L4GG: 5 Year Impact Report

LA W YE R S FOR G OOD GOVE R NMEN T

FIVE YEARS OF COLLECTIVE IMPACT

Table of Contents I MPA C T H I G H LI G H T S

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2016

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2017

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2018

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2019

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2020

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2021

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PR O B O N O C A S E S T UDI ES

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MA T A MO R O S ( R EMA IN IN M E X I C O )

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F A MIL Y S EP A R A T IO N C RI S I S

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CO VID - 19 L EGA L C LI N I C S

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L 4 G G PR O G R A MS TO DAY

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CL IMA T E CHA N GE P R O G RA M

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L A WY ER S F O R R A CIA L J U S T I C E

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P R O J ECT CO RA Z O N

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L O O K I N G AH EAD

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PR O B O N O PA R T N ERS

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A C KN O W L E D G MEN T S

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Impact Highlights In November 2016, L4GG’s Founder and Executive Director Traci Feit Love created a Facebook group for lawyers to collaborate on how to respond to anticipated threats to human rights and the rule of law in the United States. More than 125,000 lawyers across the country joined the group within the first 3 weeks of its existence.

What began as a social media community quickly evolved into an impactful organization fighting to ensure equal rights, equal environmental protection, and equal justice under the law.

Through our various programs and initiatives, 2,291 lawyers from 145 law firms and corporate legal departments have provided legal assistance to more than 25,000 individuals. What follows is a brief overview of L4GG’s impact to date.

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We are lawyers, law students, and activists who know that together, we can make a difference. And now we will.”

- Traci Feit Love, 11/15/2016

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F I G H T I NG F O R H U M A N R I G H T S A N D EQ U A L J U ST I C E We established Lawyers for Good Government to respond to anticipated threats to human rights and the rule of law. We brought more than 125,000 lawyers and concerned community members together to fight for human rights and equal justice.

In November and December of 2016, tens of thousands of lawyers provided suggestions, feedback, and support to develop the infrastructure required to help L4GG evolve from a social media community into a high-impact nonprofit organization.

O R GANIZ ING TO “ R IS E ABOVE” L4GG organized and cohosted “Rise Above,” a two-day conference for more than 1,000 attendees, featuring speakers from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the State Innovation Exchange, and dozens of other organizations.

RESPO ND I NG T O THE M US L I M B A N

M O B I L I Z I NG FOR DREAMERS

I N C R EA SI N G R EN EWA B LE EN ER G Y

We responded in force to the Muslim Ban, deploying hundreds of attorneys to airports across the country, partnering with immigrants’ rights organizations and airport coalitions to coordinate legal support efforts, and helping defend the rights of thousands of immigrants. In one case, L4GG volunteers helped to get a fourmonth-old baby from overseas into the U.S. for desperately needed heart surgery.

We mobilized more than 5,400 lawyers in response to the September 2017 rescission of DACA, training more than 1,500 lawyers in just 72 hours and connecting thousands of volunteer lawyers with legal clinics. Our initiative helped immigration organizations nationwide meet the 2017 renewal deadline for thousands of Dreamers, and planted the seed for our future immigration work.

In response to the Trump administration withdrawing from the Paris Accord, L4GG established the Climate Change Program to help local governments transition to Renewable Energy (RE). Since then, L4GG has assisted city leaders and organizations from 24 states implement critical climate tools to increase RE and reduce carbon emissions at the local level in the absence of federal leadership.

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C R E AT ING REN EWABLE ENE R GY GUID AN CE

We completed our first three “State Profile” resources to give cities in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri guidance on how to reach 100% renewable energy and presented those legal resources to over 200 local decision-makers at the Global Climate Summit in San Francisco in partnership with the Sierra Club.

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RESPO ND I NG T O F AMI L Y S E PA R A T I O N

In response to the family separation crisis at the border, L4GG founded Project Corazon, our immigrants’ rights initiative, with the support of nearly 40 large law firms.

S E ND I NG L A W Y E R S T O THE BORDER

We launched the Project Corazon Travel Fund to support the travel expenses of legal workers going to the border and asylum seekers flying to their families upon release.

We have since mobilized 256 lawyers to travel to the southern border and to detention centers providing legal assistance to 13,336 migrants.

PROVIDING R EP R ESEN T A T I O N T O D ET A I N EES

We developed and implemented a remote Credible Fear Interview representation project with RAICES, an immigration organization in Texas, to mobilize 212 lawyers from 41 law firms and provide legal representation to 1,568 asylum seekers detained at Karnes

M OBIL IZ ING AFTER IC E R AIDS

RESPO ND I NG T O M PP / REMA I N I N M E X I C O

L A U NC HI NG F U L L - T I M E MATAMOROS CLINIC

P R O T EC T I N G T H E M O ST V U LN ER A B LE

In a matter of weeks, mobilized more than 100 lawyers from 13 law firms and provided more than 50 detained migrants with legal assistance after a series of ICE raids on poultry plants in Mississippi.

