By: Julie Park, Director of Pro Bono, Fenwick & West LLP
Crowdsourcing has galvanized large numbers of activists and enthusiasts around everything from artisanal businesses to urban planning to climate change.
It’s no surprise that innovative thinkers in the legal community are applying the concept to help address the needs of the underrepresented. Lawyers gathering this month at the 2017 South by Southwest® (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, say the potential of crowdsourcing to expand access to justice to vulnerable communities is immense.
Fenwick-sponsored Equal Justice Fellow Renée Schomp, who runs OneJustice’s Rural Immigrant Connect project, is one of the panelists slated to share their experience with pioneering collaborative, crowd-driven approaches to legal advocacy.
Schomp’s Rural Immigrant Connect project connects immigrants in California’s Central Valley with ongoing legal representation from Bay Area-based pro bono attorneys through in-person and virtual technology communication.
California, with its sizable immigrant population and significant number of working lawyers, has a particular need. The state is home to the largest immigrant population in the United States (10.3 million people) and leads the nation in the number of immigrants who are eligible to become citizens (an estimated 2.5 million).
California also has the country’s largest lawyer population. With over 166,000 licensed, active lawyers, the state’s legal system should be uniquely positioned to meet the legal needs of immigrants through a robust and proactive pro bono system.
However, the vast majority of California’s lawyers work in urban and metropolitan areas, making it challenging for them to connect with immigrants in isolated and rural areas of the state.
At SXSW, the panelists will discuss the challenges and promise of disruptive, crowdsourced models for providing legal assistance to vulnerable populations throughout the global community.
Part of the "Social Impact" track of SXSW, the panel showcases the future of advocacy and new approaches to making justice accessible to all.
Panelists include:
Jennifer Gonzalez, Torchlight Legal
Renée Schomp, OneJustice, Fenwick & West LLP Equal Justice Works Fellow
Rafael Baca, R. Baca Law Firm PLLC
Stephen Manning, Immigrant Law Group PC
The “Crowdsourcing Justice” panel takes place at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13, 2017, from 2-3 p.m. PT.
From Monday, October 20, 2014 through Friday, October 24, 2014, Fenwick celebrated the American Bar Association’s National Pro Bono Week. This annual celebration focuses the nation’s attention on the increased need for pro bono services and celebrates the outstanding work of lawyers who volunteer their services throughout the year.
The Fenwick spin on Pro Bono Week began with a Monday kick-off breakfast, followed by a panel of attorneys on Tuesday sharing what they’ve learned about client service through their pro bono work. The panelists – from various practice groups – shared their experiences working on a broad range of matters, from prisoners’ rights cases, to corporate and intellectual property counseling, to rule of law initiatives overseas. Another panel of firm attorneys spoke on Wednesday about their diverse pro bono projects, covering both transactional and litigation work. That same day, Fenwick participated in a Share of Cost Clinic in Redwood Shores, helping low-income and disabled seniors qualify for affordable health care coverage.
On Thursday, litigators from Fenwick’s Seattle office discussed their pro bono case Jafar v. Webb, in which the Washington Supreme Court established that indigent litigants are entitled to a waiver of all court fees and charges, helping to ensure equal access to justice. That afternoon, Fenwick hosted a pro bono happy hour to celebrate all of the firm’s pro bono efforts during the prior twelve months. The week concluded with a guest presentation on the growing field of animal law by an attorney from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, followed by a presentation on volunteer opportunities by the Humane Society Silicon Valley.
Many thanks go to Fenwick’s Pro Bono Team for planning such a wonderful week of programming to celebrate all the excellent work that the firm does for its pro bono clients and for various communities around the country!
Emily Gische, a UC Hastings College of the Law alum, is an associate in the Intellectual Property practice group at Fenwick & West LLP. Emily focuses her practice on a broad variety of trademark matters to support clients in the high technology and life sciences industries. While attending law school, Emily was the Executive Articles Editor of the Hastings Law Journal. She competed in the Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition, focused on trademark and unfair competition law, in which her team won the Dolores K. Hanna National Best Brief Award. She also served as a Judicial Extern to The Honorable Kathryn Werdegar of the Supreme Court of California and the Honorable James Larson of the United States District Court in the Northern District of California. In her free time, Emily enjoys lacrosse and road biking.
“We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give,” Winston Churchill once said. One of my resolutions after passing the California bar was to do some good, especially to those who are less fortunate, in a concrete way using my training and experience. So when I had a chance to volunteer at the East Bay Stand Down 2014 to help veterans obtain the benefits to which they are entitled, I signed up right away.
