Pro Bono Innovators 2025 Honoree Greenberg Traurig

Greenberg Traurig’s key pro bono matters include leading an effort with four New York bar associations to protect $55 million dollars in a state of New York Interest on Lawyer Account fund that helps residents afford civil legal services from a 2024 attempt by the state to redirect the funds. The firm also achieved a “landmark victory” in Mexico’s Supreme Court of the Justice of the Nation, successfully defending a nonprofit caring for victims of human trafficking from a civil lawsuit seeking its eviction and a contractual penalty. The win impacts how the country treats cases involving human rights groups. How did your firm strategize on these matters?

Our firm’s global pro bono program succeeds by leveraging the deep local knowledge and expertise of our lawyers in each market, enabling us to build the strongest possible teams to tackle complex challenges and maximize impact for vulnerable populations worldwide. This approach proved decisive in two landmark matters that demonstrate our commitment to making a lasting impact in our communities.

Protecting New York’s Legal Aid Infrastructure: We assembled a team of experienced New York lawyers with litigation expertise, government experience, and bar association leadership. From there, our strategy for defending the Interest on Lawyer Account Fund [IOLA], centered on two prongs: collect a mass of influence through the coordinated efforts of four bar associations across New York State, and an emphasis on working collaboratively with the State as a primary option while we continued to build our case for potential litigation.

Using our government group’s knowledge of how the state budget process works, we executed a strategy to fundamentally reframe how IOLA funds are categorized within New York’s financial structure. The goal was to stretch the impact of our efforts beyond just saving the money in this budget cycle. That is how we arrived at the goal of reclassifying IOLA as a fiduciary fund, meaning the resources in the fund cannot be used for other government programs, similar to a pension fund. This success created a legal firewall preventing future administrations from treating these funds as discretionary revenue.

Defending Human Rights in Mexico: For Fundación Camino a Casa, facing eviction from their facility sheltering human trafficking victims, our strategy was once again founded on the basis of strong local team informed by their participation in Greenberg Traurig’s international platform.

Our Mexico team was able to take that combined local and global perspective to build a case focused on convincing [Mexico’s Supreme Court of the Justice of the Nation] to analyze the case through a human rights lens instead of as a simple contracts case. To add global significance to our arguments, the team incorporated United Nations recommendations for applying a “gender perspective” to situations disproportionately affecting women and children. This strategy exposed a fundamental contradiction: While the Mexican state supported sending women and children to receive help from our client’s foundation, another state institute simultaneously sought to evict the foundation from its essential physical location. When the issue was viewed holistically as a human rights issue, going beyond simple contract terms, it was clear that a different result than evicting our client was required.

Both strategies succeeded because we built teams with precisely the right expertise while refusing to accept narrow legal frameworks that ignored broader human impact. In New York, we achieved permanent structural protections for vital funds meant to preserve access to justice. In Mexico, we established nationwide precedent requiring judges to consider human rights implications when nonprofits serving vulnerable populations face legal challenges.These victories demonstrate how strategic team building, innovative legal thinking, and unwavering commitment to justice can create lasting change for society’s most vulnerable members.

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?

Protecting New York’s Legal Aid Infrastructure: The most innovative aspect of our approach was fundamentally reframing how IOLA funds are categorized within New York’s financial structure. Rather than simply fighting the state’s attempt to seize $55 million through traditional litigation, we developed a comprehensive strategy that combined the threat of legal action with strategic negotiations to achieve reclassification of IOLA as a “fiduciary fund.” We moved beyond reactive defense to proactive structural reform.

This approach came when we recognized that recovering the seized funds was insufficient and could lead to the same issue reoccurring every budgetary cycle. Instead, we needed to create lasting protections. By working with New York state leaders including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to establish IOLA’s fiduciary status, we built a legal firewall preventing future administrations from treating these funds as discretionary revenue. This removed IOLA from the typical political discussions during the budget-making processes.

Henry M. Greenberg led this innovative approach, bringing his dual perspective as both an experienced litigator in New York and a former president of the New York State Bar Association. His deep understanding of the legal and political dimensions enabled us to craft a solution that addressed both immediate and long-term concerns. The coordinated strategy between four major bar associations was also itself innovative – rarely do legal organizations of this size and scope formally unite to protect civil legal services. This collaborative approach amplified our negotiating power and demonstrated the legal community’s unified commitment to protecting vulnerable New Yorkers’ access to justice.

Protecting human rights in Mexico: For the case in Mexico defending Fundación Camino a Casa, a vital nonprofit providing shelter and comprehensive care to victims of human trafficking and exploitation, in the Mexico Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) when facing eviction, the need for innovation was clear. We did more than build a strong case, we created a new lens through which the court should view this case and other similar cases in the future.

Our approach, led by Alejandro Ostos, Mauricio Rueda, and Erick Peregrina convinced SCJN to undertake its judicial analysis through a human rights lens rather than looking at the case as a simple contractual dispute between a property owner and tenant. We also relied on recommendations by the United Nations to incorporate a “gender perspective” into analysis of certain situations that can have a disproportionately large impact on women and their children.

