Pro Bono Innovators 2023 Honoree Jones Day

In our 2023 issue of Pro Bono Innovators, Bloomberg Law honors Jones Day for its Border Project, which in January 2023 helped secure asylum for a client who fled El Salvador after a gang’s attempt to force her into exploitation. The firm is also honored for co-founding the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, formed in 2021 in response to the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Your firm’s pro bono work included helping a female client fleeing gang exploitation in El Salvador to secure asylum in January 2023. The work happened in conjunction with the Border Project, a firm program that provides free legal assistance to thousands of asylum seekers and migrants. Also, we highlight the firm’s co-founding of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, which brings together experts from a variety of disciplines to exchange ideas on preventing hate crimes with survivors and families of victims. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?

In 2014, the firm responded to the surge of unaccompanied children at the border by sending attorneys to US military bases housing migrant minors and families. Our attorneys saw firsthand these vulnerable groups and felt compelled to help. This experience provided the inspiration for the Border Project: a firmwide pro bono initiative to provide asylum seekers access to the Rule of Law.

Strategic planning for the Border Project focused on maximizing our impact. To do that, we established several goals: 1. Serve the most vulnerable migrants; 2. Fill gaps in existing services by providing legal assistance where it was not otherwise available; and (3) Utilize the talents of our lawyers across practice groups – not just litigators. We also conducted site visits and outreach to community leaders along the border to ensure we understood the needs of the communities we sought to serve. This led us to Laredo, Texas.

At the time, the Laredo Processing Center (“LPC”) detained primarily Central American women seeking asylum who recently arrived in the United States. There were no free legal services at the facility. Recognizing the need at the LPC, we established a full-time office in Laredo that we operated through a combination of Laredo-based staff and rotating volunteer attorneys from across the firm.

Attorneys from all practice groups provided in-person consults to detained migrants; our trial teams then provided full representation to a subset of migrants after securing their release from detention, including the Salvadoran woman fleeing gang exploitation.

Ten years after the idea for the Border Project was born, our work at the LPC (and two additional Laredo-area detention facilities) remains strong. We continue to provide consultations to detained migrants and full representation to asylum seekers at immigration courts around the country.

For the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, we reached out to lawyers experienced in the various aspects of the Summit’s work, including former judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, and government, as well as those practicing in the other disciplines at issue, whether health care, financial services, advertising, technology, journalism, and insurance.

This project involved lawyers not previously involved with large pro bono matters, which traditionally require litigation experience; encompassed other law firms doing similar cutting-edge work; and included our professional staff working shoulder-to-shoulder with 1200+ attendees. We created a 501(c)(3) organization, on whose board a Jones Day lawyer continues to serve, to carry the work forward in perpetuity.

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

The most innovative aspect of our representation of the three client groups described above was the Border Project’s response to Migrant Protection Protocols. MPP required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their hearings in makeshift tent courts along the US-Mexico border. This caused countless migrants to experience homelessness and persecution by cartels that operate with impunity.

MPP also drastically curtailed already limited representation along the border: Approximately 90% of migrants were unrepresented and fewer than 1% of unrepresented migrants in MPP obtained relief.

We sought to counter this, first by representing nearly 150 asylum seekers placed into MPP, obtaining relief for our clients in 94% of the cases that went to trial in the Laredo MPP court and continuing to represent our clients when their cases were paroled into the U.S or advance to BIA.

The Border Project also provided individualized pro se prep to approximately 1,000 migrants awaiting their MPP hearings. We set up and staffed a hotline with attorneys who provided daily consultations to migrants. This innovative aspect of the project was a team effort, with numerous lawyers across the firm contributing to its effort. Partners David DiMeglio and Laura Tuell lead the Border Project.

The most innovative aspect of the Summit is that it utilizes the complex problem-solving aspects of legal training, rather than the representation of individual clients, to bring change to the legal system, as well as other disciplines.

Formed following the Tree of Life killings, the largest loss of life in an antisemitic attack in US history, the Summit identifies specific solutions to hate-fueled identity-based violence of all kinds, whether based on religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender expression, immigration status, or any other factor.