When the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” policy was expanded to include the Matamoros, MX / Brownsville, TX border crossing, L4GG built a weekend legal assistance program, sending dozens of pro bono volunteers each weekend to provide legal assistance to hundreds of asylum seekers.

After it became clear that fulltime services were needed to help thousands of families stranded in Matamoros, L4GG established the only fulltime legal clinic for asylum seekers at the Matamoros, MX / Brownsville, TX border crossing.

Since establishing the clinic, we’ve defended the human rights of 8,420 asylum seekers, and have focused our efforts on helping especially vulnerable asylum seekers, including those with medical psychological conditions, disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and third-language speakers.

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S ER VING A CLOSED B OR DE R

TAK I NG A S T A ND F O R CLIM A T E J US T I C E

When COVID-19 hit, the Trump Administration used a policy known as Title 42 to block asylum seekers from their internationally-recognized right to seek safety within the borders of the U.S. Project Corazon responded by continuing to provide remote legal services to the camp in Matamoros and securing humanitarian parole for vulnerable clients.

L4GG partnered with Great Lakes Environmental Law Center to research the availability of clean, affordable drinking water in 14 underserved communities surrounding Detroit, Michigan and partnered with Midwest Environmental Advocates to research and enforce tribal treaty rights in Wisconsin.

H E L PI NG MI C R O B US I NE S S E S S URV I V E T HE C O VI D PA ND EM I C

After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, L4GG launched the COVID-19 Small Business Remote Legal Clinic, offering pro bono legal consultations to small business owners and nonprofit leaders. We launched 11 regional clinics and since then have mobilized 932 lawyers from 114 law firms and corporate legal departments to help 2,149 small businesses and nonprofits.

F I G H T I N G T O EN D SY ST EM I C R A C I SM In late spring 2020, we launched our Lawyers for Racial Justice initiative to conduct research and analysis into U.S. legal and policy frameworks that are contributing to systemic racism.

Since launching the program, we’ve worked with more than 300 attorneys from 50 law fims and corporate legal departments on researching state and federal policies.

TR AINING L OCAL G O VE R NME N TS ON R E NE W ABL E EN ERGY Our Climate Change program continued training local governments on exciting new renewable energy tools, training 42 municipalities from 24 states. We’ve determined that each city that implements a new renewable energy tool can remove at least 55,986 metric tons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere in the result, roughly equivalent to taking 12,176 gas vehicles off the road.

HELP I NG A S Y L U M SEEK E R S F I ND S A F E T Y

F I GH T I NG T O E ND C H I LD LABOR

D EF EN D I N G T H E R I G H T TO VOTE

Project Corazon oversaw the wind down of the MPP policy in Matamoros, helping hundreds of clients gain admission into the United States after many waited in the Matamoros refugee camp for more than a year. We also worked with a coalition of border organizations to secure humanitarian parole for 1,789 asylum seekers from Title 42,

Our Lawyers for Racial Justice initiative produced a report on the lack of regulatory protections for child farmworkers and its racially discriminatory impact on children of color. The report details both the history and information of child farmworkers in the US and calls for additional safety regulations at both the state and federal levels.

We also produced a report on some of the legal barriers that still exist to prevent people from exercising their civic duty, and how those barriers have a disproportionate impact on voters of color. The report recommends that states require that employees have time to vote without penalty or loss of wages.

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Case Studies When legal needs emerge, L4GG meets them with the incredible power of our community.

A constant in our work over the past five years has been our ability to pinpoint situations where hundreds or even thousands of lawyers can make an impact, and figure out exactly how to make it happen. We specialize in designing, launching, scaling, and managing rapid and effective pro bono programs to both address root causes of inequity and mitigate the harms of currently unjust policies.

Whether it’s overseeing thousands of asylum applications at the border, combating policies contributing to systemic racism and environmental injustice, mobilizing help for microbusinesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, or helping the country transition to a green economy, we show up.

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C A S E S T UDY

Family Separation In 2018, the Trump administration commenced one of the cruelest practices we’ve seen at the border: Family Separation.

Despite there being no basis in the law, the administration decided to criminally prosecute every parent that crossed the border without permission, and as a result, separate them from their children.

Children, including nursing babies, were torn from their mother’s arms, enacting irreparable harm and trauma on these immigrant families.

America was horrified, and so were we. So we jumped into action.

In a matter of weeks, we founded Project Corazon, an immigrants’ rights initiative with the power and support of nearly 40 top law firms.

In short order, Project Corazon created two essential programs to respond to the family separation crisis.

First, we partnered with RAICES to provide remote pro bono legal representation to detained immigrants in their Credible Fear Interviews.

Within a few short months, we mobilized more than 200 pro bono attorneys from across the country to represent more than 1,500 detained immigrants at Karnes Detention Center in Texas.

