Pro Bono

The firm has an annual pro bono goal of fifty hours per attorney, tracked the same way billable hours are tracked and reported to the Executive Committee each quarter. Most of that work comes to us through four Connecticut legal-services partners: the Hartford Legal Aid Society, Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, and the Connecticut Fair Housing Center. A handful of individual attorneys take on work directly through the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law or through clinics at UConn School of Law, but the Hartford-area organizations are where the bulk of our docket sits. Our pro bono coordinator reports to the Managing Partner and circulates a monthly case-intake email to the firm on behalf of the partner organizations.

What we handle

Eviction defense is the largest single category of matter. Housing-court cases move fast, the law is local and procedural, and Statewide Legal Services and Hartford Legal Aid both operate at capacities that almost always exceed what their own staff attorneys can carry. Firm attorneys — often second- and third-year associates taking first chair for the first time — cover an ongoing caseload of housing-court matters in the Hartford and New Britain judicial districts. Ash Ketchum, a junior associate in the Litigation group, has logged more than 400 pro bono hours in his first two years at the firm and handles his own rolling docket of housing-court matters at any given time.

Immigration work comes to the firm primarily through Statewide Legal Services and through a long-running relationship with a Hartford-based nonprofit that assists asylum applicants. The firm has handled I-589 asylum applications, adjustment-of-status petitions, and a smaller number of U-visa matters for survivors of crime. The work is supervised by senior associates with immigration experience; the drafting is typically shared with our immigration partner organization.

Veterans' benefits appeals arrive through the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center. Most of the firm's veterans-benefits pro bono work concerns denied disability claims and the CAVC appellate process. A subset of cases involves discharge-status upgrade petitions for veterans whose less-than-honorable discharges stemmed from conditions — most often undiagnosed mental health conditions — that are now recognized as service-connected.

Consumer-protection and fair-housing work runs through the Connecticut Fair Housing Center and through Statewide Legal Services' consumer unit. The firm has represented tenants in source-of-income discrimination matters before the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, and has represented individual consumers in FDCPA and CUTPA cases.

Three recent matters

The case descriptions that follow are anonymized and, where necessary, composite. Pro bono client privacy is treated identically to paying client privacy at the firm.

Eviction defense, Hartford Housing Session. A firm associate represented a long-term tenant whose landlord had filed a summary process action following a misattributed rent payment. The associate obtained dismissal at the short-calendar docket after a single appearance. Client was able to remain in the apartment and recover fees from the landlord under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-251a.

Veterans' disability claim, CAVC. A firm partner and associate handled a service-connected PTSD disability appeal on behalf of a Hartford-area veteran whose claim had been denied at the Regional Office and the Board. The appeal was remanded by the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims on evidentiary grounds; the claim was granted on remand and the client received retroactive benefits covering six prior tax years.

Asylum application, Hartford. A second-year associate, supervised by a senior litigator at the firm, represented an asylum applicant in a three-year matter covering the initial I-589, the individual merits hearing, and a subsequent work-authorization renewal. Asylum was granted.

Reporting

The firm publishes a short annual summary of pro bono activity, including partner-organization hours, matter categories, and attorney participation data. The most recent figure, reported in our Pro Bono Annual Report 2022, showed the firm contributing roughly 2,400 hours across all partner organizations, with 92 percent of firm attorneys logging at least one pro bono matter during the year. Updated figures for 2023 and 2024 will be posted when the current reporting cycle is complete.