DWT Pro Bono Report, Spring 2012

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In each issue of the Pro Bono Report we talk to a Davis Wright Tremaine attorney about the impact and value of pro bono work. For this issue we spoke to Karen Ross, a senior associate in Washington, D.C., to get her perspective on the value of pro bono work both to the community and to a legal career. Q: Karen, how did you get started doing pro bono work? Karen: I’ve always known that I would do pro bono work. When I first left law school, I did some pro bono work for a business law clinic, hosted by the D.C. bar, where entrepreneurs or sole proprietors could come in for free legal assistance with contracts or entity formation-type issues. Later I signed up to be a referral attorney for the Children’s Law

Center here in Washington. The center provides free legal services in family law. They train volunteer attorneys in custody law, adoption law, and to serve as a guardian ad litem. We receive case lists every month, and can select the cases we want to work on. In my first case, in 2009, I represented a single grandmother

who was seeking custody of her two young granddaughters due to neglect. The case was contested by the children’s parents. In the course of representing the grandmother in the custody case, we also represented her in a parallel domestic violence case to seek a protection order against her daughter, the mother of the children. The second case involved representation of a foster parent

in adoption proceeding. In between cases for the Children’s Law Center, due to my

work representing the grandmother in the civil protection case, a senior partner at DWT called on me to assist with an urgent pro bono civil protection case involving a family friend, and I was happy I could assist.

Q: Do you enjoy working on family law cases? karen: It’s very gratifying to be able to help the less

fortunate. There’s a certain amount of fear on my part because I’m not a litigator. But I’ve always been reminded by the Children’s Law Center that the next best option for these clients is to represent themselves, and any help we can offer is often more than they can do for themselves. That’s what drives me.

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I especially like helping children because they don’t create these

sometimes horrific circumstances, but are ordinarily stuck until adulthood unless someone intervenes. Children in these situations have so little say about what’s going on in their lives, so I’m drawn to work that offers them the chance to be raised in a better environment where they have the chance to excel.

Q: Can you describe a case you worked on recently? karen: I was involved in an adoption case that abruptly ended toward the end of 2011. We were trying to help a foster parent adopt a foster child who had been in her care for a while. This involved a court trial at which we attempted to have the parents’ rights terminated. In this case, the young child’s father had never seen or supported her, and her mother allegedly repeatedly used drugs and sold drugs and ammunition from the home and neglected to care for the young girl and her four siblings.

This

was probably the hardest pro bono case I’ve worked on. I was opposite four counsel. The birth mother and father each had court-appointed c o u n s e l . There was a guardian ad litem (GAL) representing the child, and the D.C.

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