Faegre & Benson is a founding member of the Law Firm Pro Bono Project and a signatory to the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge. Firms participate in the Challenge by committing annually to provide pro bono legal representation equivalent to at least 3 percent of their total billable hours, and to direct a majority of pro bono hours to serving persons of limited means. We have met or exceeded the Challenge every year since its inception in 1994.
Our pro bono practice is centered on a shared vision of service to the community. The tangible manifestation of this shared vision is the dedication of firm resources to support individual lawyers pursuing their own passion for specific areas of pro bono practice. Major areas of pro bono practice at Faegre & Benson include:
Children and Families. Lawyers provide pro bono representation through the JUSTice for KIDS initiative to meet the legal needs of abused and neglected children, including the Guardian ad Litem Trial and Appellate Projects, the Children's Asylum & Immigration Project and the Grandparent Custody Project. Our firm is also active with the Colorado Lawyers Committee Children's Task Force to address the needs of undocumented children.
Low-Income and Disadvantaged Clients. Volunteers provide legal support for persons of limited means served by community legal clinics. Projects include the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center Clinic, Youth Law Clinic at YouthLink, Project Homeless Connect, the Denver and Jefferson Counties Post-Decree Family Law Clinics, and Legal Night at the Sister Carmen Community Center. Areas of support include family law, housing advocacy, and consumer law.
Environmental Public Interest. We maintain a national environmental public interest litigation practice to preserve wilderness areas and protect endangered species. Matters include arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on applications of the Endangered Species Act and litigation to preserve wilderness areas in Minnesota and Wyoming. Clients have included the Sierra Club, Izaak Walton League, Nature Conservancy, Humane Society, Wilderness Watch and the Prairie Island Indian Community.
Civil and Human Rights. Our varied practice includes pro bono work to protect human rights and the rule of law in the United States and abroad. Activities include individual asylum, refugee, and immigration cases, death penalty appeals, research on the use of torture in the war on terror, international human rights documentation and monitoring projects, transitional justice projects in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and assistance in war crimes prosecutions.
Non-Profit Organizations and Community Economic Development. Volunteers from our firm offer a variety of transactional legal services to non-profit organizations in corporate, trademark, employment, real estate and other forms of civil law. We represent many organizations involved in community economic development, including WomenVenture, Milestone Growth Fund, White Earth Land Recovery Project, Boulder Innovation Center and the Neighborhood Development Corporation.
For many of our lawyers, the experience of reaching across cultural and economic divides to meet our pro bono clients on a common ground is life changing—as is illustrated in our 2007, 2008 and 2009 pro bono videos.