Pro Bono Innovators 2025 Honoree Jenner & Block

Jenner & Block’s key pro bono matters include securing a Federal Communications Commission order adopted in July 2024 reducing exploitative communication rates for incarcerated people after a decades-long effort. The firm also successfully fought to return a Queens, N.Y. home to elderly clients with disabilities who were victims of deed theft. This established a local precedent for voiding fraudulent deeds through coordinated civil and criminal litigation. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?

FCC Matter: For too long, egregiously high calling rates and fees have made it prohibitively expensive—even impossible—for incarcerated people and their loved ones to stay connected. In 2003, Martha Wright-Reed, who spent hundreds of dollars monthly on calls with her incarcerated grandson, petitioned for relief from exorbitant rates on Incarcerated People’s Communications Services (IPCS). The FCC attempted multiple times to adopt reforms and was overturned on appeal. Congress responded by passing the bipartisan Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022, directing the FCC to take swift action to adopt just and reasonable rates and charges for all audio and video IPCS.

Drawing on Mrs. Wright-Reed’s determination, we first built a strong record for meaningful reform, leveraging data from IPCS providers. Regulatory advocacy and cost-benefit analysis is fundamental to our work, and we partnered with economists at The Brattle Group, also working pro bono, to analyze provider costs, identify anomalies, and propose a “model carrier” approach of an efficient IPCS provider. The FCC incorporated our approach as part of its own comparative analysis.

Second, we developed a strong factual foundation illustrating IPCS market failures and abuses and the legal basis for rate caps and fee reforms. With our public interest partners, our advocacy succeeded in achieving bans on “site commissions,” which are payments from IPCS providers to facilities and that some states required in their contracts, and “ancillary service fees,” which are fees charged for account set up, depositing money, paying bills, etc.

Deed theft matter: When we first reviewed this case through the [New York] City Bar Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project (HSP), we realized immediately that conventional civil litigation would fail. The fraudulent deed looked legitimate in public records, and our elderly clients with disabilities lacked the resources for a protracted legal battle. We needed a different approach.

Our strategy centered on three key decisions. First, we treated this as a criminal fraud case from day one, not just a property dispute. We reached out to the Queens District Attorney’s Office early and proposed a coordinated approach where civil and criminal proceedings would reinforce each other. This was unusual because most deed theft cases proceed on separate, uncoordinated tracks, if they’re prosecuted at all.

Second, we built our legal strategy around our clients’ specific vulnerabilities. Rather than treating their age and disabilities as incidental facts, we made them central to our argument about how the fraud succeeded and why urgent intervention was necessary. This shaped everything from our discovery approach to how we sequenced our filings.

Third, we deliberately structured our work with HSP as an integrated partnership rather than a typical co-counsel relationship. We combined their housing law expertise and community connections with our litigation capacity and white-collar defense background to create something neither team could do alone.

Throughout the case, we maintained flexibility in our legal theories, simultaneously pursuing real estate remedies, estate law arguments, and criminal fraud angles. This gave us multiple pathways to success and let us adapt as the case developed. The result was a court ruling in December 2024 that not only restored our clients’ home but established a replicable model for addressing these crimes.

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?

FCC matter: Our team was unique in that we had access to the full confidential cost dataset under the FCC’s protective order process and were able to work with excellent economists. This enabled us to illustrate the incentives driving rates and fees to inflated, unjust, and unreasonable levels, compared to how an efficient provider would perform. Our view was uniquely broad. Providers could not access their competitors’ data for competition reasons, and smaller organizations and individuals could not sign up to the protective order. We were able to draw on a complete dataset for our analysis and insights, providing valuable and thorough support for the reforms we proposed.

Our team also benefited from including several FCC alums with extensive experience on rate regulation issues. Partners Rebekah P. Goodheart and Madeleine V. Findley, and Special Counsel Gregory R. Capobianco each worked in the Wireline Competition Bureau prior to joining Jenner & Block. With this intimate knowledge of how the FCC operates and what drives decisions, the team of agency veterans was able to fine tune the advocacy to prioritize arguments that would return the greatest results.

Deed theft matter: When we encountered this deed theft case through the City Bar Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project (HSP), we immediately recognized that standard legal tools were inadequate. The fraudulent deed appeared legitimate in public records, making it nearly impossible to challenge through civil litigation alone.

We pioneered an unprecedented, coordinated civil-criminal strategy, approaching deed theft as both a complex fraud requiring prosecution and a civil matter needing urgent property remediation. Our team worked closely with the Queens District Attorney’s Office from the outset—sharing evidence, aligning legal theories, and sequencing our civil timeline to capitalize on the criminal investigation’s findings. This wasn’t parallel litigation; it was an integrated legal approach.

The fraudsters exploited our elderly, disabled clients during the pandemic’s chaos, weaponizing virtual closing procedures and bureaucratic gaps in property systems. We approached the matter through multiple lenses simultaneously: a real estate dispute, an inheritance case, and criminal fraud. Central to our innovation was a vulnerability-informed legal strategy: recognizing our clients’ age and disabilities not as background facts, but as fundamental to understanding fraud, and preventing future abuse.

In collaboration with HSP, we created a replicable methodology: template discovery requests, best practices for civil-criminal coordination, and a toolkit to identify and address systemic vulnerabilities. Our innovative approach led to a December 2024 court ruling voiding the fraudulent deed, restoring our clients’ property, and setting a precedent for coordinated responses to complex, targeted fraud.

