Message From Our Leaders

Message From Our Chair and Managing Partner

In 2023, our lawyers and professional staff opened almost 1,300 new pro bono matters, a testament to our firm’s deep, abiding commitment to donating free legal services to vulnerable individuals and the organizations that serve them.

At Latham, we believe that the practice of law includes the unique ability and responsibility to advocate for equal justice. We are honored to be among the world’s largest providers of pro bono legal services, with our lawyers and professional staff donating more than 4.6 million pro bono hours in legal services over the last two decades — including over 300,000 hours in 2023.

This pro bono work spans the globe, with lawyers in all of our offices undertaking pro bono work in 2023. As always, our colleagues pursue their pro bono engagements with a clear sense of purpose and dedication to use their skills in the service of the public good. Our pro bono program encompasses nearly every area of public interest law, including veterans’ rights, asylum and immigration, domestic violence, special education, criminal justice, emerging entrepreneurs, nonprofit support, and civil rights.

You’ll read about many achievements in these, and other areas, throughout our Pro Bono Annual Review. Among several significant outcomes this year, we won a unanimous victory in the US Supreme Court that allows children with disabilities who have been denied a public school education to pursue all remedies under federal anti-discrimination law. We secured a precedent-setting outcome expanding access to veterans’ benefits, and we celebrated 10 years of staffing legal clinics with Droits d’urgence in Paris, through which we have donated more than 4,000 hours toward helping Droits d’urgence clients.

I am proud of all that our pro bono program has accomplished, and I am grateful for the perseverance of our lawyers and professional staff. Looking ahead, I am excited to deepen our longstanding relationships with partner organizations and to continue working on behalf of those who might otherwise be denied representation, equality, or justice.

I hope you will be, too.

Richard M. Trobman
Chair and Managing Partner

Message From the Pro Bono Committee

Sincere thanks to my Latham colleagues for pursuing their pro bono engagements with integrity, diligence, and conviction. Across every Latham office and every Latham practice area, our lawyers are on the front lines of matters that benefit the communities where we live and work, increasing access to effective legal counsel and strengthening the rule of law around the globe.

Laura Atkinson-Hope
Public Service Counsel, Director of Global Pro Bono

Our lawyers and professional staff donate their time and talents to pro bono for many reasons, not the least of which is to contribute to the public good. As we strive to close the justice gap, we are motivated by a desire to promote the universal ideals of justice and fairness, and we are proud to work alongside so many dedicated nonprofits and legal services organizations.

Anne Robinson
Pro Bono Committee Chair