City Launches Program to Boost the Ranks of Pro Bono Attorneys

“This bottom line . . . is to figure out a way to harness pro bono legal help to those who really need it,” Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo told the group.

He said there was an opportunity now to tap into the pool of legal talent available as a result of the economic downturn, as well as work with retired and employed attorneys.

The city does not want to “reinvent the wheel” but rather “galvanize” more volunteers and add the “mayor’s bully pulpit” to existing efforts, Mr. Cardozo said.

“NYC Legal Outreach” is part of a wider initiative dubbed “NYC Service,” which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg launched last week in response to President Barack Obama’s support of a nationwide program to foster community service.

In a radio address Sunday, the mayor, who has assigned First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris to lead NYC Service, said he intended to “unleash an army of volunteers to tackle our city’s greatest challenges.” He vowed to harness “the power of 311 and the city’s Web site to direct potential volunteers to the organizations that best fit their interests.”

“As part of the larger effort, we have been exploring how New York City can help in expanding available pro bono legal help to the poor . . . [O]ur aim has been to learn how the City can help the pro bono legal community as well as to identify ways to mobilize excess legal capacity – that is, to involve lawyers with the time and motivation to volunteer their services – to help people who have been hard-hit during this economic recession,” Mr. Cardozo and Ms. Harris wrote in a April 10 letter inviting city bar groups and law school deans to yesterday’s meeting.

Mr. Cardozo said in an interview Friday that by bringing pro bono service providers together under one roof, he hopes to make volunteer efforts more “efficient” and increase synergy among providers.

Specifically, NYC Legal Outreach will focus on four “key” service areas: evictions, foreclosures, consumer debt and immigration, all areas that have mushroomed as a result of the financial crisis.

Once an immigrant’s case winds up in the federal appellate courts, the “die is already cast,” Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said at yesterday’s meeting.

“[A]t a time when for so many immigrants whether they can stay or not depends on effective representation . . . the legal profession has a responsibility to do what it can to provide pro bono support,” Judge Katzmann said Friday in an interview.

And while in recent years firms increasingly have contributed pro bono support in immigration cases, “much more needs to be done,” the judge said.

Likewise, the need for attorneys to help homeowners facing foreclosure is “tremendous,” said Lynn M. Kelly, the executive director of the City Bar Justice Center, which launched the Foreclosure Project in June 2008. Ms. Kelly also spoke at yesterday’s meeting.

With credit markets virtually frozen, cases have not been “turning over quickly,” she said in an interview. Even though things are easing up, mortgage administrators are not responding quickly enough, she said.

Consumer credit cases and evictions are two more areas where litigants often must fend for themselves.

Last year, there were some 600,000 filings in consumer credit and housing cases. And while as many as 90 percent to 95 percent of litigants in housing cases are unrepresented, the number of pro se litigants rises to 99 percent in consumer credit cases, Judge Fern Fisher, deputy chief administrative judge for courts in New York City, said yesterday. While many lawyers already have volunteered to lend a hand, “it’s simply not enough,” she added.

As for lawyers unemployed as a result of the economic downturn, “We are going to give them something to do. We are going to put them to work,” said Judge Fisher.

Mr. Cardozo agreed on Friday that members of the “legal profession should stand up and deal with the crisis we are facing.” However, he stressed that NYC Legal Outreach is not limited to lawyers looking for a job.

Whether “you are a 65-year-old retired partner,” an employed attorney with free time or an out-of-work lawyer, Mr. Cardozo said NYC Legal Outreach is “something to get behind.”

The city plans to sponsor evening meetings in each of the five boroughs starting in late May and running through June at which attorneys can hear presentations from pro bono and legal services agencies involved in the four program areas it is targeting.

Also, it plans to enhance its www.nycservice.org site to include information about pro bono activities, primarily by partnering with organizations like Pro Bono Net and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

The city will send letters to bar groups, law schools and the 100 largest law firms, as well as publicize NYC Legal Outreach through public service announcements.

Finally, the city plans to add protocols to the 311 helpline so that operators will have a full range of legal information available for dissemination to the public.

[email protected]