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Firm Forms New Group to Focus on Pro Bono Work

New York Lawyer
Novmber 5, 2008

By Mary Pat Gallagher
New Jersey Law Journal

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Lowenstein Sandler, already New Jersey's leader in pro bono legal work, is taking it up a notch.

On Oct. 29, the Roseland firm announced the launch of its Center for the Public Interest, headed by partner Kenneth Zimmerman and staffed by five associates who will each devote 25 percent of their time for one year.

The center will spearhead the firm's pro bono efforts, which are typically spread out among the firm's attorneys, and is meant to reaffirm and expand "the firm's dedication to addressing significant social issues and providing community assistance," the firm says.

Zimmerman says the goal is to maximize the impact of the firm's pro bono work with a strategic approach that will focus on six areas: children and education; immigration; criminal justice; civil and human rights; the arts; and sustainable and community development.

Zimmerman has chaired the firm's pro bono program since coming on board in February after a two-year stint as chief counsel to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Before that, he was executive director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice in Newark, begun in 1999 by Lowenstein founding partner Alan Lowenstein.

Enhancing the firm's pro bono efforts was part of the deal when recruiting Zimmerman, according to managing partner Gary Wingen. It was something the firm had been thinking about and with Ken's availability "we felt the stars aligning," says Wingen. "If he came, his main role at the firm would be to help us further develop and further focus our public interest programs."

Zimmerman's first assignment was to try to match the firm's areas of competence and lawyer interest with existing needs and to find groups already working in those areas that it could partner with.

Zimmerman says the question presented to him was, "Given the firm's own culture and expertise, how we can make as much of a difference as possible?" He notes that the six areas identified are ones in which Lowenstein has in the past provided pro bono services.

Concerning children and education, Lowenstein will supply lawyers for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, a national initiative to provide pro bono counsel to children in immigration matters. An estimated 8,000 children per year enter the U.S. or are detained here without a parent or guardian, says Zimmerman.

The firm has already helped a 15-year-old from Sierra Leone qualify for special immigration juvenile status and the case is in its final stages, he says.

Lowenstein will provide office space for a not-yet-hired KIND New Jersey coordinator. KIND's chief sponsors are Microsoft Corp. and actress Angelina Jolie and include about 25 law firms around the country. Robert Boneberg, of Lowenstein's New York office, who will oversee the KIND work, got to have dinner with Jolie, Zimmerman says.

The KIND work for children overlaps with the immigration area, where the firm will continue providing legal research assistance for Gov. Corzine's Blue Ribbon Panel on Immigrant Policy, formed in 2007 to recommend ways to integrate immigrants in the state, economically, socially and civically.

In another ongoing immigration matter, Lowenstein is teamed with Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice in a federal lawsuit challenging pre-dawn raids on immigrants, Argueta v. Myers, 08-Civ. 1652.

Perhaps no aspect of the center's focus will be more timely than its endeavors in community development.

Working with community organizations, Lowenstein is incorporating a new entity -- the Community Asset Preservation Corporation -- that will buy and rehabilitate abandoned properties and make them available to low-income people as affordable housing. It will also buy properties and lease them back, "in circumstance where that makes sense," so that people can remain in their homes, Zimmerman says.

Lowenstein will assist the new entity with purchasing properties in bulk and provide strategic advice and direction on structured finance issues. It will start out in Essex County, with a goal of going statewide.

Despite the economic downturn that is causing some firms to retrench and even cut legal staff, Wingen says it is the right time for Lowenstein to plow more resources into pro bono.

There is "a heightened obligation to step up our efforts now," he says. "It is particularly important at times like this for our attorneys to feel connected with what's going on in the community and give them an opportunity to help in some small way."

For the last three years, 2005 through 2007, Lowenstein Sandler has led pro bono efforts at New Jersey's biggest law firms, measured by an annual New Jersey Law Journal survey. In 2007, Lowenstein lawyers averaged 70 hours apiece, for a total of nearly 17,000 hours.

The creation of the center echoes the 1990 establishment of the Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at the Newark firm then known as Gibbons DelDeo Dolan Griffinger & Vecchione and now just Gibbons. The Gibbons Fellowship similarly formalized that firm's commitment to public interest litigation, dedicating two full-time attorneys.