Pro Bono Newsletter/Fall 2009

Accolades

• The American Lawyer magazine has ranked Covington the #1 or #2 pro bono law firm eight out of the last ten years.
• Since 2003, the D.C. Circuit Judicial Conference has recognized those firms where at least 40 percent of the attorneys perform 50 or more pro bono hours during the previous year.  Covington has achieved this so-called “40 at 50” benchmark each year.  In the most recent year, 46 percent of our attorneys reported 50 or more pro bono hours.
• Washington Lawyers Committee's Wiley A. Branton Luncheon - Outstanding Achievement Award - Presented to Jeff Huvelle and the firm for successes on an Equal Employment Opportunity Project (6/16/2009).
• Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence's 20th Anniversary Luncheon - Honor Role of its Legal Action Project (6/16/2009)
• DC Appleseed's Annual Awards Dinner - CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Pro Bono Recognition (5/19/2009)
• DC Mayor Fenty - Community Service Award (4/21/2009)
• Legal Aid Society of DC - Servant of Justice Award - Presented to Anthony Herman (4/21/2009)
• John Carroll Society - Red Mass Pro Bono Award (10/5/2008)
• Nature Conservancy - 2008 Lifetime Achievement Volunteer Award (10/15/2008)
• Lambda Legal - 5th Anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, Appreciation for firm’s amicus brief (June 2008)
• New York City Bar Association's Committee on Capital Punishment - Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation (7/14/2008)
• National Legal Aid & Defender Association's Exemplar Awards Dinner - Beacon of Justice Award - For death penalty work (6/11/2008)
• Washington Lawyers Committee - Outstanding Achievement Award in the Field of Prisoners' Rights - For parolee legislative work (6/4/2008)
• Center for Constitutional Rights - Pro Bono Law Firm of the Year - Presented to Michael Winger and the firm for work related to illegal detention of Muslim immigrants after 9/11 (5/1/2008).
• Minority Media and Telecommunications Council - Distinguished Pro Bono Achievement Award - Presented to Jonathan Blake for “extraordinary assistance to the cause of diversity and inclusion in our nation’s most important industries” (7/21/2008).

Recent Highlights

Asylum

• In December 2008, Covington won asylum for a prominent Iranian journalist, Ms. S.  In 2005, an Iranian court had sentenced Mr. S to death for his outspoken support of press freedom and women's rights.  The sentence was reduced to three years on appeal.  After serving one year, Mr. S was diagnosed with a serious illness, which prison authorities ignored for months before finally granting Mr. S leave to seek treatment.  While on leave, Mr. S secured a US entrance visa and fled to the United States.  With Covington's assistance, Mr. S applied for and obtained asylum based on the persecution he suffered on account of his political beliefs.  After Mr. S's asylum application was granted, Covington successfully obtained humanitarian parole for Mr. S's wife, who had fled to Turkey but was denied a US visa.  Humanitarian parole is a rare form of discretionary relief, which permits a foreign national to travel to and remain in the United States.  The Covington team lobbied various Washington officials to establish that, in this case, there were unusual circumstances that warranted a grant of humanitarian parole.  Mr. S was reunited with his wife in the United States in 2009.

• The firm represents undocumented children who have escaped, often alone, abusive situations in their home countries.  Through the KIND program (Kids in Need of Defense), our attorneys help the children remain in this country by seeking a form of immigration relief called SIJS (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status).
• We represent siblings J & A MJ, children who arrived in the United States unaccompanied from Guatemala.  Their parents sent them to the United States after receiving death threats from Guatemalan gangs against the children.  After arriving in Texas and staying in a detention facility for several months, J & A were evacuated from the facility due to Hurricane Ike, and sent to New York, to live with their sponsor, a family friend.  The case is now pending before a New York immigration judge.

• Covington provides general corporate and employment advice to RUGMARK Foundation USA, a nonprofit organization working to end child labor in the carpet industry in South Asia.

