Remarks by Richard P. Swanson Oct 30 2025 Pro Bono Awards Ceremony

As the President of NYCLA, the New York County Lawyers Association, we are pleased to participate along with the New York State Bar Association and the New York State Unified Court System’s Office for Justice Initiatives, in the 2025 annual Pro Bono Awards celebration.  As our Vice President Hank Greenberg, who is also a Past President of the State Bar, recently noted in the New York Law Journal, the justice gap has grown into a justice chasm.  Nationwide well over 50% of civil cases have at least one party who is self-represented.  While New York does a little better than that, the challenges are clear. 

As my friend and former managing partner at Arnold & Porter, Jim Sandman, used to remind us at partners’ meetings, we are not prepared as a body politic to provide public funding sufficient to make the chasm smaller, much less to eliminate it.  Jim is the Chair Emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation, which we were proud at Arnold & Porter to support.  His reminders remain especially true in the need for providing pro bono legal services to the indigent, and especially in this era.

As a result, we are forced to rely on volunteers to try to help bridge at least part of the chasm.  This event acknowledges the efforts of at least some of those volunteers, whose efforts we all celebrate.  Their efforts are essential to people who otherwise would not be receiving any representation at all.  We are grateful for the pro bono support these volunteers provide.

At NYCLA we are proud of our pro bono programs, which are a good example of a public-private partnership.  We work closely with the Unified Court System’s Office of Justice Initiatives to identify needs, and we rely in part on grants from the IOLA program among other things, but we also provide our own support for our pro bono programs.

We’ve also been prepared to sue when necessary, to help preserve the IOLA program when attacked by the state legislature at budget time, and to secure necessary increases in compensation for lawyers representing indigent defendants in criminal cases, a right guaranteed by Gideon v. Wainwright, a case pursued by my former law firm, Arnold & Porter, by the way.

We have a dedicated paid pro bono staff, headed by our General Counsel and Director of Pro Bono programs Sharon Sash, and our Assistant General Counsel and Supervising Pro Bono Attorney Jessica Breuer, as well as our Staff Attorney Rinku Kapoor, and our Pro Bono Programs Administrator Arya Shekarandaz, but we rely critically on pro bono volunteers and interns to do much of the work.  Ours is a good example, I believe, of the kinds of programs which many others need to provide to reduce the size and breadth of the justice chasm that Hank Greenberg has noted. 

This event thanks and acknowledges so many volunteers, including ours, who are devoting many hours of their scarce and valuable time to provide pro bono legal services.  We thank and honor them.

Let me also say, if you are not a member of NYCLA, but you believe in pro bono, and believe our pro bono programs are worthy, then please consider joining us, to support our pro bono programs, and perhaps even participating in them as a volunteer.

 Our programs include:

• CLARO, which provides limited representation to pro se litigants in Civil Court in Manhattan for litigants who otherwise would have to navigate litigation pro se.

• Our legal counselling project on things like family, employment and landlord-tenant law.

• Project Restore, which helps people with criminal convictions gain access to vocational licenses and other required eligibilities.

• The State Central Registry Project, which helps people come off the registry for child abuse and neglect, which can undermine both employment and parental rights.

• Our Reentry Project, which secures certificates of release from civil disabilities that often follow criminal convictions, which also impacts employment, public benefits and civil disabilities such as voting.

• Our veteran’s discharge upgrade project, which tries to upgrade dishonorable and general discharges to honorable, which is important for qualifying for VA benefits (and is often accompanied by LGBTQ status, or sexual harassment, or PTSD).

• Social Security disability appeals.

• Our Tax Court project, and

• Our First Department pro se appeals project.  

These programs also provide great training opportunities for younger lawyers, with direct hands-on client opportunities as well as potential courtroom and trial experience.  So please check us out and consider volunteering with us and joining us!