Pro Bono Report (Spring 2013)

Each year, Davis Wright 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 Jeff Glasser, a sixth-year associate in our San Francisco office, who provided over 200 hours of pro bono legal service in 2012 alone.

Glasser entered law school after almost eight years as a journalist and researcher, including three years spent helping Bob Woodward write a book about the Clinton Administration. He has built on that experience with a practice focused on First Amendment and media work. His pro bono efforts have been largely dedicated to opening up public records.

An application for asylum can be a life-or-death matter for some clients. That’s why Davis Wright Tremaine is working to ensure that asylum applicants have access to all the information they need to present their best case to the U.S. government.

Recently the federal government has hamstrung applicants and their lawyers by withholding, or delaying the release of, key documents. Two attorneys in DWT’s San Francisco office are serving as pro bono counsel in a Freedom of Information Act and declaratory relief lawsuit, filed in February in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, that seeks to stop this practice, which is occurring throughout the nation.

DWT helped score a major victory for free speech on campus in February, as a federal jury found former university president Ronald M. Zaccari personally liable for violating the due process rights of Hayden Barnes, a student he expelled.

DWT represented the Valdosta State University student, who, in the spring of 2007, peacefully protested the university’s plan to construct a new, $30 million parking deck. In response to Barnes’ activism, Zaccari personally ordered that he be “administratively withdrawn” from the institution.

As a result of a lawsuit pursued by DWT on behalf of the ACLU of Northern California, the city council of Redding, Calif., agreed to withdraw speech limitations it had imposed on the area around its municipal library. It announced this decision in January after DWT and the ACLU won in the California Court of Appeal.

The appellate court found that the area outside the library was “a public forum,” and therefore open to all expression that is protected by the First Amendment (with limited exceptions for neutral government restrictions). It wrote: “Characterizing the area [outside the Redding library] as a public forum is consistent with the role of a library as ‘a mighty resource in the free marketplace of ideas.’”

DWT lawyers are helping make a difference for victims of domestic violence, for whom court can be a very intimidating place. Language barriers, cultural traditions, the influence of the abusive partner, and the complexities of the system can make it challenging to obtain a much-needed protection order.

One of the local resources for people in such a position is a program called the Domestic Violence Protection Order Impact Project, managed by pro bono counsel at the law firm Foster Pepper PLLC. The project is dedicated to representing women with children who need, or have been wrongfully denied, protection orders. The program generally offers one-time representation to help women make permanent a temporary protection order they’ve been granted, or get reconsideration of a protection order that has been denied. The program offers training to volunteer lawyers, and matches them with clients.

In the five counties that make up New York City, recent data indicate, there are well over 100,000 petitions a year in Family Court on matters related to child custody, support, and visitation. The majority of the petitioners are female, members of a racial minority, and with low levels of income and education. Most of them are also navigating this complex system without representation by any lawyer.

To assist this vulnerable population, attorneys from DWT’s New York office are participating in a Volunteer Attorney program that provides free, on-site, walk-in assistance at Family Court.