• A favorable settlement that the firm obtained resulted in reforms to a North Carolina school system designed to prevent abusive treatment of special needs students.
• In a separate matter, the firm is advocating on behalf of incarcerated special needs youth in Maryland who are not receiving the rehabilitative special education services mandated by state law.
• In yet another case involving a Georgia school system, the firm is challenging the pattern of forcing troubled youth into “alternative” schools that are jail-like and provide no real education.  These efforts are an attempt to curtail the “school-to-prison pipeline” problem facing this country’s low income minority youth.

• The firm has successfully concluded a child custody and adoption case in which we represented the prevailing parties pro bono for more than a decade.  The child at issue, KT, was born in December 1997 with traces of cocaine in his system.  As his biological parents showed little interest in caring for KT, care for the baby was provided by our clients, CM and ETS.  They eventually were given temporary custody of KT in connection with a neglect case brought by the District against the biological mother.  We filed a complaint for permanent custody on behalf of CM and ETS in September 1998.  The biological father, who had never provided overnight care for KT, opposed the complaint.  In July 1999, after a week-long trial, the trial court granted our complaint for permanent custody.  The biological parents appealed.  It took several years for the appeal to be fully briefed and argued and several more years for the Court of Appeals to issue a decision.  Eventually, in W.D. v. C.S.M., 906 A.2d 317 (D.C. 2006), the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent custody order and reopen the neglect case.  Identifying an issue that had not been raised by either biological parent, the court ruled that the trial court lacked jurisdiction over the custody complaint because it concerned a child who was already the subject of a neglect proceeding.  The Court of Appeals’ decision in W.D. v. C.S.M. was controversial.  In July 2007 the D.C. Council enacted legislation that effectively overruled the decision and made it clear that a trial court does have jurisdiction over a third-party custody complaint in circumstances similar to those of our case.  In May 2007, as soon as the case was remanded to the trial court, our clients filed a petition to adopt KT, who by this time was almost 10 years old and was thriving in their care.  In January 2008, the trial court held a show cause hearing on the adoption petition, and in July 2008 it issued a decree of adoption in favor of our clients.  The biological father again appealed but repeatedly sought extensions of the briefing schedule, so the firm filed a motion to dismiss his appeal.  In response, the biological father has decided to withdraw the appeal, thus ending the litigation.
   

• Covington currently is handling a total of 12 capital cases: six in Alabama, two each in Mississippi & Florida, one in Georgia, and one in Tennessee.  The firm traditionally has represented clients during the post-conviction phase. More recently, it has turned its resources to the direct trial and direct appeal stages.
• In one case, the firm represents Mr. M in his appeal of his conviction for capital murder in the death of a police officer.  Mr. M, a young father with no prior criminal record and no history of criminal activity, was asleep in his half of a small duplex home in Prentiss, Mississippi, on December 26, 2001.  Local police officers arrived shortly before midnight to serve search warrants at his home and that of the adjoining duplex apartment.  Mr. M awoke, and believing that the police officers were intruders, he loaded his weapon and lay at the foot of the bed on which his infant daughter lay sleeping.  A police officer kicked in the exterior door leading directly to the bedroom, and Mr. M shot and killed the police officer who entered his home.  Represented by another lawyer, he was tried for the murder of the police officer, convicted and sentenced to death.  In September 2006, the trial judge agreed with Covington’s argument that Mr. M’s trial counsel provided ineffective assistance during the sentencing phase of the trial, and vacated the death sentence.  The trial court later re-sentenced Mr. M to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Covington appealed Mr. M’s conviction, challenging the legal sufficiency of the evidence, and raising a host of other issues, including challenges to the trial court’s jury instructions and venue rulings, as well as its decisions concerning the legality of the search warrant and the admissibility of speculative expert testimony from a discredited forensic pathologist.  The Mississippi Court of Appeals heard oral argument on June 4, 2009.
• In another case, Mr. S was sentenced to death in 1994 after being convicted of first-degree murder of a Florida police officer.  We filed a motion for post-conviction relief, on the grounds that Mr. S' trial counsel provided ineffective assistance at various points during his trial.  Between February 2003 and July 2006, we represented Mr. S in two separate multi-day evidentiary hearings on certain of his ineffective-assistance claims.  In July 2007, after two rounds of briefing and two oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court, the Court unanimously vacated Mr. S’ convictions and sentence, on the grounds that his trial counsel’s errors deprived Mr. S of his constitutional right to adequate representation at the guilt/innocence-phase of his trial.  As a result, Mr. S is no longer on death row.  We are currently assisting the Capital Litigation Unit of the Miami Office of the Public Defender in defending Mr. S on remand.
  

