Pro Bono

A World of Good: Dechert’s Pro Bono Program

Dechert has a long-standing tradition of providing pro bono legal services to individuals and organizations who cannot otherwise afford legal counsel. We approach pro bono engagements with the same energy, enthusiasm and resources as we do work for commercial clients, and our associates receive billable-hour credit for their pro bono work. All lawyers are required to perform at least 25 hours of pro bono work per year. We strive to find projects that make a difference in our communities and match the interests and skillsets of our lawyers. 

Pro Bono Areas We Cover

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties  |  Criminal Justice and the Innocence Project  |  Death Penalty | Domestic Violence  |  Education  |  Housing and Homelessness  |  Human Trafficking  |  Immigration  |  Nonprofits, Social Enterprises and Small Business  |  Prisoners of Conscience  |  Prisoners' Rights | Veterans  |  Voting Rights  
 

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Over the years, Dechert attorneys have been involved in a broad array of civil rights and civil liberties matters, assisting with both direct representations as well as amicus or intervention briefs. Issues we have worked on include:

• Disability rights
• Freedom of expression
• LGBTQ+ rights
• Prisoners' rights
• Racial justice
• Religious liberty
• Reproductive rights
• Voting rights
• Women's rights
   

Criminal Justice and the Innocence Project

Dechert works on a wide range of criminal justice matters including:

Criminal Trials and Appeals: Every year, we assist dozens of indigent defendants in criminal cases at both the trial and appellate level. For example, in our New York office, the firm participates in the Criminal Justice Act Panel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and regularly takes cases to trial from those appointments. The firm also handles a steady stream of criminal appeals, working with both the Legal Aid Society and the Office of the Appellate Defender.

• Clemency: Our attorneys represent prisoners in both federal and state prison in submitting petitions to have their sentences commuted.
• Innocence Project: We also work extensively with the Innocence Project – a nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing and to reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice – both at the national level and with some of its state level chapters.
   

Death Penalty

Over the years, Dechert attorneys have handled a number of death penalty cases. Dechert handled one of the first cases to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which categorically barred the execution of individuals with mental impairments. Our client, Simon Pirela, had been on death row for over 20 years when the court vacated his death sentence after a 10-day evidentiary hearing where the team presented extensive evidence regarding his brain damage and associated issues.

Additionally, working with The Advocates for Human Rights and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Dechert lawyers have filed several reports with the UN Human Rights Committee with respect to the state of the death penalty in various countries.

Domestic Violence

With multiple community partners we represent individual victims of domestic violence who are seeking temporary and permanent restraining orders against their abusers. Additionally, with The Advocates for Human Rights, we have worked to reform the domestic violence laws in several countries. We have accompanied The Advocates on missions – where we undertook detailed reviews of the current state of the law, interviewed relevant stakeholders in-country and then made proposals for law reform. Our lawyers have also engaged in several comparative law research projects on domestic violence issues – providing information to advocacy groups about best practices around the world.
 

Education

In several jurisdictions, Dechert lawyers represent individual children and their families with an array of educational issues. The majority of our work has been in the area of special education, assisting children with special needs trying to obtain appropriate special education placements. Dechert lawyers are often the critical players in negotiating Individual Education Plans for their clients – and challenging them in due process hearings when agreements cannot be met.
 

Housing and Homelessness

A long-standing component of Dechert’s pro bono program has been our representation of tenants in their fight to stave off eviction or improve their living conditions. Examples of the work that we do include:

• In Philadelphia, we have a Landlord Tenant Pro Bono Practice Group, which routinely takes referrals from our community partners, including Community Legal Services and Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program, to represent tenants in Municipal Court eviction hearings. Additionally, Dechert was instrumental in working with the Court of Common Pleas to expand the program to include a volunteer-staffed mandatory mediation program for landlord-tenant appeals. 
• In New York, in conjunction with Legal Services NYC, our attorneys focus on representing tenants in housing repair cases.
  
• In Washington, D.C., attorneys participate in the Housing Right to Counsel Project, representing people who are living in subsidized housing and facing eviction.
  

In addition to the direct representation to tenants, Dechert attorneys also advocate for persons experiencing homelessness by partnering with organizations like the National Law Center for Homelessness & Poverty and the Homeless Advocacy Project. 

Human Trafficking

Over the years, Dechert has developed a strong practice of representing victims of human trafficking. We have helped victims obtain immigration relief as well as helped them seek compensation from their traffickers. Our work on these cases typically involves securing immigration relief in the form of T-Visas for the victims as well as seeking unpaid wages and damages from the traffickers.

Our work in the United States has had a particular focus on assisting domestic servants who were trafficked by diplomats into the country. Dechert handled one of the seminal cases in this arena, representing Vishranthamma Swarna, who was brought to the United States from India to work as a live-in domestic in the household of a high ranking diplomat. During the next few years she was beaten, raped and threatened. She escaped and sued the diplomat, who argued diplomatic immunity protected diplomats even after their posting in the United States. The court disagreed, ruling that “residual immunity” — a form of protection from some U.S. laws that continues after diplomats leave their posts — did not apply to how diplomats treated their household workers. 

We have also assisted numerous trafficking victims outside of the diplomatic context. We have secured a T-Visa for a teenage girl from Zambia who had been labor trafficked into the U.S. by her own relatives, who forced her to lie about her age to U.S. embassy officials. We have also worked in the sex trafficking sphere, including the recent successful vacatur of over 90 prostitution convictions for a woman who was sex trafficked in New York.
 

