2022-2023 Pro Bono Program Review

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR

To Our Clients and Friends,

Few lawyers have embodied our firm’s commitment to public service and pro bono work as thoroughly as our late partner Walter Dellinger, a fixture on what I call O’Melveny’s Mount Rushmore. A constitutional scholar and appellate practitioner whose résumé includes stints as head of the Office of Legal Counsel and acting Solicitor General, Walter passed away in 2022, at the age of 80, and not a day goes by that I don’t miss his towering intellect, huge heart, and generous spirit. During his 23 years at O’Melveny, Walter inspired us to be the best advocates we could be—and to be our best selves. Reflecting on O’Melveny’s pro bono efforts over the past two years, I see Walter’s DNA in all we have achieved. Whether fighting to preserve access to reproductive healthcare or protect immigrants from persecution in their homelands, our people again devoted extraordinary resources—more than 65,000 hours in 2022 and more than 78,000 hours in 2023—to cases and causes aimed at making the world a more equitable place. Nearly 90 percent of our US attorneys participated in those efforts, some of which drew on years-long commitments from coast-to-coast teams. Among the life-changing highlights in these pages, a 2014 lawsuit we filed against Pennsylvania officials culminated in a historic victory on behalf of the state’s underfunded school districts and disadvantaged schoolchildren. And having achieved a landmark win in 2020 at the US Supreme Court that barred non-unanimous guilty verdicts in trials for serious crimes, we won the acquittal of Evangelisto Ramos, a Louisiana man who had previously been convicted of second-degree murder by a non-unanimous jury. I’ve always believed that, as lawyers, we have a unique opportunity to make this a fairer, more just world for everyone. Walter called it our sacred obligation. Many of us were drawn to O’Melveny precisely because this firm has embraced those ideals since its founding more than a century ago, and as you review this small sampling of the many hundreds of pro bono matters our people regularly handle, I hope you’ll agree that the fight for equal justice remains an innate part of who we are.

Bradley J. Butwin Chair , O’Melveny & Myers LLP

PRO BONO PROGRAM REVIEW 2022-2023

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