Blog — Around the water cooler

Each week I will highlight a different case or legal happening, and solicit your thoughts on the impact of it in the legal community.

The Chicago Legal Clinic (CLC) will honor Kimball R. Anderson and Karen Gatsis Anderson, Holland & Knight, and Schiff Hardin. They will be presented with awards at the clinic’s annual dinner May 16 at the Hilton Hotel, Downtown Chicago.

 CLC’s mission is to identify legal needs and provide community-based quality legal services and education to the underserved and disadvantaged in the Chicago area. 

Kimball R. Anderson and Karen Gatsis Anderson will receive CLC’s Cardinal Bernardin Award, presented for “action on behalf of social justice, advocacy for the less advantaged, and passionate promotion of the ideal that we are our brother’s keeper.”

CLC’s board of directors noted that in 2003, Kimball and Karen Anderson set a precedent for others in the legal community with a $100,000 gift, which they doubled in 2005. Their donation created a public interest law fellowship to assist outstanding law school graduates who have elected to work in the field of public interest law. The couple also recently made a commitment to funding a complete redesign of a courtroom at the University of Illinois College of Law.  The Andersons also give countless hours of pro bono assistance, and serve on numerous boards of not-for-profit organizations.

“We’ve got a huge gap out there in terms of those who have access to justice and those who do not,” said Kimball Anderson, partner and general counsel at Winston & Strawn. “As lawyers we have a special obligation to try to fill that gap and I’ve been doing that for the 31 years I’ve been practicing. The Chicago Legal Clinic is very much focused on filling that unmet demand for legal services.”

Holland & Knight is receiving the clinic’s Charles J. O’Laughlin Memorial Award, which is presented to a law firm or law department with an exemplary record of pro bono representation of individuals or groups.

Holland & Knight maintains a full-time community services team to marshal its resources to provide legal representation to those who cannot afford it. 

Last year, through the efforts of the firm, the Chicago Legal Clinic was awarded a $150,000 cy pres award to continue and enhance its efforts to defend those in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. The firm’s efforts have helped dependent and delinquent children to get needed mental health services, African-American renters denied housing in a decades-long scheme, and also assisted Mohammed Al Rehaief, an American hero, who, with his family, helped save POW Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

“Chicago Legal Clinic just does a tremendous job,” said Ed Ryan, Holland & Knight partner. “From our perspective, it is just an honor to be associated with one of the premier organizations of its kind.”

Ryan said he’s particularly impressed with the work the chancery advice desk does because it’s helping people who face foreclosures, but do not have representation.

“The advice desk is doing so much good work and I’m sure is stressed a bit in terms of person power to handle all the matters,” he said. “They do a wonderful job.”

Schiff Hardin is the recipient of CLC’s 2008 Pro Bono Award. The award is presented to a firm that has provided pro bono assistance for the clinic. Schiff Hardin’s pro bono work focuses on civil rights and law reform cases involving discrimination in public housing, governmental surveillance of citizens, racial profiling, rights of minors under state custody, prisoners’ rights, rights of persons committed indefinitely for psychological reasons, and the constitutionality of bias violence statutes, as well as death penalty and wrongful conviction cases.

Schiff Hardin provides transactional, consulting, and other pro bono legal services in different practice areas, to public service, civic, and other not-for-profit organizations dealing with affordable housing, community economic development, animal welfare, job training, health care services and education.

“I think [pro bono] is part of the culture of the firm,” said Paul Dengel, pro bono partner at Schiff Hardin. “Any firm probably recruits people in their own image and we tend to find people that share those values, and a sense of using your legal talents to help those who have nobody to speak for them … It’s a deeply shared value and what it means to belong to this firm.”