• In November 2008, the firm resolved longstanding wrongful death and “deliberate indifference” claims on behalf of two clients against the District of Columbia and its officials.  The claims arose out of inmate-on-inmate stabbings at the D.C. Jail in December 2002, when the facility was severely understaffed and overcrowded.  One client’s son was stabbed to death by another inmate while awaiting trial on non-violent offenses.  When the attack occurred, only one guard was in a cellblock housing 150 prisoners, in violation of the Jail’s self-described "critical minimum" staffing level.  Two days later, the other client was attacked under similar circumstances. The case settled following four years of grinding discovery.  The Covington team and co-counsel developed a factual record showing that staffing levels often were below official “critical minimums,” and that high-level corrections officials were warned repeatedly yet failed to address the situation.  According to the press, the settlement was the largest amount the District ever has agreed to pay in a prisoner wrongful death case.  The litigation also spurred significant improvement in the conditions at the jail.  The lawsuit and surrounding public attention led to the implementation of a number of overdue jail reforms -- including a pretrial inmate classification system, 24-hour video surveillance, and a new inmate population cap.
• In a lawsuit against officials of the California prison healthcare system and prison doctors, the firm is representing a former prisoner who gave birth while incarcerated.  The doctors who treated the client failed to perform a routine test for vaginal strep infection and, as a result, her otherwise healthy baby died.  The plaintiff’s claims against California prison officials are based on the Eighth Amendment, and she is bringing medical malpractice and related claims against prison and private doctors and officials.
• The firm recently obtained $1.88 million in settlements in a section 1983 case in Louisiana for our pro bono client Mr. B, who served nearly 20 years in prison for a rape that he did not commit.  The case arose out of events in 1984 in Covington, Louisiana, where Mr. B was picked up by the local police in an investigation of a burglary. Despite having no evidence to link him to a rape that had occurred several days before, the Covington police questioned him about the rape, took blood and hair samples from him, and asked him to take part in a lineup as a "filler."  The victim, who testified that she had not had a good opportunity to observe her assailant because it was dark and he was wearing a mask, picked Mr. B out of the lineup.  Mr. B was arrested days later, after the state crime lab issued serology tests purportedly linking him to the rape.  He was convicted of aggravated rape and given a life sentence.  In 2004 post-conviction proceedings, Mr. B obtained a DNA test that eliminated him as a suspect in the rape, and he was released from prison.  In late 2005, we brought suit against the City of Covington, three police officers, and a state crime lab technician.  Years of discovery and litigation over a claim of qualified immunity ensued.  The turning point came in the spring of this year.  As we pressed forward with discovery, the City moved to continue the June 2009 trial date so it could bring in new counsel.  We opposed, arguing that Mr. B had been deprived of his day in court for too long.  The court granted the continuance, but only on condition that defendants not file any motions for summary judgment on qualified immunity.  This gave us a clear path to trial, and the City’s insurer stepped up with an offer to settle for its policy limits of $1.1 million, with an additional $300,000 to be paid by the City over ten years.  A settlement with the State for an additional $480,000 followed shortly thereafter.  Combined with an award of $177,000 in a related state court compensation action, the total monetary recovery for Mr. B is over $2 million.
  

• In 2008, the Second Circuit issued a decision in favor of the firm’s pro bono client, Mr. R, reversing the district court's judgment and reinstating Mr. R’s Section 1983 claims for false arrest and malicious prosecution.  In the early 1990s, a New York state court dismissed criminal charges against Mr. R, including for attempted murder, after the alleged victim failed to appear at trial.  Mr. R subsequently filed a Section 1983 action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York against Suffolk County and several county officials, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution.  Although the District Court initially concluded that Mr. R’s circumstances warranted the appointment of pro bono counsel -- because he was indigent, because his claims had sufficient merit, and because his incarceration (on unrelated convictions) hindered his ability to develop his case -- it abandoned its effort to secure counsel for Mr. R after two private attorneys declined the representation (one of whom declined due to a conflict).  Mr. R proceeded to trial pro se, and the District Court dismissed his claims after he failed to present any evidence.  The Second Circuit appointed Covington to represent Mr. R in his appeal and unanimously adopted most of our arguments, holding that (1) the District Court erroneously concluded that Mr. R's indictment created a presumption of probable cause for purposes of the false arrest claim; (2) the District Court erroneously concluded that the dismissal of the criminal charges did not constitute a "favorable termination" for purposes of the malicious prosecution claim; and (3) the District Court erred in failing to appoint pro bono trial counsel.  The court vacated the judgment and remanded for appointment of pro bono trial counsel.
  