To evict our client would have had severe implications, especially for the children who benefit from its services. The assets Mexico gives to certain non-profit civil associations, especially those intended to protect minors and women victims of violence, are not governed by typical rules of civil law. Rather, we argued the Judge must analyze these legal relationships more deeply with the weight of women’s rights and other vulnerable people under their care.

The SCJN determined that the rights of the abused women and the Universal Rights of the child, should be considered when assessing whether our client complied with the contractual clauses, which ultimately led to our success.

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

Protecting New York’s Legal Aid Infrastructure: In the IOLA matter, our work made a huge impact for New York’s most vulnerable residents who depend on IOLA-funded legal services for critical matters like child custody, eviction, foreclosure, and debt collection. The $55 million recovery alone will allow thousands of low-income New Yorkers to receive legal representation they otherwise couldn’t afford.

On a state level, the fiduciary reclassification creates permanent structural protections for IOLA, which has distributed nearly $1 billion since its creation in 1983. More importantly, we’ve protected the next billion in potential funds by ensuring this vital revenue stream continues supporting legal aid organizations across New York State indefinitely without risk of the funds being rerouted.

Nationally, our success demonstrates the legal and policy heft of bar organizations when they combine forces. We’ve demonstrated that coordinated bar association advocacy can achieve lasting structural reforms rather than temporary fixes. Our approach shows another way the legal profession can serve society’s most vulnerable populations beyond the classic pro bono model.

The innovative fiduciary reclassification strategy can also have national implications, as other states with legal defense funds could also look at instituting structural reform to protect those funds. This is particularly crucial as access to justice gaps widen across America, with most poor Americans unable to afford legal representation for essential legal matters.

Protecting human rights in Mexico: In Mexico the Supreme Court’s resolution, which accepted our arguments, established a nationwide precedent. In cases where the Mexican federal government, or a Mexican state government, has granted real estate rights or other assets to certain non-profit associations dedicated to protecting the most vulnerable, federal, and local judges must consider the human rights implications when making their judicial analysis. This departs significantly from how judges considered these cases in the past, which have typically been handled as standard civil or commercial contract matters. Non-profits now have a stronger foundation on which to defend themselves and stay afloat when they need protection the most.

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

Protecting New York’s Legal Aid Infrastructure: Our success in the IOLA matter stemmed from building the exact right GT team, combined with full support from the New York State Bar Association, New York City Bar Association, New York County Lawyers Association, and Monroe County Bar Association. This created extraordinary negotiating leverage that no single organization could have achieved alone.

The GT team has brought incredible experience and targeted capabilities few other firms could provide, assembling a team as strong as we would bring for any commercial client: Hank Greenberg led our team, bringing decades of experience as a litigator in New York and a former president of the New York State Bar Association. Beth Garvey brings deep government experience, having served in the governor’s office and in the state Senate. Stephen Saxl co-chairs GT’s Class Action Litigation Group and has served on the Judiciary Committee of the New York State Bar Association. Caroline Heller chairs GT’s Global Pro Bono Program and has worked on many cases protecting New York’s most vulnerable.

Success was also driven by a commitment to collaboration with the state rather than jumping straight into legal action. We demonstrated how protecting IOLA served everyone’s interests – maintaining funding for vulnerable New Yorkers, while removing a potentially contentious political issue from future budget cycles.

Protecting human rights in Mexico: Our success in the Mexico case stemmed from our fundamental recognition that this wasn’t merely a property dispute, but a matter affecting vulnerable women and children’s safety and rights. We refused to treat our client’s foundation as an ordinary tenant, instead framing the case around the critical services provided to abused minors who depend on this refuge. Our strategic approach centered on building compelling arguments that highlighted the importance of preserving these rights and the devastating consequences that rigid application of ordinary civil law would have on the foundation’s beneficiaries. We understood that technical legal arguments alone wouldn’t suffice – we needed to demonstrate the human impact.

The breakthrough came when we successfully convinced the Supreme Court Justices to resolve this controversy through a gender and children’s rights perspective, aligning our arguments with United Nations recommendations for the handling of similar human rights situations. This reframing elevated the case from a contractual dispute to a fundamental human rights issue, requiring the court to consider broader implications beyond traditional property law.

Most powerfully, we exposed the Mexican State’s internal contradiction: prosecutors were channeling abused minors to our client’s foundation while simultaneously, through another state institute, attempting to deprive the foundation of the very refuge essential for protecting these children. This contradiction over an alleged contract breach that wasn’t serious or substantial became impossible for the court to ignore. Our success ultimately resulted from our unwavering conviction that the foundation’s mission transcended ordinary legal categories, combined with strategic advocacy that forced the court to confront the potential real-world consequences of their decision on Mexico’s most vulnerable children.

Responses provided by Greenberg Traurig Litigation Shareholder Henry M. Greenberg and Global Pro Bono Program Chair Caroline J. Heller for the Lawyer Account Fund matter.

Responses provided by Greenberg Traurig Mexico City Shareholder Alejandro Ostos Fulda and Associate Mauricio Rueda Gutiérrez for the protecting human rights in Mexico matter.