Second, we founded the L4GG Travel Fund to help send volunteer lawyers to the front lines of the crisis. The Travel Fund helped cover the costs of hotels, flights, and other expenses for more than

250 immigration attorneys and legal workers who volunteered at the border and remote detention centers throughout the country.

Travel Fund attorneys worked side by side with leading organizations, including Al Otro Lado, CLINIC Legal, The Children’s Immigration Law Academy, The Dilley Pro Bono Project, The El Paso Immigration Collaborative, and HIAS. Many of the flights provided to Travel Fund attorneys were paid for with airline miles donated through a partnership between L4GG and Lawyer Moms of America.

In sum, Travel Fund attorneys provided legal assistance to more than 13,300 immigrant families.

Pictured above: L4GG Travel Fund participants.

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FA M I LY S E P A R A T I O N | C R Y S TA L’S ST O R Y The following is a reflection from Crystal, a Spanishspeaking law student, who was able to travel to Tijuana, Mexico to work with Al Otro Lado through the L4GG Travel Fund. ​​ With dozens of families coming into the clinic every weekday, there are so many voids one can fill to assist. I enjoyed playing a small part in ensuring that the children were enjoying themselves, which allowed their families to feel at ease knowing they were being cared for. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived in Mexico, but when I imagined volunteering with any legal clinic, I never thought I could feel as though I was surrounded by family.

I was on the ground when the Trump administration announced [Remain in Mexico,] its restrictive policy that would render asylum seekers crossing the border into Mexico ineligible to legally cross the border through the asylum process in the U.S. The result of such a policy would massively cut racial minorities’ access to the United States. I saw the real-world impact this had on people who have already gone through traumatic circumstances to arrive in Mexico.

I highly recommend that any law student volunteer with a front line organization if they get the chance, even if it’s just for a Spring Break or a week before school starts back up.

Law students are future legislators, judges, and advocates, so it’s critical to recruit and engage the attorneys of tomorrow on immigration issues to ensure progress is both gained and maintained over time.

Pictured above: A photo of Tijuana captured by Crystal on her Travel Fund trip.

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C A S E S T UDY

Matamoros Remain in Mexico In August 2019, L4GG faced yet another immigration crisis.

The Trump Administration had implemented a dangerous and racist policy called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico,” which forced asylum seekers to wait for their immigration hearings from Mexico instead of inside the US. When MPP expanded to include the Matamoros, MX / Brownsville, TX border crossing, L4GG was approached by individual advocates who were aware of quickly ballooning and acute needs for legal assistance on the ground and asked if we could help.

Matamoros is an extremely dangerous border town, designated with the State Department’s highest security level, the same as travel to North Korea or Yemen. Violent cartel crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, including gun battles and blockades, are widespread. The Mexican government has limited capability to respond to this violence.

Within weeks, thousands of asylum seekers had been returned back from the Brownsville port of entry after requesting asylum and told to remain in Mexico. Because of the danger in Matamoros, these refugees stayed close to the bridge to the US, at first without shelter, food or water, sanitation, or medical care.

Confronted by a problem of immense scale, we once again jumped into action, put our community to work, and started provided legal assistance.

We spent a weekend in the plaza of downtown Matamoros where the burgeoning refugee camp was being built, interviewing hundreds of asylum seekers to determine their needs. Based on our initial assessment, we built a weekend legal assistance program where we sent cohorts of volunteer attorneys every weekend to the refugee camp to provide legal information and assistance to as many asylum seekers as possible each weekend.

After a few weeks, it was clear that the need was greater than a weekend program could address, so we expanded and shifted tactics.

We launched a full-time legal clinic on the ground in Matamoros, partnering with the Matamoros Resource Center for office space.

With full-time staffing, we were able to build a broader legal assistance program and mobilize hundreds of remote pro bono attorneys to help prepare asylum applications.

An additional focus for our full-time program is ensuring that asylum seekers who are especially vulnerable, such as those with medical or physical conditions, disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, or third-language speakers, receive holistic legal assistance. For these asylum seekers, we ensure a continuum of care from medical providers, social services, translators, and more. Oftentimes, we work with someone who is in need of critical medical care, and securing their entry to the US to wait for their immigration proceedings can significantly improve their health or even save their life.

Since August 2019 when we first mobilized a program, the situation on the border has experienced ever-shifting policies and a change in Administration. Yet through it all, L4GG has been there, defending the rights of asylum seekers.

In sum, we’ve provided legal assistance to more than 8,000 asylum seekers at the Matamoros border crossing - and we’re just getting started.

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MAT AMOR O S | SON IA’S STORY

One of the asylum seekers our Matamoros program has had the privilege of helping is Sonia.

We first met Sonia, a 7-year-old asylum seeker suffering from serious colon problems in December 2019.

