Pro Bono Innovators 2024 Honoree DLA Piper

In our 2024 edition of Pro Bono Innovators, Bloomberg Law honors DLA Piper for its success securing a redistricting win on behalf of Navajo Nation voters in San Juan County, New Mexico. The firm is also honored for successfully running a program that has trained more than 180 women lawyers in Nepal in skills such as negotiation and mediation.

Your firm’s key matters over the past year include a redistricting victory which helps safeguard voting rights for indigenous people in New Mexico and a successful training program for women lawyers in Nepal. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?

Navajo Nation voting rights protection: Taking on a redistricting matter is a heavy lift for the firm. We commit a lot of resources, including time and costs related to running a litigation. These types of litigations can last for two or more years and generally end with a trial and potentially an appeal.

DLA Piper reviews these matters with an open mind toward accepting the matter if it appears to be an opportunity to right a wrong, while also considering the political climate and likelihood of success. For this matter, we carefully considered the makeup of the DLA Piper team, as well as which nonprofit organizations had the expertise and experience, we needed to win the case.

Importantly, prior to filing the lawsuit, we worked with the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission to demonstrate the lack of representation in each of the relevant San Juan County districts. In addition, we ran alternative maps to be certain there was a workable scenario that would give the Navajo opportunities to be appropriately represented. We also considered how a negative decision, if published, would affect the national landscape for these types of matters.

Training women lawyers in Nepal: Our Nepal project is run through New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s global pro bono initiative that provides long-term pro bono legal assistance around the world. New Perimeter’s mission is to advance justice and strengthen institutions to support a fairer, more sustainable, and prosperous world.

New Perimeter collaborates with charitable organizations, governments and academic institutions, and draws on the resources of DLA Piper lawyers from across the firm’s global offices. These are the principles that guided us when developing and executing our training in Nepal. Specifically, our long-term commitment and strong relationships with organizations on the ground in Nepal have been critical to our strategy on this project.

We have also been guided by regular evaluations of the program by trainees, changing how we deliver the training to better respond to the needs of the people we are reaching. As part of our long-term commitment, we have worked to ensure that the project is sustainable by working closely with Nepali lawyers who help deliver the training— including some who have gone through the training themselves.

Our teams, which have traveled to Nepal to deliver trainings in person since 2015 with a brief pause for the pandemic (when we delivered virtual trainings), have taught Nepali women on numerous topics. Those topics include negotiations, arbitration, mediation, advocacy skills, intellectual property, corporate and commercial law, and legal ethics. Together with our project partners, Nepali lawyers who serve as co-trainers, and the women trainees who have offered feedback, we have modified our curriculum and added new topics that include speaking skills, business development, and client interviewing.

Our 2023 training was “residential,” meaning the DLA Piper lawyers who traveled to Nepal to deliver the training stayed at the training venue, together with the trainees, allowing the DLA Piper and Nepali lawyers not just to train together, but also to share meals, conversation, and recreational time, further building networks and contributing to the evolution of the program. (Past trainings were in Kathmandu, with DLA Piper lawyers and trainees commuting to the training venue each day.) As a result of the relationships forged during the training, DLA Piper lawyers often stay in touch with the Nepali women, both virtually and, when possible, in person.

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?

Navajo Nation voting rights protection: Redistricting matters are difficult to win in today’s environment. You need strong litigation counsel, world-class experts, local counsel who carry weight with the courts, and an organization that has experience handling these types of matters and representatives of the local community.

Bringing all these individuals and organizations together to function as one entity was the key to successfully challenging the district map. Each brought their own strengths, which allowed the team to proceed in an efficient, methodical and effective manner.

While collaboration between law firms and nonprofits is common, the most innovative aspect of this matter was the way in which we organized the collaboration, which included three immersive events on the Navajo Nation during the litigation, which allowed the lawyers to feel connected to the ancestors of the Nation. We had a blessing with a medicine man at the start of the litigation, a tour of the Nation land and a traditional Navajo lunch at the home of one of our plaintiffs.

In addition, after filing the lawsuit, we suggested mediation very early in the case. We wanted the mediator to help soften the hard position the county was taking, and over the course of the litigation, we leaned on the mediator and ended up settling on the eve of trial.

The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission contacted DLA Piper’s Ray Williams based on their previous collaboration on a voting rights matter in San Juan County, Utah. Ray led the innovation, working in coordination with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the ACLU of New Mexico, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, and the Navajo Nation Department of Justice to represent the Navajo Nation.

Training women lawyers in Nepal: Women in Nepal have access to fewer educational and professional opportunities, and because of this, there are very few women lawyers in Nepal, particularly in rural communities. (A 2023 International Bar Association report estimated that in 2020, only 12% of lawyers in Nepal—or approximately 2,200 lawyers—were women.)