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

FCC matter: This issue is both clear: rates are too high; and impactful: we know that being able to maintain contact with friends and family is linked with lower recidivism rates, and further, that staying in contact with an incarcerated parent can be essential to both the child and the parent. Thanks to the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, Congress gave the FCC the explicit authority to set rates for both inter- and intra-state audio and video calls. The FCC’s 2024 reforms have had a nationwide impact.

Rates are now lower than the rates adopted in 2021, with the effective per-minute rates for audio calls decreasing substantially, and video calls are subject to rate caps for the first time. The nationwide prohibition on ancillary fees protects consumers from IPCS providers simply raising these previously unregulated fees to offset the new, lower rate caps.

Forbidding site commissions has ended a practice that even some providers acknowledged distorted the IPCS marketplace, as carceral facilities would often contract with the provider who would pay the largest commission rather than choosing based on technical or quality factors. Incarcerated people and their loved ones’ benefit, as site commissions were often passed on by IPCS providers to the consumers, creating a warped structure where incarcerated people were funding payments to facilities that confined them.

Deed theft matter: Our deed theft case directly addressed a national crisis that continues to target vulnerable homeowners with devastating precision. The FBI’s 2024 IC3 Report documented over 9,300 real estate fraud complaints, with $173.6 million in reported losses—nearly half from victims aged 60 and up. Deed theft schemes thrive in high-property-value areas with overburdened systems, preying on elderly and disabled homeowners who lack the resources to fight back.

In Queens, our December 2024 victory established precedent for voiding fraudulent deeds through coordinated civil-criminal litigation. This precedent has already been cited in subsequent cases, offering a blueprint for lawyers and prosecutors confronting similar challenges. The Queens DA’s Office has embraced aspects of our integrated strategy, leveraging both criminal investigations and civil remedies—as standard for prosecution.

The City Bar Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project (HSP) incorporated our methods into its training for pro bono lawyers. HSP reports that our collaborative model has fundamentally transformed their approach to other complex housing matters involving vulnerable homeowners.

National and Systemic Impact: Nationally, our work has catalyzed a broader recognition that deed theft demands more than siloed legal responses. We exposed flaws in property recording systems and demonstrated conclusively how pandemic-era virtual procedures enabled fraud. Our findings have directly influenced discussions around modernizing records and strengthening verification protocols.

Social Justice: This case exemplifies how targeted legal work can protect individual clients while driving systemic change. Our vulnerability-informed strategy—treating clients’ age and disabilities as central legal considerations—has become a model for broader approaches to elder and consumer fraud. Most importantly, we proved that creative, coordinated advocacy can dismantle even the most sophisticated exploitation and restore justice to those most at risk.

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

FCC matter: Advocating for reforms to the IPCS marketplace is an exercise in patience and tenacity. Incarcerated people and their loved ones often have limited money or power to affect the system. This proceeding at the FCC began because our late client, Martha Wright-Reed, complained to the courts about the predatory IPCS rates she faced as she attempted to contact her incarcerated grandson. IPCS reforms are won incrementally, and progress does not come at an even pace. For example, the D.C. Circuit in 2015 struck down significant IPCS reforms, because of the FCC’s lack of authority over intrastate calling.

After the Martha Wright-Reed Act gave the FCC that explicit authority, the Biden FCC adopted permanent rate caps that are even lower than today. While the current FCC recently made certain adjustments to those reforms, the rates are still lower than the previous rates adopted in 2021. A dedicated team must maintain the ability to regroup after disappointment—and there have been difficult moments—and use your energy and conviction to continue the work. We have also been willing to try new and creative avenues to achieve results, whether that is looking for legislators to sponsor legislation or partnering with other advocates and with economists to build a record that will enable the agency to act.

Deed theft matter: Our success in this deed theft case stemmed from an innovative five-part strategy protecting vulnerable homeowners from sophisticated fraud:

Strategic Partnership Integration: We didn’t treat our work with the HSP as a standard co-counsel arrangement. Instead, we built an integrated team operating as a unified force. HSP offered housing expertise and community ties while we contributed litigation resources, white-collar defense skills, and capacity for complex discovery. Together, we provided legal and practical support for our elderly, disabled clients that neither organization could have delivered alone.

Coordinated Civil-Criminal Strategy: We knew civil litigation alone couldn’t reverse the fraudulent deed. Therefore, we coordinated with the Queens DA’s Office to ensure prosecution and civil action worked hand in hand. This partnership gave us access to criminal investigative tools and created aligned legal theories to overcome procedural barriers.

Vulnerability-Informed Legal Approach: We treated our clients’ age and disabilities not as background details, but as the cornerstone of both the fraud and our legal argument. This human-centered approach made our case both compelling and morally powerful.

Multidisciplinary Legal Framework: We addressed the case not merely as real estate fraud, but simultaneously as an estate issue, a criminal matter, and a civil rights violation—identifying remedies unavailable under any single legal theory.

Client-Centered Advocacy: We focused on both legal goals and immediate client needs, minimizing stress on vulnerable clients. The December 2024 court ruling validated our approach and created a replicable model for future cases.

Responses provided by Jenner & Block Partner Rebekah Goodheart and Special Counsel Greg Capobianco, Communications, Internet, and Technology, for the FCC matter.

Responses provided by Jenner & Block Associate Florian Fuhrimann, Investigations, Compliance, and Defense, for the deed theft matter.