Stuck in the border camp in Matamoros, Sonia had no access to clean, hygienic conditions, and volunteer doctors at the refugee camp warned that she would likely become septic and die.

She had developed the medical condition known as an enterocutaneous fistula, or an opening between her intestines and her skin, while she and her mother were in ICE detention. Despite the severity of her medical condition, Sonia and her mother were still released into Matamoros, Mexico to await her asylum hearing.

That’s where Charlene D’Cruz (Project Corazon’s Program Director) met Sonia. For the next week, Charlene and the L4GG community fought to save Sonia’s life.

Project Corazon attorneys physically presented Sonia and her mother at the Gateway Bridge in Brownsville multiple times, imploring US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials to follow their own regulations about medically vulnerable asylum seekers, and admit her into the United States to await her asylum hearings. CBP turned Sonia away, over and over again.

We put a call out to our members, asking them to call the CBP office in Brownsville, their representatives, the media, and more.

The response was overwhelming. Within hours, CBP called the Project Corazon attorneys, requesting that they return to the bridge with Sonia and her mother for entry to the US. “I don’t have any words for the support [L4GG] gave me and my daughter,” said Sonia’s mother.

Thanks to both the attorneys on the ground and the incredible L4GG community stepping up and putting pressure where they could, Sonia was finally admitted to the United States and able to get the lifesaving care she needed.

That’s when the L4GG community stepped in.

I don’t have any words for the support L4GG gave me and my daughter.”

– Sonia’s mother 12

M A T A M O R O S | EST U A R D O ’ S ST O R Y

Project Corazon’s help has been invaluable not only to me but to thousands of asylum seekers who have been stuck in Mexico.”

-Estuardo Cifuentes

L4GG has also had the privilege of working with a young man who ended up having a marked impact on our program.

Today, Estuardo Cifuentes serves as Client Services Manager of L4GG’s Project Corazon initiative, and is himself an asylum seeker from Guatemala, as well as a former client of Project Corazon.

He spent more than 18 months waiting in Matamoros, MX as a result of the dangerous and draconian Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program that forced asylum seekers to wait for their immigration proceedings in Mexico. He fled his home country after police persecution for his sexual orientation and quickly learned that LGBT asylum seekers living in Matamoros were not safe from persecution there either.

As a result, Estuardo set up Rainbow Bridge, an organization to help migrants from the LGBT community waiting in Matamoros for entry to the US. Today, Rainbow Bridge continues to be an important partner in Project Corazon’s work coordinating holistic services for LGBT asylum seekers.

He first served in the role of client service manager as a volunteer for many months, making himself essential to our work communicating with thousands of Spanish-speaking clients.

If not for Project Corazon in Matamoros, we would never have connected with such a remarkable person, who is now helping others seeking asylum.

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C A S E S T UDY

COVID-19 Small Business Remote Legal Clinic In March of 2020, the world shifted as a global pandemic ground businesses to a halt nationwide.

small business owners via a virtual meeting, then go through a series of follow-up steps including post-consultation reporting.

Within weeks, L4GG responded with one of our most successful legal interventions to date: The COVID-19 Small Business Remote Legal Clinic, a series of 11 state-based clinics to provide assistance to microbusinesses and nonprofits.

Within a few months, we launched clinics in eleven states: Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington. In each state, L4GG partners with local legal service organizations and provides law firms with resources and tools to manage the program.

Here’s how it happened.

Hundreds of thousands of small business owners, many of whom already operate on very narrow margins, struggled with questions about how their businesses could survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only do these businesses provide necessary services in communities all over the country; they provide employment, job training, and other benefits. Their survival is essential to strong neighborhoods.

With so many microbusinesses at risk, we knew we needed to create a model that operated remotely and scaled dramatically.

So we worked quickly and launched our pilot in New York City on April 7, 2020 (three weeks after ideation), in partnership with the City Bar Justice Center and Kirkland & Ellis.

To run our clinics, L4GG manages a technology platform that coordinates thousands of requests from microbusinesses and nonprofits, then screens, vets, and matches matters to trained, experienced pro bono attorneys in our vast network. Attorneys provide legal assistance to the

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Since our launch in April 2020, our clinics have provided critical legal assistance to 1,972 microbusinesses and nonprofits with the support of 932 pro bono attorneys from 114 firms and corporate legal departments. We estimate we’ve provided support that has collectively been worth more than $2,000,000 in legal fees.

And we know we’ve made a real impact on communities. For example, in Seattle, Washington, an artisan and trades cooperative known as The Hook Cooperative requested and received a consultation from our Washington COVID-19 Small Business Clinic in July of 2020.

Marnina Cherkin, a pro bono attorney from Amazon Web Services provided them with a consultation. After their consultation, the Hook Cooperative said that the most helpful part of their consultation was “informing other parties we had legal assistance. They negotiated rapidly and in our favor after that.” They also said of their pro bono attorney, “We can’t thank you enough. Your assistance has kept over a dozen small trades/craft businesses operating in our secure, affordable workspace for the foreseeable future.”

