Squire Sanders reaches out to its member communities to support civic, charitable, educational and professional organizations with extensive pro bono activities. Our lawyers dedicate thousands of hours each year to supporting our 350 active pro bono clients.
From helping the American Bar Association ensure that capital case defendants are afforded due process, to seeing nonprofit organizations through the initial stages of their development, Squire Sanders' ongoing commitment to pro bono service is broad and varied.
- For 30 years, the Cleveland office staffed a position at the Cuyahoga County Legal Aid Society, rotating associates from all departments for one-month stints.
- A pro bono team of Cleveland lawyers won a new trial for a Michigan inmate who had been in prison for more than 10 years on a sentence of life without parole.
- Los Angeles office lawyers acted as lead counsel in a nine-week pro bono jury trial that resulted in a US$2.4 million verdict in favor of an elderly homeowner who had been deceived in a fraudulent loan scheme. This is the first case tried under California's Elders Abuse Law.
- A number of our lawyers are involved with the American Bar Association's Disaster Legal Services team, which provides immediate pro bono assistance to victims and their family members in the wake of calamities. Several of our lawyers assisted those victimized by the terrorist bombings on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001.
- Lawyers and summer associates from the Phoenix office represent the Arizona Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, helping to protect a southern Arizona preserve property to which a third party holds subsurface mineral rights.
- Along with the Legal Aid Society, a number of our San Francisco colleagues represented a class of 3,000 indigent and primarily homeless persons with chronic mental illness who needed more services than the state was funding. After a successful trial and three successful rounds of appeal, the litigation produced US$17 million in additional mental health care funding.
- In a joint pro bono effort with a Cleveland associate, two Washington DC lawyers are representing a nationwide class of physically handicapped citizens suing a large department store for alleged violation of the American With Disabilities Act and other state acts.
