Pullman & Comley honored as Pro Bono Partnership’s CT Law Firm Volunteer of the Year
Pullman & Comley, LLC, was selected by Pro Bono Partnership as their Connecticut program Law Firm Volunteer of the Year and honored at an awards ceremony April 24 at Real Art Ways in Hartford. Pro Bono Partnership is a nonprofit organization that coordinates the provision of free legal assistance to other nonprofits fulfilling important social and community services needs in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.
“At Pullman & Comley, volunteering and pro bono work are an essential part of who we are as a firm,” says attorney Adam J. Cohen, who coordinates pro bono outreach programs for Pullman & Comley and serves on the Connecticut Bar Association’s Pro Bono Committee. “We’re very proud of the commitment of so many colleagues who give their time and passion to helping neighbors and improving the communities in which we work and live.”
Each year more than 240 corporations and law firms and nearly 1,600 individual attorneys in the tri-state area respond to Pro Bono Partnership’s call to service. This year, one law firm and one attorney from each state were honored. The individual recipient this year is Nichole Berklas, a partner at at Bocarsly Emden Cowan Esmail & Arndt LLP.
“The business model of Pro Bono Partnership allows the nonprofit organizations that serve our communities to focus on their clients, not their legal matters,” Pullman & Comley chair Lee Hoffman said during the awards ceremony. “That way, those organizations can do what they do best, serving their communities and serving their clients. Pro Bono Partnership figured this out 27-some-odd years ago, and in the process has touched probably millions of lives throughout the service territory of the Partnership. It’s truly an amazing organization and we’re gratified to be a small part of that.”
Pro Bono Partnership describes those honored as Volunteers of the Year as “displaying a dedication that rises well above the ordinary, distinguished by the complexity or transformative nature of a pro bono project, the extraordinary responsiveness of a volunteer or volunteers or the sheer volume of matters or time committed to pro bono service through the Partnership.”
“Pullman & Comley has made a sustained, multi-year commitment to our program,” says Priya Morganstern, Pro Bono Partnership’s Connecticut program director. “Their attorneys have taken on numerous projects and are always ready and willing to respond to a call to action. The work they do is of the highest quality and, perhaps most importantly, our clients love them.”
One of those clients is the Windham Region No Freeze Project, which for more than 20 years has provided emergency shelter for adults experiencing homelessness and assisted those in the greatest need with a warm, safe place to sleep, as well as hygiene, navigation and housing services. Pullman & Comley attorneys Tom Lambert, Brion Kirsch and Liana Feinn assisted No Freeze with a variety of pro bono projects including reviewing contracts and agreements and researching relevant laws and regulations that affect operations. The work allowed them to build their first permanent shelter.
“I can’t even begin to tell you the value of what you do when you volunteer for a nonprofit,” Windham Region No Freeze Project executive director Avery Lenhart said while presenting the award to Pullman & Comley. “It’s enormous. The thought of having to pay an attorney to do this thing is oftentimes a make-or-break situation. If we didn’t have the support of all the volunteers who help our organization in so many ways, we would not be anywhere close to where we are now, and we would potentially still have people dying in our community in the cold.”
In addition to serving the Windham Region No Freeze Project, Pullman & Comley attorneys completed pro bono projects for a dozen other local nonprofit organizations through the firm’s relationship with Pro Bono Partnership over the past year.
Pullman & Comley also has been active with pro bono work through the Connecticut Bar Foundation for decades and is the longest-serving law firm member of the CBA’s Pro Bono Committee. In 2001, Pullman founded the CBA’s speakership program to preach the importance of pro bono work to area law school students, and in 2005 reformed the CBA’s recognition system for attorneys’ pro bono contributions, and still chairs both programs. In 2008, Pullman founded the CBA’s pro bono emeritus project to facilitate free legal service by retired attorneys and, since 2016, has been a member of the Pro Bono Institute, which challenges the nation’s most successful law firms to dedicate 3% of their annual billable hours to pro bono work.
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