The lawyer I was matched with had a similar background as me and knew the language I was speaking - which for me, made all the difference in the world.”

– Spencer Swain, Executive Director of Families First in Cabarrus County, North Carolina

Working in partnership with the North Carolina Pro Bono Resource Center and Nelson Mullins, we also helped Families First in Cabarrus County, North Carolina when they were in need of legal advice. The organization operates preschools dedicated to providing a center where children from underserved, disadvantaged, and immigrant backgrounds are able to learn in a safe and healthy environment. The Executive Director, Spencer Swain, says he needed clarification on whether he was able to supplement some funding with the Paycheck Protection Program, and that he needed legal advice to make a decision on how to proceed.

Swain says of the experience, “the lawyer I was matched with had a similar background as me and knew the language I was speaking - which for me, made all the difference in the world. What could have been several days of conversations, occurred in an hour because he went above and beyond the call by doing prior homework.

I was impressed.”

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Lawyers for Good Government Today L4GG in 2021 is a thriving nonprofit organization with a full-time staff of 10. We currently run programs in the following areas: immigration, racial justice, and climate change. We also keep resources available to respond to emergent legal needs when they arise.

In all our programs, we seek to:

1.

create systemic change by identifying and promoting policies at the state, local, and federal level that foster equal rights, opportunities, and justice under the law; and

2.

run impactful pro bono programs to mitigate the harmful effects of unfair or unjust policies currently in place.

L4GG is especially well-positioned to confront the crises facing the U.S. today, from a continued humanitarian crisis at our Southern border, to state legislatures restricting the right to vote. With our expert staff leading our community of lawyers and advocates, 125,000 strong, we are now seeking to harness the same sense of urgency and shared purpose that worked five years ago to band us together and working to tackle the root causes of injustice.

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Project Corazon At the U.S. Southern border, Project Corazon continues the fight to welcome migrants with dignity and defend their human rights.

The Trump administration succeeded in enacting policies that have worked too well to traumatize and endanger the lives of our clients, and unfortunately, the Biden Administration has continued most of the same policies to the consternation of L4GG and other border advocates.

For example, after vowing to wind down Remain in Mexico, and spending months admitting asylum seekers who had been abandoned in Mexico to fend for themselves in dangerous conditions for over a year, the Biden administration is taking active steps to reinstate the same program. Project Corazon is currently preparing for its reinstatement, which would be devastating to migrants arriving at our southern border and would almost guarantee a return to refugee camp conditions in Matamoros and other border cities, with our clients being kidnapped, assaulted, and even dying.

Or take Title 42. Even though the United States’s long-held practice is to guarantee the right to seek asylum to individuals who arrive at our southern border and ask for protection, this right has been fundamentally suspended since March of 2020. Using COVID-19 as a pretext, the Trump administration decided to use this obscure 75-year old public health rule to immediately expel any migrants crossing our borders irregularly or those seeking asylum at ports of entry.

Over the last two years, border rights groups, with support from L4GG, have been fighting the Title 42 expulsion policy in court, and frustratingly, the Biden administration has continued its use. As a result, it’s nearly impossible for approaching migrants at our Southern border to assert their internationally-recognized right to seek asylum, even for asylum seekers who are extremely medically vulnerable.

Our staff members are fighting every day to help defend the human rights and save the lives of as many asylum seekers as we can.

We’re continuing to prepare asylum applications and connecting asylum seekers with remote pro bono attorneys from across the country to help them. We’re filing humanitarian parole requests when particularly vulnerable asylum seekers’ health is at risk. And we’re constantly adapting to ever-shifting policies.

Responding to our clients’ needs, in the fall of 2021 we also launched the Work Permit Pro Bono Project in partnership with the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. This new pro bono project mobilized pro bono attorneys to secure work permits for asylum seekers after they’ve entered the U.S. and are awaiting their immigration hearings.

In the first two months of the project, we’ve provided legal assistance to more than 100 asylum seekers in securing their work permits, a process that will enable them to provide for their families and contribute meaningfully to their new lives in the U.S. 17

Climate Change Program There is no longer any doubt - this world is facing a climate emergency.

People from every part of the political spectrum are facing catastrophic weather events from wildfires and droughts in the west to Force 5 hurricanes in the east. And yet, the U.S. government has failed to provide leadership or deliver effective policies to reduce carbon emissions on any significant level.

Scientists agree that if local governments and states make significant changes, we can achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions without federal leadership.”

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But there is hope. It is estimated that cities currently generate threequarters of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Changes in local policy across the country will make a huge impact in the fight against climate change and climate injustice. That’s exactly what L4GG’s program sets out to do. With the absence of good government at the top, L4GG’s Climate Change program is stepping into this gap and tackling the causes and effects of climate change in two critical ways.

