The Richard and Ginni Mithoff Pro Bono Program kicked off the American Bar Association’s annual Celebrate Pro Bono Week with volunteer appreciation cupcakes in the atrium and wrapped up the week with a lunch presentation on the Justice Lab, an ACLU project launched after the murder of George Floyd.
The Justice Lab’s litigation initiative enlists law firms to challenge racially motivated stops and seizures under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and applicable state laws. Justice Lab participants Keith Cohan ’09 and Ryan Goldstein ’12, Austin-based partners at Reid Collins & Tsai, discussed their work representing Teliah Perkins in Perkins v. Hart, one of 40 individual police misconduct lawsuits filed by law firms and law school legal clinics working with the Justice Lab on a pro bono basis. The case is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, following the trial court’s denial of the defendant-sheriff deputies’ motion for summary judgment. In addition to talking about the case, Cohan and Goldstein discussed the role of pro bono practice in law firms and the benefits of pro bono work for junior associates.
Photos: Top far left, Justice Lab presentation: Andrea Marsh, director, Mithoff Pro Bono Program; Ryan Goldstein; and Keith Cohan. Bottom far right, volunteer appreciation in the atrium: Sarah Sedgwick, Mithoff Pro Bono Program Coordinator; Andrea Marsh; and Cassie Geiken, Parole Project Fellow.
