Proskauer Rose's Eric Blinderman
Holland & Knight's Christopher Nugent
NLJ PRO BONO AWARDS | HOLLAND & KNIGHT, MAYER BROWN, PROSKAUER ROSE
Pending peace, refuge for Iraqis
January 5, 2009
When he returned to New York in December 2006 after nearly three years in Iraq, Eric Blinderman was determined to continue his work with Iraqis.
Blinderman, international legal counsel to New York's Proskauer Rose, had gone to the war zone in March 2004 as an associate general counsel for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Later, he served as chief legal counsel and associate deputy to the Regime Crimes Liaison.
Many Iraqi colleagues had received death threats — they were considered traitors for assisting U.S. and coalition forces. His Iraqi translator, a married father of six, was among those killed. Others were badly injured. Uday Hattem, who worked alongside U.S. soldiers in Iraq, was shot in the face. Blinderman helped Hattem arrange free reconstructive surgery and asylum in New York.
In 2007, Blinderman's firm officially became a part of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Refugees, a nonprofit organization founded that year to help resettle Iraqis in danger because of their affiliation with the United States. Holland & Knight had already been collaborating with the project, and Mayer Brown signed on this year. The joint effort has helped bring nearly 300 Iraqis to the United States. The project attracts as many as 25 new applicants each week.
Blinderman opposed the war in Iraq, but believes that the United States has a moral obligation to help those affected.
"I want to see peace and stability so I don't have to do this type of work moving forward, but right now we are not there yet," he said. "I don't know when we'll be there, but until the need is there let me put a moral obligation on me and others. We have the power as lawyers to make a difference. I don't think one can be a lawyer and turn their back on people in need."
In 2008, Blinderman said, Proskauer was involved in more than 160 cases involving more than 400 refuge seekers, as many have family members. The firm's Iraq Pro Bono Human Rights Project has involved more than 80 lawyers and staff members from almost all of the firm's offices. Proskauer donated more than 3,000 hours in 2008, helping more than 60 Iraqis and their relatives get to the United States thus far.
A '24-7 operation'
At Holland & Knight, 75 attorneys and paralegals are managing more than 180 active cases involving more than 600 individuals. The firm has successfully resolved more than 60 cases. Although it got involved with The List Project in 2007, it was helping Iraqis before that through its work with the Pan American Center's Freedom to Write Project, representing Iraqi journalists, poets and authors under threat. The project has been rewarding for everyone involved, said Christopher Nugent, senior counsel to the firm's Washington office, who has been the firm's project leader.
"They really form intense bonds with the clients, even though they work with them from eight hours away," Nugent said. "That's why it's kind of a 24-7 operation. Because the e-mails don't stop at midnight — that's when they [in Iraq] are getting up."
Chicago-based Mayer Brown got involved this year. The firm took five pilot cases at the beginning of the year and now has about 70 attorneys working on more than 80 cases, said Marcia Tavares Maack, Mayer Brown's Washington-based assistant director of pro bono activities.
Much of the work involves helping the Iraqis secure refugee status by counseling them about their options, preparing them for interviews and filing the necessary paperwork. In many cases, lawyers have gone way beyond legal work.
Daniella Rudy, a Proskauer associate in New York, secured a job for an Iraqi woman by calling various universities until she found her a job in Georgia. The woman received death threats in Iraq because she worked for an American organization, Rudy said. Rudy screamed and jumped with joy when she found out the woman was coming to the United States.
"It's really exciting because you really do form a connection and a bond, and it's beyond just a usual client-attorney relationship," Rudy said. "It's really trying to get someone out who's feeling extremely powerless. It's not a big, faceless case — you're here dealing with someone's life, and oftentimes you're the contact outside of everything that's going on."
The woman, who asked not to be identified by name because her daughter and son remain in Iraq, said that Rudy saved her life.
'I was hopeless'
"I had a really hard time and, really, I was hopeless," said the woman, who is in her mid-40s and holds a doctoral degree. "What she did for me was tremendous. She followed the process for me to come over here, did her best to get me a job here. She made my life."
Kirk Johnson, a former worker with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Iraq who founded The List Project, has helped raise money that pays for salaries of four Iraqi refugees to coordinate the project — two at Holland & Knight and one each at Proskauer and Mayer Brown. Johnson said that he has been thrilled by the law firms' work.
"Initially, I went around, and I was asking all of these human rights and refugee-oriented [nongovernmental organizations] for help, but none of them have the capacity to do this," said Johnson, who lives in Boston. "And who would have thought that in the end it's the big bad law firms that end up working more with the List than anybody?"
More information about the effort is available at www.thelistproject.org.
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