Using the principles of building a litigation case, the Summit identifies desired outcomes (solutions or “deliverables”), and then forms a “case team” of global experts across professional disciplines to achieve them. The annual in-person Summit gathering provides a one-year deadline to report progress on each solution.

As described by one of our Global Advisors, “[t]he Eradicate Hate Summit is truly unique. It brings together experts on combatting hate from all directions in a way no other event ever has, and its focus on solutions sets the event apart.” Heidi Beirich, Co-Founder, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

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

In the Border Project we work closely with other advocates, and we share our resources widely with the communities we serve. For example, we translated our KYR materials into multiple languages and distributed them to advocates across the border; we often share data about immigration trends with national nonprofits, law school immigration clinics, and similar organizations.

Due to our remarkable experience, we were uniquely situated to speak to the access to justice issues created by MPP. We outlined those issues in two amicus briefs before the US Supreme Court and when DHS subsequently terminated MPP, it cited one of these briefs to support its conclusion that MPP created safety concerns that curtailed access to counsel.

The Summit has had positive impacts on the survivors as well as the professions, non-profit organizations, researchers, tech companies, and government officials who are combating hate-motivated violence in the US, Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and the UK.

Together with the United Nations, the Summit formed a Sports Working Group, which created “The Game Plan” in December 2022. This is a plan of action to counter hate speech through engagement with major professional sports leagues, teams, and athletes, starting in the US and UK. Numerous leagues have already signed on, including the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, and NASCAR.

Other working groups are developing novel solutions into action plans as well, including: A directory of providers in every state, so those in need will know where to turn for help; judicial management techniques to aid judges who are handling prosecutions and trials of hate crime offenders; model college and graduate program curricula to create a field of study to tackle hate-motivated violence; training for police officers and mental health providers in how to deal with perpetrators of identity-based violence and coordination between financial institutions and academic researchers to interdict the flow of money worldwide among hate groups.

Why do you think your team ultimately achieved successful results in these two matters?

When we launched the project, the firm’s then-managing partner pledged that Jones Day attorneys would continue to provide access to the Rule of Law for asylum seekers at the border as long as the need existed. That need has only grown.

In response, we opened multiple offices along the border, built relationships with immigration nonprofit and government partners, increased the number of volunteers, and took on more clients. This dedication is echoed in our commitment to client service, which ensures that our pro bono clients are entitled to the same excellent legal representation we offer our billable clients

Our attorneys zealously represented their clients in the courtroom and as needed, on appeal. We created novel legal arguments, meticulously gathered supporting evidence, and engaged experts to support our clients’ claims to relief.

The Summit’s success arises from lawyers with vision and commitment. The Summit’s founders, Mark Nordenberg, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh, and Laura Ellsworth are very well-respected lawyers. They talked with scores of experts around the world to learn what was needed to improve the field of preventing hate crimes.

They were able to attract other members of the Pittsburgh community to serve on the Summit’s Executive Committee and Steering Committee, along with an equally impressive list of Global Advisers--truly world class experts who are the best in their field to bring the best results. Jones Day and its foundation provided substantial funding and indispensable volunteer help as the Summit has no paid staff.

The Summit’s rapid recognition also lies in that while most organizations aim to improve one aspect, such as gun control, after-school programs, or voting rights, the Summit’s founders saw that more could be, and has been, achieved by sharing diverse ideas and best practices across professions, sectors, and boundaries.

What did you do to celebrate when these matters were resolved?

Both of these projects involve ongoing work with no end in sight. As such, celebration would be premature, but we are sincerely honored by the recognition. Migration numbers remain at or near all-time highs and the need for legal services far eclipses the supply. The weight of this work makes celebrating successes along the way all the more important.

At the end of each week in Laredo, we host our volunteer attorneys at a local restaurant to thank them for their work and provide a forum for reflection. Similarly, we encourage trial teams to celebrate their trial wins with their clients over a meal.

Responses provided by Laura Ellsworth, Jones Day partner-in-charge of global community service initiatives, and Laura Tuell, partner-in-charge of pro bono.