• We represent sixteen men detained at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.  Most of the men have been detained for approximately seven years.  None have been charged with any crimes, and none have been accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention.  In Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008), where we were co-counsel for eleven of the detainees, the Supreme Court held that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus extends to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.  Following that decision, we have been preparing for habeas corpus hearings to be held in federal district court Washington, DC, for eleven of our clients.
• The firm has been involved in the Guantánamo related litigation for the last five years.  In addition to the on-going habeas corpus proceedings, our efforts have included: bringing cases for review of enemy combatant classification decisions in the D.C. Circuit under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005; challenging the destruction of CIA torture tapes in federal court; filing amicus briefs and coordinating the amicus effort in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); filing amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Moussaoui v. United States, 382 F.3d 483 (4th Cir.), cert denied, 544 U.S. 931 (2005); challenging the government’s practice of redacting information from documents given to security-cleared habeas counsel; and challenging the abusive medical and living conditions that the detainees experience at Guantánamo.
  

• Through Covington’s pro bono program, associates have opportunities to play a lead role in representing indigent criminal defendants at trial and on appeal.  In 2008, such an opportunity landed an associate on the biggest stage - the Supreme Court of the United States.  The associate presented oral argument with support from the head of the firm's appellate practice.  The case presented three issues: whether the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures was violated when police entered a home without a warrant after an informant wearing a wire indicated to officers outside that he had purchased illegal drugs; whether the officers’ entry violated a clearly established constitutional right, such that the officers are not entitled to claim immunity from suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and whether the Supreme Court should overrule its decision in Saucier v. Katz.  It is so rare for an associate to argue before the Supreme Court that the event became a front page story in Legal Times.
  

• The firm is co-counseling with the Urban Justice Center in representing three former nail salon workers in wage and hours claims brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act and N.Y. state statutes, against the owners of two nail salons in Long Island, NY.  The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleges that the salon owners and operators failed to pay our clients overtime compensation, spread of hours compensation, and minimum wages.  The complaint also alleges retaliation against our clients, asserting rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as age and race discrimination for submitting a labor complaint.  The civil suit is proceeding in parallel with prosecution of the salons and their owners by the National Labor Relations Board.
  

• On behalf of seventeen African-American pro bono clients and the NAACP, the firm obtained a favorable settlement with Waffle House in the Northern District of Georgia.  Our individual clients claimed that Waffle House had unlawfully discriminated against them by denying them service, requiring them to prepay for their meals, ignoring them, or subjecting them to racial slurs.
• The firm is representing the NAACP in potential litigation against Hamburger Joe's, a restaurant located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, relating to that restaurant's violations of public accommodations laws during Black Bike Week.
• The firm is serving as co-counsel to the Center for Constitutional Rights for the plaintiffs in a federal class action lawsuit against the City of New York and the New York City Police Department that challenges as racial profiling and otherwise unconstitutional the stop-and-frisks of Blacks and Hispanics in the City in recent years (Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al.).
  

• The firm is representing the Sikh Coalition in its effort to ensure that TSA’s new policy requiring the secondary screening of airport passengers wearing bulky items of clothing, including the Sikh turban, does not unreasonably discriminate against members of the Sikh faith.
  