CLEAN ENERGY: First, we’re enabling U.S. cities to reduce CO2 emissions and convert to 100% Renewable Energy (RE) at the local level to help meet Paris Accord goals. U.S. cities are some of the country’s biggest energy customers - their policies on clean energy shift market demand. Local governments are also more nimble than Congress and capable of implementing aggressive climate targets through local laws and policy initiatives. Cities want to reduce their carbon emissions but they need technical expertise to do so, and regulatory parameters vary widely by state.

L4GG currently trains, recruits, and manages pro bono volunteers from across the country to enable these cities to make the vital conversion to a clean economy. We do this through two current initiatives:

CLIMAT E JU ST IC E : There is no climate solution without climate

• First, we create state-level research memoranda, or State Profiles, that are designed to answer specific legal questions related to state renewable energy law and policy, and then distribute them both on our website and through a specialized partnership of climate change NGOs. We have published 13 State Profiles for priority states.

• Second, we provide direct legal assistance to municipalities seeking to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and help them navigate and enable specific climate tools available to them based on their unique regulatory framework.

justice. Our Climate Change Program also provides direct legal assistance to the communities hardest hit by climate change to support the reform of policies directly contributing to climate injustice.

The US legal system often protects the powerful, not the vulnerable, and plays an important role in contributing to climate change, which disproportionately impacts communities of color. Organizations on the front lines of organizing against climate change have approached L4GG asking for a large influx of legal resources to support broader reform in this area.

L4GG is currently working with two front-line communities: • We’re working with local advocates at the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Michigan to help establish a right to clean, affordable, and accessible water in Michigan.

• We’re working with local advocates at Midwest Environmental Advocates to build legal authority on behalf of native tribes in Wisconsin and to tribes across the country.

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C L I M A TE C H A N G E P R O G R AM | R E D U C I NG CA R B O N E MI S SI O NS - 55, 9 8 6 M E TRI C TO NS A T A TIME Local governments, school districts, counties, and other public entities are working to reduce greenhouse emissions and meet aggressive climate targets, but the process can be complicated and riddled with legal hurdles. It requires energy law and regulatory knowledge that’s not usually available to city government officials. The costly burden of hiring energy attorneys often prevents cities from meeting their climate goals and supporting new clean energy projects.

That’s where L4GG’s Climate Change Program comes in.

With the help of our pro bono volunteers, we’ve quickly become experts on methods for reaching 100% renewable energy, even in the most conservative states, and are training local governments on how to do it.

One important new creative tool is the Virtual Power Purchase Agreement, or VPPA. This tool has been used in the private sector for years to bring new solar and wind projects online, but cities have been unsure about how to use it. L4GG has been training cities in 9 states on how to implement these tools, including what ordinances to pass and how to include provisions for climate justice. And, we’ve found that for every new VPPA a city creates, it reduces CO2 emissions by 55,986+ metric tons annually. That’s roughly equivalent to taking 12,176 gas vehicles off the road! The tool is so effective that cities in Virginia are now working to pass VPPA-enabling legislation to ensure that all cities in the Commonwealth can use VPPAs. To date, we’ve trained more than 42 municipalities and public entities from 24 states on VPPAs, and many of them are taking active steps towards creating new ones.

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L4GG’s work helping municipal governments meet their renewable energy goals doesn’t stop with education. For cities in Virginia, like Richmond and Blacksburg, it involves supporting their work to gain critical policy changes.

What Carol Davis, Blacksburg’s sustainability manager, says is most remarkable about L4GG’s Climate Change program director, Jillian Blanchard, is her willingness to stick by them.

“What I love about L4GG is that they just keep hanging in there with us. They seem really committed to helping us shift the landscape,” said Davis.

L4GG is now working with Davis and a group of other Sustainability Directors to draft model legislation to give municipalities maximum flexibility on the ways they can access clean energy.

Lawyers for Racial Justice At L4GG, we believe there can be no good government without racial justice. To achieve racial justice in this country, we have to dismantle the systems of racial oppression, and that includes the pieces of the legal and political system that are causing racially disparate outcomes.

That’s why we created the Lawyers for Racial Justice initiative in 2020.

There are myriad state and federal policies, both historical and contemporary, that contribute to today’s racial disparities. Before advocates can push for policy reforms or provide assistance to those who have been harmed by this country’s racist systems, they must first identify the policies that are contributing to disparate outcomes.

Then, they must seek to change them through the legislative process, which is extremely resource-intensive.

Additionally, there are organizations that continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in an effort to ensure the system serves the status quo. For example, well-funded organizations like the Heritage Center and ALEC mobilize legal resources to make it as easy as possible to introduce and gain support for harmful legislation at the state level, which is why we’ve seen lawmakers introduce 361 bills with voting restrictions in 47 states just in 2021.

