Pro Bono & Community Service

Participation in pro bono and community service is one of Baker & McKenzie’s core values. The following are examples of activities in our North America region.

Children

• Our lawyers in New York represent foster care children in their annual review of their custody status. In Miami, we have represented foster care children facing commitment to mental health facilities.
• In San Francisco, Palo Alto, Chicago, Houston and Washington, DC, our lawyers have written appellate briefs advocating for children with special educational needs who are seeking services from their schools.

Education

• Lawyers across our North America offices represent children with special needs in disputes with their schools. The Bay Area project, coordinated by the San Mateo County Legal Aid Society, helps individuals and children receive additional hours of speech therapy, social work counseling and individual tutoring.

Health and Wellness

• Since 2004, every office in North America has participated in a program to increase breast cancer research, education and awareness, raising more than US$100,000.

Housing and Poverty

• Each year since 2002, our lawyers and staff across North America have worked with Habitat for Humanity International to build homes for low-income families. In Toronto, we also help Habitat families with probate and wills to protect their homes thereafter.

Immigration and Asylum

• In Chicago, our immigration lawyers sponsor Saturday morning clinics to help pro bono clients of the National Immigrant Justice Center, which represents and advocates for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We train volunteers and represent applicants in their interviews with the government agency that authorizes US citizenship.
• Our lawyers in several North American offices have represented applicants for political asylum at the hearing and appeal levels before the US federal courts.
• In Dallas, our lawyers work with the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas to provide pro bono legal services. The cases we have handled include gaining political asylum for a Colombian woman and permanent residence status for a Congolese woman facing deportation.

Legal Systems, Legal Rights

• Our Chicago and New York offices have represented appeals by condemned prisoners from state courts to the US Supreme Court.

Teaming up with Clients

• Our lawyers and staff from offices in North America collaborated with clients, including Anadys Pharmaceuticals, Jones Lang LaSalle and Signet Armorlite, to participate in walkathons, office events and fund-raisers to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.
• Baker & McKenzie has made significant financial contributions to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer and the CIBC Run for the Cure.
• We collaborated with McDonald’s® lawyers and paralegals to review loan applications and identify predatory lending practices, as members of a task force established by the Pro Bono Center for Disability and Elder Law in Chicago.
• We work with client organizations to help applicants for naturalization complete the process for obtaining US citizenship. We run about eight clinics a year and have helped numerous families become US citizens through the program.
• We have worked with Boeing to help low-income families and individuals in the United States file tax returns and take advantage of tax credits. The King County Bar Association also worked on the project.