This annual training program, which was held most recently in December 2023, created a first-of-its-kind network of Nepali women lawyers who can rely on one another for support and mentorship. Over the years, as the program has developed, opportunities to participate in the training have been extended beyond the capital, Kathmandu (with both the December 2023 training and upcoming November 2024 training taking place outside of Kathmandu), giving women lawyers from more remote areas valuable access to the skills development and networking opportunities that the training offers.

In more recent years, former trainees have been selected to serve as local trainers and assist with the planning of the training, which ensures the topics covered are highly relevant to the women participants. Notably, some of the Nepali participants report being the only woman lawyer in their villages or districts, so the training affords them a rare opportunity to connect with other women lawyers.

The innovation has been led by DLA Piper in collaboration with our on-the-ground project partners. Pro Bono Counsel Suzanna Brickman is the project manager, and Pro Bono Partner Lisa Dewey and Partner Andrew Valentine have played leadership roles.

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

Navajo Nation voting rights protection: The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of New Mexico in early 2022, challenged San Juan County’s 2021 redistricting map for county commission districts, which diluted the voting power of Navajo voters. The map packed Navajo citizens into District 1, which had an 83% Native American voting age population, while reducing the Native American voting age population in other districts below the level necessary to provide Navajo voters with an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, as required by Section Two of the federal Voting Rights Act.

This meant Navajo voters had an equal ability to elect preferred candidates in just one out of five districts, despite Navajo citizens making up roughly 40% of the county’s total population. The new map ensures a more equitable distribution of the Navajo population and will remain in place through the 2030 Census, with the two new Navajo opportunity districts first up for election in 2026.

This victory is a significant step in protecting voting rights for Indigenous people in New Mexico, as the suppression of their voting power has made it harder to achieve important policy priorities, such as providing and maintaining critical infrastructure on Navajo Nation land.

Training women lawyers in Nepal: While women lawyers have been practicing law in Nepal for over 50 years, men still dominate the profession. Trainees in our program mentioned that prior to their participation in the program, they experienced many barriers and constraints to practicing law—some of which seemed insurmountable, such as a lack of family support due to the need to practice for a considerable length of time before they would be able to earn money.

For most trainees, the program was their first opportunity to sit with other women lawyers, share their experiences, and gain courage, patience and motivation through the professional network they developed. Trainees said the experience was nothing short of transformative—one lawyer, for example, credited the training with being the source of encouragement she needed to continue working as a lawyer.

By bringing together women lawyers who are often professionally isolated in Nepal—particularly those located in more rural areas outside of Kathmandu—we were able to foster a sense of community within the group that many trainees remarked would stay with them as they continued to grow in their careers.

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

Navajo Nation voting rights protection: We argued the county’s redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act by denying indigenous voters the right to have their voices heard, and we were able to show that the voting power of the Navajo residents had been suppressed. There were numerous challenges—for example, we were in a very conservative jurisdiction, where it was not uncommon for family members to pass along the commissioner role to other family members for decades.

For this reason, getting the County Commissioner to agree to a new map was a big obstacle. While every party was actively involved in the matter, the bulk of the litigation process—including interviewing individual plaintiffs, drafting the complaint, responding to discovery, drafting briefs, taking and defending depositions, arguing briefs and attending status hearings, preparing for and participating in client meetings, mediation, and drafting of the settlement—was handled by DLA Piper and UCLA. As noted above, we determined that using a mediator was important, and by taking a coordinated, collaborative approach to this matter, we were able to secure a victory.

Training women lawyers in Nepal: We believe our success can be attributed to the longstanding nature of our commitment. We have been able to build relationships with key stakeholders in Nepal, tailor our program to the needs identified by local lawyers and women lawyers undergoing the training and involve people at the highest levels of the bar association and legal sector in Nepal.

We have prioritized “learning by doing” teaching techniques, encouraging women trainees to actively participate in group exercises that allow them to test new techniques and practice skills they will use in their work. Following their participation in the project, we’ve seen the women lawyers make significant strides in their careers, securing prestigious job positions and attaining high-ranking roles within the legal profession. Some are successfully running their own law firms.

These outcomes clearly demonstrate the project’s success in empowering women lawyers and facilitating their professional growth, which aligns with our objectives of capacity-building and career advancement for women in the legal field.

Responses provided DLA Piper Senior Counsel Raymond Williams for the Navajo redistricting matter.

Responses provided by DLA Piper Pro Bono Counsel Suzanna Brickman and Sara Andrews, co-director of New Perimeter for the Nepali woman lawyers training program.