The East Bay Stand Down is a consortium of community organizations of San Francisco Bay Area that provides a four-day event every other year with a primary goal to serve military veterans who have served our nation. This year, Fenwick & West LLP teamed up with non-profit veteran services organization Swords to Plowshares to help veterans claim the benefits to which they are entitled. I took a day away from the patent prosecution world to learn to give back to this most deserving client base of veterans and walked away with the joy of giving and inspiration.
War causes wounds and suffering inside and beyond the battlefield. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimation, within the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties, there are over 7,000 needy or homeless veterans. Nationally, it is estimated that over 250,000 needy and homeless veterans are on the streets on any given night. However, applying VA benefits is a difficult and confusing process. Many veterans are not even aware of their entitled benefits. Compounding the difficulty of the benefit application, those veterans who did not receive fully honorable discharges may be ineligible for most VA benefits.
With four hours of online training on the basics on VA benefits, discharge upgrades and veteran cultural competency, I arrived at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton Saturday morning, September 13, 2014, excited and a bit nervous. It was really hot figuratively and literally. Figuratively, I was immediately warmed up by the enthusiastic volunteers at the registration desk and many more around the fairground, whose smiling faces read “welcome!” It was literally hot (over 90° F) especially after I proudly put a staff volunteer shirt on.
Swords to Plowshares staffed a walk-in clinic with volunteer attorneys, paralegals and law school students from the San Francisco Bay Area. I teamed up with another volunteer attorney and was thrilled to help two Vietnam-era veterans in the morning shift. We listened to their stories and the cultural, educational, psychological and economic barriers they faced in their transition to the civilian world. We brainstormed with them and helped them recall the pivotal – sometimes painful – events from many decades ago that may help their benefits claims. One such brainstorm session lasted three hours! We missed the delicious lunch provided by the event organizer, but were very happy to help the veteran fill out those lengthy and complicated application forms. When he left the clinic knowing his benefit application was ready to go, he shook our hands tightly with touching gratitude on his face. I deeply felt the joy and power of giving.
With a half donut in my stomach, I went back to the afternoon shift and doubled my joy of giving to two more Vietnam-era veterans, including a female veteran at a similar clinic specially set up for female veterans by Swords to Plowshares. On one hand, my heart was so heavy when I listened to her struggles that I barely could hold my tears; on the other hand, I was so inspired by her determination to restore dignity, hope and self-sufficiency not only to herself but also to her fellow female veterans in need. When she hugged me at the end of her session, I felt the difference, be it small, I may have made in her life, by just patiently listening and filling out some legal papers for rebuilding her life.
As many pro bono attorneys before me can attest, there are countless reasons to do pro bono work: feeling good, connecting with people and learning effectively, in other words, making a difference. There is no doubt I can achieve these goals from my job. However, through this pro bono work, I feel very fortunate to be a lawyer and among the few who can make the legal system work for people who give us all they have – gratitude. On the way home, I remembered why I went to law school, but this time with assurance.
Helen Li, a Santa Clara University School of Law alum, is an associate in the Intellectual Property practice group at Fenwick & West LLP. Helen concentrates her practice on the drafting and prosecution of U.S. and international patent applications for clients in computer engineering technologies with a focus on video signal compression and computer networking. Before joining Fenwick, she worked as a software engineer for several Silicon Valley-based technology companies. Helen is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. At pro bono clinics, she not only volunteers as an attorney but also as an interpreter. Helen loves playing ping pong.
By: Jeremy Kazzaz, Summer Associate, Mountain View
As a 1L I competed in the school-wide and regional client counseling competition. At the competition student-actors play the part of first time clients walking into your law firm and our task as competitors was to build a relationship with the client, listen to his or her story, and pick out the relevant facts to be able to advise them accordingly. The client counseling competition was one of my favorite extracurricular activities as a student, so imagine my delight in finding out that our pro bono service day with Fenwick would be a real, live version of the client counseling competition.
The first Justice Bus trip of the summer that Fenwick associates volunteered for was focused on a substantive area of law working with parents to craft or dispute educational plans for their children with special needs. For this trip, legal aid nonprofit OneJustice prepared us volunteers to hear about any civil legal issue that the scheduled and walk-in clients are facing in a general clinic format.
Eight Fenwick summer associates, two Fenwick associates, three Google legal interns, and five LinkedIn attorneys and legal interns took a day away from the corporate world to give back to our Northern California community, expecting the unexpected.
With coffee and bagels in hand (necessary pro bono tools), we boarded the Justice Bus on Friday, July 25 to cruise up to rural Marin County. We staffed a walk-in clinic with Legal Aid of Marin, an organization that provides access to the civil justice system to low-income, vulnerable and otherwise underserved residents of Marin County.
We were thrilled to have the opportunity to provide a wide range of legal services to those in need. The service day also gave us the opportunity to tackle problems that we wouldn’t encounter as corporate associates. Highlights included helping a local resident with a consumer protection and elder abuse issue, aiding a family with landlord disputes, and a longtime social worker with employment disputes.