There can be no good government without racial justice.”

L4GG’s community is uniquely suited to respond to these problems through our Lawyers for Racial Justice initiative.

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In coalition with more than 100 racial justice organizations, our expert staff identify state-level policies that are creating specific instances of racial disparity through large-scale legal research efforts leveraged from qualified pro bono volunteers. We rely on pro bono partnerships with dozens of the nation’s top law firms and corporate legal departments to conduct this critical research and analysis. Then, we draft model legislation and provide ongoing legal support to grassroots advocates to dismantle those harmful policies and increase racial equity.

We know we’re already making a difference. In a little over a year, we’ve advanced policy objectives through legal research and analysis on the following topics: • Changes to absentee and mail-in voting in the lead up to the 2020 election; • The role of police in schools and its relationship with the school-to-prison pipeline for children of color; • The racial disparities caused by a lack of protections for child agricultural farmworkers; • Corporal punishment policies at public schools; • Requiring paid leave for voting; • Making election day a state holiday in all 50 states; • Criminal record sealing and expungemment policies; • And more.

In October 2021, we released a report highlighting the lack of regulatory protections for child farmworkers and its racially discriminatory impact on children of color. As a part of the report, we released a model policy that can be used by advocates to push for safer protections in their own state. We also just released a report about how states can require employers to provide paid leave for voting, another issue that disparately impacts voters of color.

Dozens of new projects are in the works, and Lawyers for Racial Justice is positioned to make major strides on racial justice policy reform in the coming months.

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LA W Y E R S F O R R A C I A L J USTI CE | C HIL D F A R M W O R K E R S: T O O YO U NG, VU LNE RABLE , & UNP R OTE C T E D Our report, “Child Farmworkers: Too Young, Vulnerable, & Unprotected,” highlights the lack of regulatory protections for child farmworkers and its racially discriminatory impact on children of color.

Many Americans have no idea where their food comes from or who grows it, including that hundreds of thousands of middle school-age children are working in fields. While the horrors of work conditions in the Industrial Revolution helped give rise to a children’s rights movement and restrictions on child labor, Congress carved out one industry for exemption: agricultural work. At the time federal protectinos were introduced, this meant that Black children in the Jim Crow era continued to work the fields, while white children were given educational opportunities. Today, roughly 90% of migrant child farmworkers are children of color and only 10% of them graduate high school.

As a result, children as young as 12 years old in the United States may be legally employed unlimited hours, in the hot sun, exposed to heat, chemicals, and hazardous machinery, risking serious injury, illness, or death. The vast majority of these children are children of color.

Our new survey of the laws of the 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico show: • 22 states have no minimum age to work in agriculture.

• 25 states and D.C. set no limit on the number of hours in a day a child farmworker under 16 can work in the fields.

• 35 states and D.C. allow children under 16 to work 7 days a week in the fields.

• All 50 states give employers fines for violating child labor laws, but 15 states make that fine $500 or less for the first offense. Indiana has the lightest penalty for an initial violation of state child labor

The report’s findings include:

12 years old The federal minimum age to work full-time in the agricultural industry is only 12 years old, the age of a sixth-grader, while in most other industries, the federal minimum age to work full-time is 16, the age of a tenth grader.

330,000 child workers Approximately 330,000 children under the age of 16, including over 80,000 children under the age of 10, are child farmworkers in the United States.

33 children injured daily Approximately 33 children are injured on farms every day, and a child dies in a farm accident once every three days in the United States. Although only 6% of child workers in the United States are employed on farms, more than half of child work-related deaths are in agriculture.

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L4GG: Looking Ahead In the coming months and years, L4GG will continue its focus on two strategies: first, tackling the root causes of systemic injustice by focusing more on policy reform; and two, reponding to the emerging legal needs of individuals who have been harmed by unjust policies.

On the policy front, we are led in our efforts by veteran civil rights attorney Adam Fernandez, and plan to both increase the identification and analysis of policies contributing to systemic disparities and to use the power of our community to increase our impact by training L4GG community members in state-level legislative advocacy. We are currently developing projects on the following topics: criminal justice reform including criminal records clearing, solitary confinement, and juvenile justice issues, immigrants’ rights, voting rights and elections issues, the right to clean, affordable drinking water for disadvantaged communities and Native tribes, and education equity including the school to prison pipeline. We also plan to teach individual attorneys across the country how to take model policies drafted by L4GG, tailor it to their state, find sponsors in their state legislature, and support passage of the legislation with

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targeted communications efforts. In doing so, we will turn our community of 125,000 lawyers into change agents at the state level, enacting a ripple effort of change throughout the country on issues that matter.

