MISSISSIPPI NARRATIVES: TALES FROM THE PRO BONO TRENCHES

In the 21 months since Katrina, the Mississippi Center for Justice has been blessed by an outpouring of pro bono support from all across the country. In 2006 alone, we hosted more than 50 lawyers and 200 law students who came at their own expense to help our clients, to staff legal clinics, and to do research. Another 100-plus lawyers worked from their NYC, DC, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland and Atlanta offices on behalf of our clients. In 2006, these attorneys contributed 10,000 pro bono hours, and they are on track to match that in 2007. This is the equivalent of more than five full-time lawyers whose time is valued at more than $3 million.

These volunteers helped with FEMA appeals, bankruptcy counseling, eviction defense, and consumer fraud. They brought class action lawsuits against FEMA, helped craft affordable housing developer incentives, investigated why tens of thousands of children have been dropped from Mississippi’s Medicaid rolls, and defended against FEMA’s “recoupment” efforts to make residents return recovery assistance funds. They worked one client at a time and are making tremendous inroads. And they are still coming, still offering, still helping.

We at the Mississippi Center for Justice feel intense pride in the legal profession. The overwhelming outpouring of help from all corners of the country—from the largest law firms, from in-house corporate departments, from small firms and law schools—is helping to pick up where the deep south’s civil rights movement of the 1960s left off.

Perhaps the silver lining to the nation’s worst natural disaster has been a renewed awakening to the stark realities of racism and poverty in America. And a belief that maybe this time, America can permanently alter living conditions in one of its poorest states. It is certainly true that if we can do it in Mississippi, we can do it everywhere in the country.

This may be the ultimate lesson of Katrina—that a terrible disaster can also be an opportunity to reconcile the disparities in the United States, the richest country in the history of the world. Perhaps the ongoing outpouring of assistance means we’re really ready to “build” upon the premise that preserving the poverty status quo is, finally, no longer acceptable.

As you will read in the stories that follow, the pro bono work has had a significant impact on the work of MCJ and the people of South Mississippi. You will also see that the experience had a major impact on the lawyers themselves.

Please select narratives from the following list.

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP
Gilbert Randolph LLP
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP
Covington & Burling LLP
Crowell & Moring, LLP
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliff, LLP
Cooley Godward Kornish LLP
Citigroup(MexicoCity)
Citigroup
Dechert LLP
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
DLA Piper
Latham & Watkins LLP
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo
Nixon Peabody LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP