Squire Patton Boggs has a long-standing commitment to pro bono services that promote equal justice and provide service for those with limited resources.
Our pro bono legacy is deeply rooted in our dedication to the communities where we live and work, both in the US and around the world. We actively encourage and support our lawyers in answering the call to serve and volunteer their legal services each year by providing billable credit, awards and other recognitions for performing pro bono work.
Our lawyers work on a diverse range of pro bono matters that advance social justice, support nonprofit organizations across the globe, protect our global resources and provide individual assistance to those in need. In addition, the firm’s Public Service Initiative (PSI), a team of lawyers in our New York office, is dedicated to handling the most challenging constitutional criminal justice issues, innocence cases, and challenges to the death penalty.
In 2016, PSI secured the release of Albert Woodfox, of the Angola 3, who served 44 years in solitary confinement – a story that is told in Mr. Woodfox’s highly praised memoir, Solitary.
After 30 years of asserting his innocence on Alabama’s death row, Christopher Barbour finally won a court order entitling him to DNA testing, which not only excluded him and a co-defendant as the perpetrators, but also identified another man already serving a life sentence for murder as the likely actual perpetrator. PSI is now preparing for a hearing to prove Mr. Barbour’s innocence.
PSI submitted the principal amicus brief on behalf of several national defense organizations in McWilliams v. Dunn, which – as evidenced by the majority opinion’s reliance on the brief – was critical to convincing the US Supreme Court that an indigent defendant is entitled to a mental health expert independent of the state and prosecution.
Having secured a decision that vacated Kenneth Reams’s death sentence, PSI and the NAACP LDF are now working to secure clemency for Mr. Reams and recently filed his federal habeas petition.
In 2016, PSI secured a court ruling stating that Joseph J. Dick Jr. was innocent, leading to the dismissal of all criminal charges against him and his co-defendants (the Norfolk Four) and, one year later, an absolute pardon for all of them from the Governor of Virginia.
After presenting more than 20 witnesses testifying to how his conviction was based on flawed forensics and incorrect facts, Rodney Reed’s compelling claim of innocence is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and garnering bipartisan legislative support in the Texas House of Representatives.