Our direct services work will continue being responsive to the needs of the communities we serve, led by experienced attorneys Charlene D’Cruz and Jillian Blanchard. We are committed to fighting for the human rights and dignity of asylum seekers on our Southern border, and will do everything we can to provide legal assistance to as many as possible. We’re also committed to helping U.S. cities and communities impacted by client change with direct legal assistance to reach their climate goals. Through it all, we’ll also continue to build out the impact of our programs as a whole under the leadership of our Director of Pro Bono Initiatives, Lauren Worsek.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of L4GG, and we are grateful to all the supporters and pro bono partners who make our programs possible.

Pro Bono Partners L E ADE R S HIP PARTN ERS BNY Mellon Kirkland & Ellis LLP Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP

S US T AINE R S

Mayer Brown LLP

ADVOCAT E S

Clean Energy Counsel GE Johnson & Johnson Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Verizon White & Case LLP

SUPPO R T E R S

Advance & Conde Nast Alston & Bird LLP Ballard Spahr Comcast - NBCUniversal Crowell & Moring LLP Dell Technologies Digital Asset DLA Piper Davis Polk Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP Exelon Fenwick & West LLP Goodwin Procter Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP Linklaters LLPMorgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP McDermott Will & Emery LLP Perkins Coie LLP Proskauer Rose Robins Kaplan LLP Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP Sidley Austin LLP Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP

PR O B O NO PA R T N ER S

Akerman LLP Amgen Inc. Baker & Hostetler LLP Bank of America Corporation Brown Rudnick LLP Cohen & Siegel, PLLC Cooley Covington & Burling Cozen O'Connor Finn Dixon Foley Hoag Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP Google LLC Hogan Lovells US LLP Holland & Hart K&L Gates LLP Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP LinkedIn Corporation Linklaters Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone, P.L.C. Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. Moore & Van Allen

Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius LLP Norton Rose Parker Poe Paul Hastings LLP Pfizer Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP Reed Smith LLP Seyfarth Shaw Shearman & Sterling LLP Sheppard Mullin Squire Patton Boggs Steptoe US Bank Vinson & Elkins WilmerHale Winston & Strawn LLP

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Acknowledgments Lawyers for Good Government would not exist without the support of thousands of individual volunteers, partner organizations, law firms, and donors.

While it would be impossible to acknowledge all of them on this page, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to a number of people who have helped make L4GG the organization it is today, including: Sabrina Rose-Smith, Larysa Kautz, Jonathan Lowy, Jennifer Alpert Wong, Francey Youngberg, Adam Cohen, Ted Jacobs, Jacqueline Haberfeld, Dan Osheyack, and Rhea Ricard, each of whom has served (or is currently serving) as a member of the L4GG Board of Directors and contributed in countless ways over the past five years. We quite literally would not be where we are today without the support of our dedicated Board members.

Jillian Blanchard, Charlene D’Cruz, Suhayla Karawan, Sterling Howard, Adam Fernandez, Jessica Riley, Yesenia Davis-Padilla, Lauren Worsek, Joe Spielberger, and Estuardo Cifuentes, each of whom is an integral member of the L4GG team. This team is responsible for ensuring, every day, that L4GG is fulfilling its potential and delivering on its mission.

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Erin Albanese, Geri Armine-Klein, Sandi Bachom, Candace Banks, Deborah Barron, Linda Bytof, Jean Carmalt, Rob Chaloupka, Sylvia Chin, Amanda Cirella, Jennifer & Christopher Coelho, TW Collins, George De Castro Day, Jared Feit, Stephen Feit, Donnie Fowler, Sam Frank, Lesley Goldberg, Deirdre Goldfarb, Kate Gordon, Julie Hancock, Richard & Janet Hart, Amy Heaton, Talin Hitik, Elizabeth Finn Johnson, Haleh Shahmohammadi Kimelman, Tovah Ross Kopan, Dotty Lindquist, Natalie-Claire Woods Lyda, Belinda Macauley, Julie Manrique, Sheila Nielsen, Michael Nigro, Tolu Levi Odukoya, Mary Peckham, Beth Perry, Marc Porat, Sue Pyne, Marie-Louise Ramsdale, Mark Renner, Karla Rosario, Bruce Rosenblum, Riley Ross, Toby Rubin, Joanna Ryan, Mansi Shah, Sarah Shipp, Jessica Morreale Therkelsen, Katie Trotzky, Eva Van Brunt, Veronica Walther, Tahmina Watson, David Ziemba, and Elizabeth Zitrin, who have each contributed in very different ways over the years.

Whether by volunteering, offering guidance, promoting our work, fundraising, partnering, donating, or just lending a supportive ear, these individuals have helped bring the vision of L4GG to life.

On a more personal note, I would like to thank my daughter Carly Love, who inspired me to take extraordinary action the night of November 8, 2016 and reminds me every day why it is so important for all of us to fight for a better future.

-Traci Feit Love

When circumstances call for extraordinary action, we must ourselves become extraordinary.”

-Traci Feit Love (L4GG Founder)

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