attorneys Robert Dombroff, Managing Partner; Edward Maluf, Partner and co-chair of Bingham’s national pro bono committee; and Jaimie Dockray, Senior Manager, Pro Bono, to discuss their role in helping 400 Harlem students graduate high school by providing the children and their families with legal services.
Bingham collaborates with Say Yes to Education, an organization that provides inner city youth with supportive services to help them keep their focus on graduating, with the promise of college tuition. Bingham’s New York office took an impressive and unprecedented step by a law firm and embarked on an ambitious multi-year commitment to offer pro bono legal services to the children and families of Say Yes New York. Maluf describes the Say Yes/Bingham partnership as “leveling the playing field.”
Now in its eighth year, the program is an integral part of Bingham’s work and legal and non-legal staff support its efforts. More than 60 attorneys have worked on hundreds of pro bono matters, traveling up to Harlem during the school year and in the summer. “These guys change lives,” Dombroff says. “The older brother of one child was arrested for attempted murder. Our attorneys took on the case, found out he had an alibi and the case was dropped before arraignment.”
You can read more about the program, the challenges faced in setting it up, and the immense success that it has become in Pro Bono Net’s Spring Newsletter.