All in all, we were able to help 13 Point Reyes Station locals. The moment that left the biggest impact on me came toward the end the day. Once I had fully advised a client on the substantive housing law issues she faces, seasoned Fenwick Associate Robin Reasoner joined me in laying out basic negotiation strategies and tactics to empower the client to negotiate a favorable new lease agreement for the home the client’s family has resided in for nearly a decade. We crafted a game plan that I have no doubt she will implement in the coming weeks in negotiations with her landlord.
Community service has always played a big part in my life from building roofs with the National Park Service in middle school, organizing social activities for the elderly in an assisted living home in high school, and as of late, teaching legal research and writing basics to inmates serving long sentences in Michigan’s only women’s prison. I am proud to be at a firm that is as committed to pro bono work as I am.
Fenwick's team of volunteers included Summer Associates Amanda Baratz, Jessica Benzler, Ari Haber, Jeremy Kazzaz, Zach Lerner, Liwen Mah, Robin Reasoner, Travis Robertson, Victoria Wong, and Michael Xu, Associates Liwen Mah and Robin Reasoner, and Pro Bono Coordinator Bonnie Lau.
Jeremy Kazzaz, a rising 3L at the University of Michigan Law School, was a summer associate in the Corporate practice group at Fenwick & West LLP. He has volunteered with low-income applicants to Michigan’s unemployment insurance, taught legal research and writing to inmates at Michigan’s only women’s prison, and spent his 1L summer working with student startup companies at Michigan’s Entrepreneurship Clinic. Before law school, Jeremy briefly lived in Israel on a kibbutz, or communal farm, and served as a paratrooper for the Israeli Defense Forces. As an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, he was an active member of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill’s successful campaign, and later took a semester off to work for her on Capitol Hill. In his free time, Jeremy enjoys listening to podcasts on double speed, visiting microbreweries, and biking.
By: Robert Brownstone, Technology & eDiscovery Counsel, San Francisco
From the ashes of the flawed 2000 presidential election the Election Protection coalition arose. That group of civil rights organizations and other non-profits protects individuals’ rights to vote and to have their votes counted as cast. In 2004, a key player in that coalition, Verified Voting Foundation was founded by Stanford University computer science Professor David Dill. For the past 10 years, Verified Voting has played an integral role in Election Protection by, among other efforts, striving to convince legislatures and election officials nationwide to ensure the integrity and data security of voting machines.
This August 13, Verified Voting will be celebrating its 10th Anniversary of “safeguarding elections in the digital age” at an evening event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Details are available at this registration page. Fenwick & West is proud to be a sponsor of the anniversary bash because 2014 also marks our firm’s 10th anniversary of providing pro bono legal advice and on-the-ground support to the Election Protection movement.
During the past decade, dozens of our firm’s lawyers and paralegals have advised coalition members such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In the Fall 2010 election season, we realized there was a particularly intense synergy between the technology focus of our firm and the voting-machine-centric work of Verified Voting. Our firm also wanted to be involved in voting issues on a more regular basis, not just during the ramp up to a federal election day. So, in early 2011, we became pro bono counsel for Verified Voting.
Although I’ve enjoyed being one of the leaders of our firm’s pertinent efforts since Fall 2004, the past three-plus years of focused efforts advising Verified Voting have been even more energizing. I share the passion the organization and its president, Pam Smith, exhibit day in and day out for trying to ensure that voting machines provide Voter-Verified Paper Ballots (VVPBs). The lack of a Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) foils voters’ attempts on Election Day to ensure their votes are cast consistent with their selections. It also prevents legally defensible and/or statistically sound audits and recounts in the aftermath of Election Day.
On behalf of Verified Voting, I have led Fenwick teams that have prepared written challenges regarding New Jersey’s statewide use of Direct-Recording Electronic voting machines (DREs) and as to Maryland’s flirtation with the use of an online ballot marking wizard that does not appear to comply with state or federal certification rules. See eCounts and Recounts (Oct. 2012). And, in Fall 2012, I went toe-to-toe with New Jersey Governor Christie when he and I were quoted as to our opposing viewpoints on the makeshift vote-by-email approach New Jersey took that election week in light of Hurricane Sandy. See Despite Lawsuit and Numerous Glitches, New Jersey Voted, but It Wasn’t Pretty(Nov. 2012).
In addition, I have joined countless lawyer and paralegal colleagues of mine in staffing call centers during multiple election seasons. And I have beamed with pride as some of our paralegals jumped into the breach to help with editing and finalizing Counting Votes 2012: A State by State Look at Election Preparedness, which was a joint effort of Verified Voting Foundation, Common Cause and the Rutgers School of Law.
