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    PRO BONO

    ABA honors 5 for their commitment to pro bono work

    The American Bar Association has announced awards to three individual lawyers and two law firms for demonstrating outstanding commitment to volunteer legal services for the poor and disadvantaged.

    The Pro Bono Publico Awards are the top honors given by the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service, which spotlights pro bono efforts of individual lawyers and small and large law firms, government attorney offices, corporate law departments and other institutions in the legal profession. The awards will be presented at a luncheon Aug. 10 at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

    Recipients of the 2019 Pro Bono Publico Awards are:

    • Faegre Baker Daniels of Minneapolis, whose lawyers in 2018 contributed 38,950 pro bono hours, with 79 percent of the firm’s lawyers participating in pro bono work and 80 percent of their pro bono hours devoted to serving low-income clients. The firm supports more than 25 community clinics.
    • McCarter & English, LLP of Newark, N.J., which recorded 16,903 pro bono hours in 2018 and launched new projects firmwide to respond to emerging needs. Such efforts included sending teams of partners to immigration detention facilities and creating a pro bono fellowship in Newark.

    • Marc S. Ehrlich of Troy, N.Y., for improving the financial lives of his pro bono clients and mentoring other lawyers in pro bono work for much of his 30-year career. Ehrlich has spent countless hours shepherding pro bono clients through the process of Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

    • Mona Kaveh of Las Vegas, who has helped foster children on a pro bono basis in Nevada since 2010, representing many through the Children’s Attorneys Project at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. She began that relationship while in law school in 2008.

    • Arturo Gonzalez of San Francisco, who was nominated by a retired federal judge who presided over two jury trials in which Gonzalez served as pro bono lead counsel and achieved “outstanding and exemplary results” for plaintiffs pushing civil rights claims against law enforcement. 

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