• The firm handled a lengthy trial to advance the cause of gay rights in an important case involving a child visitation dispute between two lesbians who had ended their relationship.  The firm represented Ms. K against her former partner, Ms. M, over the daughter the women raised together but only Ms. M formally adopted.  The issue on remand was whether "exceptional circumstances" existed warranting a grant of visitation to Ms. K, a legal "third party."  After an eight day trial, the court ruled that "exceptional circumstances" existed warranting visitation, but that visitation was not in the child's best interest because Ms. M's objection to visitation was causing the child significant anxiety.
• Working with co-counsel National Center for Lesbian Rights, the firm obtained a settlement on behalf of a lesbian couple and their 9-year-old daughter.  When the parents had taken their sick child to a California emergency room, the hospital staff allowed only one parent to stay with her, forcing the other parent to remain in the waiting room.  In contrast, hospital staff allowed both members of a heterosexual couple to stay their child in the emergency room.
  

• The firm's Women's Forum launched an initiative to represent immigrant women in asylum, trafficking and Violence Against Women Act cases.
• The firm is representing an Army veteran in her appeal of a rating decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs involving compensation for service-connected injuries. 
• In 2000, Congress passed the Equity in Contracting Act, authorizing a women-owned small business procurement program.  In 2005, Covington brought suit on behalf of the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce against the Small Business Administration for unreasonable delay in implementing the program.  Denying the government's motion to dismiss for lack of standing, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a strongly worded 38-page opinion, stating “that the [SBA had] invaded concrete and particularized procedural rights of the [Chamber's] members and [had] sabotaged, whether intentional[ly] or not, the implementation of a procurement program which would have, and will, likely benefit the businesses they represent."  The Court retained jurisdiction to monitor the SBA's progress in implementing the program.  On the eve of issuing a proposed final rule, the agency withdrew it, a pattern that it had repeated over the years.  The Court, at our request, held a hearing in November 2007 to address the agency's reversal, and entered an order requiring an Office of Management and Budget official to appear at a status conference if the program was not finalized by January 2008.  Since then, the agency has promulgated a final rule and a proposed rule for comment, and the Court continues to monitor the agency’s progress.  Simultaneous to these efforts, the firm has counseled with respect to a Congressional hearing on SBA proposed regulations, and passage of legislation that would reaffirm the establishment, on an expedited basis, of a women’s small business procurement program.
  

• The firm represents Ms. S in a habeas action.  Ms. S was in an abusive marriage and was convicted as an accomplice to a murder committed by her husband.  Ms. S is serving a sentence of 50 years to life.  The firm has filed a federal habeas petition on her behalf based on the fact that the client was an abused spouse, whose trial counsel failed to effectively present evidence of the threats and violence she suffered at the hands of her husband, allowing the prosecution to successfully undermine her duress defense and portray her as a killer.  At the husband's trial, the prosecution changed its story about the client, describing her as another of her husband's victims and essentially characterizing her as incapable of exercising independent judgment.
  

• In a matter referred to the firm by the D.C. Law Students in Court program, Covington recently scored a complete victory in a landlord and tenant case.  Our client, Ms. C, had been a resident of Potomac Place Apartments in southwest DC since 1969.  The owner of the property decided to convert the property to condominiums, and embarked on a complete rehabilitation of the apartments.  To accommodate the construction, the company temporarily moved residents, including Ms. C, from one half of the building (the "north tower") to the other half (the "south tower").  Those residents occupied apartments in the south tower under temporary occupancy agreements, separate from their leases to the north tower apartments.  A year after the move, the management company sued Ms. C for possession of the south tower apartment, alleging that she had violated the temporary occupancy agreement by failing to keep her apartment in a sanitary condition.  We interviewed Ms. C in her apartment, the conditions of which convinced us that the suit was simply an attempt to force her out so that the owner could sell her apartment as a condominium.  We also discovered that the management company had failed to properly serve Ms. C with notice of the lease violation, and that Ms. C still had an existing lease to the north tower apartment.  Ms. C had only agreed to temporarily relocate from that apartment during construction, which was completed while the lawsuit was pending.  On the day we filed our summary judgment motion, the Plaintiff threw in the towel.  The management company agreed to move Ms. C back to her north tower apartment at its expense, after which the lawsuit would be dismissed.  Soon thereafter, Ms. C moved back to her original, and now rehabilitated, apartment.
  

