Role of Major Law Firms in Addressing the Unmet Legal Needs of the Immigrant Poor, The

Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, The, Winter 2008 by Lardent, Esther F

I am honored that my dear friend, Judge Robert A. Katzmann, has invited me to respond to his provocative and thoughtful address "The Legal Profession and the Unmet Needs of the Immigrant Poor." His remarks paint a troubling and compelling picture of the current status of legal assistance to low-income immigrants and newcomers. The gap-more accurately a chasm-between the legal needs of this fast-growing segment of our nation's poorest and most vulnerable people and the legal resources available to meet those needs grows larger every day.1

Judge Katzmann's lecture accurately and movingly details the unconscionable delays in processing cases and appeals, the often ineffective assistance provided to the minority of immigrants who manage to locate an advocate, the "streamlining" of administrative immigration matters which has resulted in unworkable caseloads for immigration judges, decisions affirmed without any adequate record, countless legal and factual errors, and a crisis in our Federal district and appellate courts which are seeing immigration appeals in record numbers.

One bright spot in the area of legal assistance to immigrants is the accelerating role of pro bono lawyers at large law firms in narrowing-though not closing-the gap between immigrant legal needs and access to counsel. Immigration advocacy groups like Human Rights First have worked diligently to recruit, train, and support a growing number of pro bono volunteers who represent low-income immigrants. The numbers of large law firms, in particular, that encourage their lawyers' immigration pro bono efforts has grown dramatically.2

However, there is much more that immigration advocacy and legal assistance groups and major law firms can do to enhance effective legal assistance to individual immigrants and to effectuate much-needed systemic change.

Each of these two groups-public interest programs and major law firms-has strengths and limitations that complement the other. Immigration groups have highly expert staff, strong ties to immigrant communities, and a "large picture" perspective on the status of policy issues impacting immigration practice. However, these public interest groups typically have extremely limited resources and small staffs that restrict their advocacy capacity. In addition, Legal Services Corporation grantee programs face restrictions on representation of certain categories of immigrants and on the advocacy tools they can employ. Major law firms have a wealth of human capital-hundreds and even thousands of potential volunteers with a wide range of expertise and perspectives, non-lawyer staff members who have important organizational, technical, and research skills, geographically dispersed offices, and, at a growing number of firms, a strong pro bono infrastructure and culture that enables the firms to assemble and administer major pro bono projects and engagements. However, the availability of volunteers is intermittent, expertise in the arcane laws and regulations of immigration practice is often lacking, and, given the emotion and controversy surrounding immigration issues, some firm members may be reluctant to take on immigration advocacy.

In order to most effectively address the crisis in immigration legal needs, and, ultimately, to fashion an immigration policy and legal process that is fair, accessible, humane, and politically viable, law firms and immigration legal groups can and should work cooperatively. Working together, they can develop sustained, synergistic multi-tiered partnerships that make the highest and best use of the expertise of the public interest groups and the human capital of the law firms to expand legal assistance and address systemic issues more strategically. These partnerships will require each of these segments of the legal profession to make some difficult and fundamental changes in how they approach client services and pro bono. The proposed elements of these revamped relationships include the following:

I. RECONCEPTUALIZING AND RESTRUCTURING THE PUBLIC IMEREST/IMMIGRATION GROUP ROLE

In light of the vast numbers of unrepresented immigrants, both legal and undocumented, coupled with the small number of full-time public interest attorneys currently available to address those needs, the primary role of public interest advocates can not and should not be the direct representation of individual immigrants. Rather, public interest immigration advocates should be viewed as resources, mentors, and strategists who direct, train, support, and leverage the pro bono work of others, including partners and associates at major law firms. A reasonable-if optimistic-estimate would put the total number of full-time public interest and legal services lawyers currently representing immigrants at no more than 400. If each of these lawyers maintained a high caseload of one hundred clients annually, the maximum number of immigrants those lawyers could serve in any one year would be 40,000 people-a number far short of the enormous unmet need among the large immigrant population.