GPSLD Celebrates Public Service Achievements

The Dorsey Award

The Dorsey Award honors an outstanding public defender or legal aid lawyer. This year, the award went to Amrutha Jindal, executive director of Lone Star Defenders. In 2021, under Operation Lone Star, the State of Texas executed memoranda of understanding with more than 100 ranchers, allowing the Texas Department of Public Safety to police ranches—some the size of Delaware—to arrest immigrants, largely for criminal trespass. This resulted in an enormous increase in the number of criminal defendants needing representation in rural counties completely unequipped for the massive caseload increase. Amrutha Jindal stepped up and launched Lone Star Defenders, swiftly creating an 80-attorney public defender system that guaranteed quality representation for thousands.

This achievement required tremendous effort, including the recruitment and training of dozens of lawyers and support staff, the launch of a managed assigned counsel system to support and oversee members of the private bar, and the creation of systems handling appointment, case management, and oversight. Due to Jindal’s determination, thousands of people with a constitutional right to an attorney are receiving not only counsel but also high-quality representation.

As she accepted the award, Jindal gave more details about the situation that resulted in the creation of the office: “What we’ve seen happen in Texas is not unusual. Whether it’s homelessness, mental health, or immigration, it’s becoming more and more common for governments or elected officials to attempt to use the criminal justice system as a ‘response’ or a solution to complex societal or humanitarian issues.”

She continued,

While conversations about these issues often involve statistics and policies, what’s often lost in these discussions are the very real stories of the humans impacted by the implementation of these systems. In Operation Lone Star’s case, these humans include thousands of asylum seekers from all over the world, having gone through a harrowing journey to come to the U.S. to seek a safe place to live, only to be arrested by the state for trespassing. It also includes many young U.S. citizens, teenagers, who are recruited on social media to give people rides for money and find themselves in the criminal justice system for the first time, charged with human smuggling and facing a minimum of ten years in prison. It’s in this system that public defenders play such a crucial role. We hear and share our clients’ stories with compassion. We make sure the system doesn’t violate our clients’ constitutional rights. And we fiercely advocate for justice under difficult circumstances on their behalf.

The Hodson Award

The Hodson Award recognizes an exceptional government or public sector law office. New York City’s Asylum Application Help Center (AAHC) is this year’s recipient. AAHC is a pro se legal clinic for asylum seekers in shelters. The AAHC was founded in June 2023 to assist with the filing of asylum applications, as many asylum seekers in shelters were at risk of missing the critical one-year filing deadline. Since its founding, the AAHC has expanded to five locations in two boroughs and now provides support for asylum, temporary protected status (TPS), and work authorization applications. Through an innovative partnership model bringing together law firms, corporations, universities, nonprofits, and every level of government, the AAHC efficiently centralizes legal resources for migrants in New York City. It has assisted asylum seekers in the completion of more than 60,000 applications for asylum, TPS, and work authorization and has hosted more than 1,900 volunteers from law firms, corporations, and universities.

Alicia Berenyi, AAHC’s legal director, accepted the award on behalf of her office. Accepting the award, she said,

a critical ingredient to the Help Center’s success has been the unwavering support of the bar—and not just in NYC but around the country. Leadership and members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, intimately familiar with the shortage of immigration legal resources that NYC was facing, were quickly on board. We secured the commitment of many members of the immigration bar, including solo practitioners, immigration law professors, leaders of immigration nonprofits, and even retired immigration judges, to serve as supervising immigration lawyers at the Help Center. They form the backbone of the operation. Each supervising attorney ensures every application constitutes an immigrant’s strongest claim for immigration relief, and each is filed according to the highly technical rules of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Immigration Courts, helping to solve dozens of tricky legal issues along the way. When brainstorming how we would scale so quickly, we realized we would need significant volunteer support. Leading law firms answered the call. Cleary Gottlieb; Paul, Weiss; Simpson Thacher; and Skadden, Arps signed on to the initiative prior to launch, committing pro bono staff and other resources. Dozens of other law firms, Fortune 500 companies, and universities across NYC also raised their hands, joining in the effort to reach as many immigrants as possible with these services.

Berenyi continued,

Reflecting on a year of this work, I believe the Asylum Application Help Center represents not only the best of government but the best of the legal profession: people coming together to expand access to justice despite facing impossible-seeming deadlines and highly technical rules. Thank you so much to the ABA, the entire Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division, and the Awards Committee for recognizing this critical work and for this incredible honor.

The Nelson Award

The Nelson Award recognizes superior, sustained contributions to the ABA by an individual public lawyer, and this year, the award was presented to Sylloris Lampkin, attorney advisor with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Lampkin has served in numerous ABA positions that have elevated the voice of public lawyers. As chair of GPSLD’s Law Student Outreach Committee, Lampkin organized presentations at numerous law schools, including Emory University School of Law, Georgia State University College of Law, John Marshall Law School, Mercer University Law School, South Texas College of Law, Texas Wesleyan School of Law (now Texas A&M University School of Law), and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, providing timely information to students interested in public service careers. Lampkin also helped to educate public lawyers across the country by participating in GPSLD podcasts and CLE webinars. In addition, Lampkin represented public lawyers in ABA-wide entities, including serving as vice chair of the Housing and Urban Development Committee of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, as a member of the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, and as a liaison to the ABA Council for Diversity in the Educational Pipeline.

As she accepted the award, Lampkin said,

The ABA has been a cornerstone in my professional journey in public service, providing invaluable resources, guidance, and a platform to advocate for justice and equality. Receiving the Nelson Award is a reminder of the importance of our work in the legal profession. It is a call to continue striving for excellence, advocating for justice, and making a positive impact in our communities.

Submit a Nomination

It’s not too early to think about submitting a nomination for the 2025 Dorsey, Hodson, and Nelson Awards honoring outstanding government and public sector lawyers. The Dorsey Award honors an outstanding public defender or legal aid lawyer. The Hodson Award recognizes sustained, outstanding performance or extraordinary service by a government or public sector law office. The Nelson Award recognizes exceptional contributions to the American Bar Association by an individual government or public sector lawyer. Nominations are due April 7, 2025.

For more information, visit www.americanbar.org/groups/government_public/awards.