• The firm submitted an amicus brief filed in the Eleventh Circuit on behalf of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in support of the City of Atlanta’s position that Georgia firearm licensees should not be allowed to bring guns into certain areas of airports.  The Court found in favor of the City.
  

• We handle regular requests for assistance on projects for The Nature Conservancy ("TNC").  In 2008 the firm advised on a series of Latin American debt for nature swaps in Brazil and provided advice in connection with TNC’s efforts to explore projects in India and Micronesia.  We have assisted TNC with various organizational/regulatory issues, and advised on intellectual property issues involving TNC’s research efforts and collaboration with public agencies, universities and private parties.  The firm also has provided research and advice on treaties and national laws concerning IP rights of indigenous peoples and IP advice on the patentability of technology developed during TNC projects.  Finally, the firm is providing assistance in designing a FCPA compliance program for TNC's international efforts, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, and has continued to provide advice on federal and state legislative issues relating to Hawaii's efforts to fund increased agricultural inspectors of inbound air and sea cargo for invasive species.
• The firm advises the Coalition for Rainforest Nations on policy initiatives undertaken in the global climate change negotiations.  The principal aim of the Coalition is to represent the views of its member governments in support of the inclusion of credits for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the global climate change regime.  The Coalition currently has the support of the Governments of Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo, Colombia, Costa Rica, DR Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Fiji, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay, Uganda, Vanuatu and Viet Nam.
• The firm is working with DC Appleseed to restore the Anacostia River.
  

• In late 2007, a Covington Senior Counsel was a member of a small delegation to visit Pakistan on behalf of Human Rights First to investigate the then-Government's removal of many judges, including the entire Supreme Court, and its imposition of martial law.  This was his third human rights visit to Pakistan.  The delegation met with the US ambassador and several Pakistani ministers and other senior officials, as well as some of the deposed judges and leaders of the Bar.  Since their return, they have prepared various reports and protests for Congress, newspapers, and other audiences.
  

• On behalf of the Professional Media Program of the International Research and Exchange Board, Internews, the International Center for Journalists, the Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, and the Global Internet Law Project (a joint venture of Internews and the Center for Democracy and Technology), we have undertaken substantial media law reform efforts in some 30 countries.  We have commented on and advocated changes in media laws in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa.  We have traveled to meet with members of various parliamentary bodies and have advocated changes in favor of free expression, even-handed regulation of broadcast media, effectiveness of freedom of information legislation, and fairness of defamation legislation.  Countries have included East Timor, Iraq, Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkey, Indonesia and Mongolia.  We also have conducted workshops for journalists and policymakers in a dozen countries.  We are currently assisting with respect to media law projects involving Rwanda, Bahrain, Yemen, Somaliland and Jordan.
  

• An associate with the firm’s London office traveled to Beijing to assist the International Paralympic Committee's (IPC) at the 2008 Paralympic Games, which took take place between 6 and 17 September 2008.  The associate advised the IPC on matters relating to anti-doping rule violations and assisted the IPC in ensuring that its Doping Control Programme was compliant with the IPC Anti-Doping Code, the World Anti-Doping Code and the provisions of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games’ Doping Control Guide.  The associate assisted the IPC with procedural issues that arise at the anti-doping rule violation hearings and arbitrations that will be set up and run at the Paralympic Village.
  

• For six years, the firm has provided a variety of transactional legal services to FINCA International, a nonprofit that makes micro-loans to small groups of individuals in underdeveloped countries, the vast majority of whom are women, for the purpose of starting or expanding their businesses.  In 2008 the firm assisted FINCA in the incorporation of FINCA (UK), a company limited by guarantee, in the United Kingdom, and the subsequent successful registration of FINCA (UK) as a charity with the Charity Commission of England and Wales.  In addition, the firm provides advice in the following areas of law: international tax and finance, banking regulations, government contracts, insurance, employment and employee benefits.
  

• The firm continues to bring insurance claims on behalf of Katrina survivors.
  

• The firm represents Mr. B, a low-income debtor, in a Chapter 7 adversary proceeding in Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York.  The debtor is a 64-year-old mentally disabled man seeking to discharge his student loans.  The firm recently defeated the defendants’ motions for summary judgment and is preparing for trial.