Pro Bono Report (Spring 2014)

Playwright David Adjmi has built a reputation for provocative work that combines disparate styles and influences, often including the tropes and clichés of pop culture. A prime example is his recent play, 3C. Produced Off-Broadway in 2012, it employs elements of the chirpy 1970s television series Three’s Company to explore dark themes of alienation and despair.

Each year, Davis Wright Tremaine honors one associate at the firm who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to pro bono service. This year, the Heart of Justice Award was given to Kathleen Cullinan of our Los Angeles office, who provided nearly 200 hours of pro bono legal service in 2013 alone.

Cullinan cultivated her strong passion for public affairs and the First Amendment while working as a newspaper reporter after college. She later spent a year as a legal fellow with The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides free legal assistance to journalists. She joined DWT’s renowned media team upon graduating from law school in 2012.

An artist who painted three large murals to brighten the walls of a Brooklyn hospital has won compensation from the City of New York for the destruction of her work, which occurred without any prior notice to her. DWT was pleased to represent the client pro bono through the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts program.

A settlement agreement reached in the first quarter of 2014 is helping insure appropriate service for tens of thousands of developmentally disabled individuals living in California’s San Bernardino and Riverside counties. DWT partner Terri Keville, along with associate Sarah Fallows and former associate Aleah Yung, helped gather information and negotiate and draft the agreement on behalf of our pro bono client, Disability Rights California (DRC).

“I like doing math and I like doing taxes,” says David Silverman, a partner in the Intellectual Property practice group of Davis Wright Tremaine.

It’s perhaps an unusual passion, but one he’s put to good use: For the last three years he’s devoted numerous evenings and weekends—over 160 hours in this year’s tax season alone—to assisting low- and moderate-income tax filers in his home county of Fairfax, Virginia. “We did it Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and all day Saturday,” says Silverman. “Every time we opened, there’d be a line of people waiting.” 

In March, DWT attorneys Rob Balin, Bob Corn-Revere, Ronnie London, and Alison Schary were honored with the Kenneth P. McLaughlin Award of Merit from the National Press Photographers Association. According to the Association, the award is given to “those rendering continuing outstanding service in the interests of news photography whether or not they are members of the profession.”

DWT was pleased to work in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Honorary Consul of Spain in Seattle to assist with legal documentation for the highly anticipated exhibition, “Miró: The Experience of Seeing,” which opened in February.

The exhibition was drawn entirely from the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. It comprised over 50 paintings, drawings, and sculptures made by Joan Miró between 1963 and his death in 1983.