So Happy 10th Birthday Verified Voting Foundation! My association with this pro bono client has been inspiring, and I expect it will continue for the rest of my life.
Robert Brownstone is Technology & eDiscovery Counsel at Fenwick & West LLP, as well as Co-Chair of the Electronic Information Management (EIM) practice group. He advises clients on electronic discovery, electronic information management, retention/destruction policies and protocols, information-security and privacy. Both in depositions and at trials, Bob has handled direct-testimony and cross-examination of expert witnesses as to electronically stored information (ESI) and computer-forensics. A nationally recognized resource on electronic information, Bob has penned over 50 articles on law and technology issues and has been featured in over 50 media outlets. Bob also authors the IT Law Today blog.
Fenwick & West attorneys Lynda Twomey, Walter Raineri, Sheeva Ghassemi-Vanni, and I joined with Yahoo! and the Justice & Diversity Center of The Bar Association of San Francisco to deliver services to local nonprofit organizations on April 11, 2014. The Fenwick attorneys provided a couple of hours of intense training in the areas of corporate structure and governance, employment, tax, intellectual property, and privacy to members of Yahoo!’s legal department. After learning from us about the most common legal issues that nonprofits face and how to address them, the Yahoo! participants met in teams to counsel representatives from local nonprofits who had requested legal advice through the Justice & Diversity Center. Throughout the counseling sessions, the Fenwick attorneys were available for follow up questions and to provide more in-depth feedback responsive to particular facts.
This was our second annual pro bono clinic with Yahoo! aimed at serving nonprofits, and I hope this new tradition will continue far into the future. After participating last year, I eagerly returned because it is exciting to see one of our Silicon Valley neighbors as dedicated to serving the community as we are. It was a delight to partner with the Justice & Diversity Center and Yahoo! to leverage the impact we can make, particularly in legal areas within our professional expertise. I am particularly thankful to have had the opportunity to use my skills to help solve problems that distract nonprofits from their important work. I find it rewarding to know I played even a small part in helping local nonprofits thrive.
Robin, a Stanford Law School alum, is an associate in the Intellectual Property practice group at Fenwick & West LLP. She includes strategic patent counseling and obtaining domestic and foreign patent rights in a number of technical fields, including optics, computer software, and business methods in her practice. She has prepared and prosecuted numerous provisional and utility applications. Robin also provides IP due diligence and litigation support.
Last month I again participated in the Volunteer Attorney Program (VAP) as part of a partnership of Fenwick & West LLP and other organizations with Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto. Volunteers taking part in the VAP assist local low-income clients with a range of issues, such as contracts, debt collection, and landlord-tenant disputes. Each volunteer is paired with a pre-screened client who is in need of legal assistance. More often than not, the issue is usually more complicated than we think. The clinic sees about thirty clients each month with the help of volunteer attorneys and law students. In every case, we provide legal advice, and in some cases, we are able to provide some brief service, like writing a demand letter or filling out a consumer complaint.
Client sessions involve extended inquiry into the factual details, followed by counseling about the possible options and associated risks. I often find that clients have an inaccurate understanding of the legal implications of their situations, and (accordingly) significant anxiety about the gravity of the potential outcomes. In many cases—e.g., debt collection—this anxiety is unwarranted, and the ability to explain the situation and allay the clients’ fears is one of the aspects of volunteering as part of the VAP that I’ve found particularly satisfying.
Christopher is an associate in the Intellectual Property practice group at Fenwick & West LLP. A graduate of Santa Clara University School of Law, Christopher focuses his practice on obtaining domestic and foreign patent rights, with an emphasis on the computer software field. He has prepared and prosecuted numerous patent applications in diverse technology areas such as machine learning, video analysis, cryptography and computer security, advertising statistics, geographical information systems, and social networking.
On October 25, 2013, Chief Judge Randall R. Rader of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the FederalCircuit and representatives from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), law associations, private practitioners, and independent inventor organizations will sign a charter to found the America Invents Act (AIA) Pro Bono Advisory Council. The Council will provide support and guidance to intellectual property pro bono organizations dedicated to assisting independent inventors and small businesses.
Fenwick will join the AIA Pro Bono Advisory Council as a founding member. Sabra-Anne Truesdale, a Fenwick Intellectual Property Senior Associate, will attend the ceremony in Washington, D.C. and sign the charter as Fenwick’s representative.
At Fenwick & West, we are proud of our commitment to the community and to our culture of making a difference in the lives of individuals and organizations in the communities where we live and work. We recognize that providing legal services is not only an essential part of our professional responsibility, but also an excellent opportunity for our attorneys to gain valuable practical experience, learn new areas of the law and contribute to the community.
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