Pro Bono Innovators 2022 Honoree Mayer Brown

Your firm’s work included a September 2021 win in the US District Court for the Southern District of California that held the United States has a duty to inspect and process asylum seekers at ports of entry. You also helped to evacuate 150 Afghan female students to the US a month earlier. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters? 

In the asylum access matter, we worked closely with the nonprofit organizations with whom we partnered to strategize about factual development and legal theories. Fact discovery was key to our success in establishing what the government had been doing at the border and that the government’s claims of capacity concerns were a pretext to turn back asylum seekers. We developed our legal theories and arguments through an iterative, collaborative process with co-counsel as we refined our arguments.

With respect to the evacuation from Afghanistan, we were in constant contact with the Asian University for Women [an independent, regional institution dedicated to women’s education and leadership development based in Bangladesh] and reached out to people within and outside the firm who could help us navigate the military chain of command, which was crucial to the success of our evacuation effort. It is a testament to the Mayer Brown culture that every lawyer we asked for help went above and beyond to ensure these young women would have an opportunity to realize their dreams.

What were the most innovative aspects of these matters in your view? And who took the lead on driving innovation with the work?

The most innovative aspects of the asylum access matter involved piecing together evidence that the government’s claims of capacity constraints were pretextual and not factually founded. Former litigation partner Stephen Medlock took the lead on our factual development strategy and effectively using the factual record to make our point.

In the Afghan evacuation matter, our lawyers were integrally involved with the evacuation effort. Team leader, Marcia Goodman, and consultant, Charles Hallab, stayed in almost daily contact with the “Seven Sister Leaders.” We navigated the women through Taliban checkpoints and into the Kabul airport.

At the same time, our team was in constant contact with military, government officials, contractors and NGOs from the volunteers on the ground to officers in charge, flight charters, and the State Department to coordinating with AUW founder, Kamal Ahmad.

Tell us more about the impact of the matters on the local, national, and/or global level.

In the asylum access matter, the decision fundamentally changed the rights of asylum seekers arriving at land ports of entry and will likely affect tens of thousands of asylum seekers’ right to access the US asylum process. The court held for the first time that asylum seekers coming to ports of entry have rights under US law and the government cannot deny them those rights by preventing them from physically crossing the border.

In the Afghan evacuation matter, the team was able to evacuate almost 150 young women who would otherwise have been deprived of higher education, been cut off from the world, and been at risk of physical harm in Afghanistan. Once they arrived in the US, we worked with AUW to place these women at universities throughout the country so they could continue their studies. We are now leading a coalition of 20 law firms and corporate legal departments who are helping the women apply for asylum.

Why do you think your team ultimately achieved successful results?

In both matters, our teams achieved success for the same reasons that they often do in pro bono matters—creative lawyering, devotion to the case (we took over after a prior firm was unable to commit the necessary time and resources), lots of hard work, and cooperative relations with co-counsel and a refusal to give up.

Take us back to the time the matters were resolved. What did you do to celebrate? 

The team held a virtual happy hour to celebrate their win in the asylum access matter.

We celebrated the Afghan evacuation matter by letting the more than 75 lawyers who had contributed to this effort know that they succeeded—they brought freedom to the 150 young women who heaved a sigh of relief to evacuate. We then doubled down on our efforts to support these women and AUW as they work through the joys and the challenges of building a new life in a new world far from their families for now.

Responses provided by Mayer Brown partners Ori Lev and Marcia Goodman and former partner Stephen Medlock.

—With assistance from Kibkabe Araya.