Immigration

Dechert has a long history of representing immigrants with respect to both individual representations as well as assisting in matters seeking systemic change.

In our United States offices, working with our many community partners, Dechert lawyers work to secure lawful immigration status for those seeking asylum, having left their home countries to escape religious, political and other forms of persecution. We also represent children who may be fleeing violent or unstable home lives, who are often alone in the United States, helping them pursuing Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and other remedies.

In our Paris office, working with Alliance Des Avocats Pour Les Droits De L'Homme, we also assist unaccompanied minors with their immigration status. As part of a consortium of four law firms, Dechert's London office has been supporting the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees, helping them file exceptional case funding applications to help immigrants obtain legal aid.

Nonprofits, Social Enterprises and Small Businesses

In all our offices, Dechert is committed to providing pro bono legal advice to local nonprofits, small businesses and social enterprises. Working with our many community partners, the firm has handled in excess of 2,000 matters of varied complexity and scope that allow these entities to serve their communities. Our work includes providing advice on issues including formation, tax exempt status, corporate governance, leases, employment, intellectual property, mergers and dissolution.
 

Prisoners of Conscience

Dechert has a long-standing relationship with Freedom Now, a Washington, D.C.–based organization set up to seek the release of prisoners of conscience around the world. Unlike other human rights groups, Freedom Now mobilizes lawyers to take on political prisoners directly as pro bono clients and conduct legal, political and public relations advocacy campaigns to gain their release.

Not only does the firm work with Freedom Now to help identify potential matters to take on – but, at any one time, Dechert lawyers are actively pursuing up to a dozen Freedom Now cases. A Dechert team recently represented Mohammed Shaikh Ould Mohammed Ould Mkhaitir, a Mauritanian blogger who faced a death sentence on charges of apostasy. Mkhaitir published a blog post that provided a social critique and commentary on the nexus between religion, racism and discrimination. He was subsequently arrested, tried and sentenced to death by firing squad. Among other things, Dechert and Freedom Now filed a petition on Mkhaitir’s behalf with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The Working Group found Mkhaitir’s detention to be arbitrary and called for Mauritania to immediately release him. In its decision, the Working Group found that the Government of Mauritania had committed numerous violations of international law in arresting and detaining Mkhaitir. In July 2019, Mkhaitir was released from prison.

Prisoners' Rights

Prisoners’ rights are a notable cornerstone of Dechert’s pro bono program, encompassing representation of individual prisoners as well as class actions tackling more systemic prison condition issues.

Since 1998, the firm has taken over 120 prisoner cases involving attorneys from Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and the Silicon Valley offices. Dechert’s individual cases often involve issues of excessive force, failure to protect and deliberate indifference to medical needs.

Dechert’s class actions have included a successful challenge to the conditions at the Passaic County Jail, where the prisoners had been subjected to abhorrent living conditions, including mass overcrowding, oppressive heat inside the 50-year-old facility, and excessive use of force by corrections staff. Most recently, Dechert teams filed a series of individual and class actions aimed at forcing correctional institutions to comply with public health recommendations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and/or to release those at an increased risk of serious complications from COVID infection. In Connecticut, a team successfully negotiated a settlement on behalf of all persons incarcerated in Connecticut jails or prisons. The settlement increased incarcerated persons’ access to hygiene, personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing, and established a five-person monitoring panel that recommends additional public-health measures to the Connecticut Department of Corrections.
 

Veterans

For many years, Dechert attorneys have worked to support and advocate on behalf of veterans who have been unjustly denied the full benefits and recognition they have earned by serving their country. Working with groups like the National Veterans Legal Services Program and The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program, Dechert lawyers handle a steady stream of veterans benefits cases, including those involving discharge upgrades, combat-related special compensation and military sexual trauma.

Voting Rights

Voting Rights Litigation

Dechert is among the firms that have joined together to forcefully denounce restrictive voting provisions introduced by state lawmakers. Working with community partners including the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Brennan Center for Justice, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union – Voting Rights Project, Dechert has handled numerous cases to protect the right to vote including:

• Dechert teams have had several successes ensuring that states comply with the National Voter Registration Act, often known as the “motor voter” law because it requires state motor vehicle departments to provide voter registration applications when individuals apply for or renew their drivers’ licenses. Our success in Ohio, in a case we brought alongside the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, allowed 400,000+ low-income Ohio citizens to register to vote in just the first two years after the litigation.
• Dechert teams have challenged restrictive voter identification and documentary proof laws in several states, including in Kansas, where, alongside the ACLU and the ACLU of Kansas, we successfully challenged a documentary proof-of-citizenship law that introduced additional burdens to voter registration.
• Dechert teams have also successfully challenged attempts to improperly remove voters from the voting rolls, including in New York where, in a case in which we partnered with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a landmark decision holding that New York State’s refusal to include inactive voters on poll ledgers used in polling places on Election Day violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
  

Election Protection

During each election season, hundreds of Dechert lawyers and paralegals staff a national voter hotline for Election Protection, the nation’s largest non-partisan voter protection coalition which helps ensure eligible voters are able to participate in our democracy while collecting data for meaningful reform so that our elections are free, fair and accessible.

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Recognition

Over the years, Dechert and individual Dechert lawyers have been recognized on numerous occasions for pro bono contributions. Some of our most recent recognitions include: