In-house attorneys leave the 'house' to provide pro bono aid in the Gulf Coast region

Jill Nawrocki
Corporate Counsel
September 12, 2006

When Citigroup Inc. associate GC David Goldberg began knocking on the doors of New Orleans' small businesses this winter, he found local store owners who were left with nothing after Hurricane Katrina. Many of the people he spoke with were skeptical of legal assistance and confused by the idea of pro bono help. But seven months and several trips later, Goldberg and other attorneys have assisted nearly 1,000 small businesses in securing relief. And that's just for starters.

Since January, about 25 of Citigroup's roughly 500 U.S.-based attorneys have logged 350 hours on Katrina-related pro bono work. Besides Goldberg, another 15 in-house lawyers have made a total of five trips to the Gulf Coast -- four times to Mississippi, to work in legal clinics for Katrina victims, and once to Louisiana, to help establish a relief organization for small businesses. Even staff lawyers at the New York-based financial services giant who couldn't travel to the Gulf Coast pitched in by working on appeals to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It's all part of Citigroup GC Michael Helfer's mission. When he came on board in 2003, Helfer wanted to create a socially conscious legal department with a focus on pro bono. While strides had been made toward achieving that goal, the company's efforts didn't start to solidify until the Association of the Bar of the City of New York held a meeting last October about Katrina relief efforts. Conversations at that session jump-started Citi's pro bono program, says Goldberg, who attended the meeting.

Citigroup's Katrina work stands out because the bank is one of the very few companies to undertake a major pro bono effort in the Gulf Coast region. Officials at 12 national and regional legal aid organizations contacted for this story could not name another corporation that has mounted a significant post-Katrina pro bono program for the storm's victims. Calls to a sampling of Fortune 1000 companies, both in the Southeast and around the country, also failed to turn up efforts comparable to Citigroup's.

A LACK OF PRO BONO INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE GULF REGION

Esther Lardent, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Pro Bono Institute, says that many obstacles prevented in-house attorneys from doing more. In general, corporate counsel don't have the kind of legal expertise necessary for civic pro bono work. But perhaps the biggest challenge was the lack of infrastructure in the areas hit hardest by the storm last August. Louisiana and Mississippi "have not been known for [having] a very strong pro bono culture, even locally," says Lardent.

That's something that Goldberg and Kevin Curnin, special counsel and public service director at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, learned firsthand. (Stroock is one of Citigroup's regular outside firms.) At the October bar meeting, Goldberg and Curnin joined forces with the D.C.-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to form Second Wind, a new group designed to bring financial relief and disaster assistance to small businesses in New Orleans.

"After weeks of tracking the problem [from New York], it became clear there wasn't enough infrastructure [in New Orleans] to do what we needed to get done," Curnin says. "So we went down there and created it ourselves." Curnin, Goldberg and members of the Lawyers Committee literally knocked on doors to find people who needed their help. They continue to work with government officials in securing grants and relief funds for rebuilding efforts.

Through the Second Wind partnership, Citigroup learned of other Katrina-related pro bono opportunities. In June the company partnered again with the Lawyers Committee to serve as counsel for a proposed factory in Mississippi that will build environmentally sound modular housing for Katrina victims.

Citigroup lawyers have been especially eager to work in the Mississippi legal clinics that are run in conjunction with the Lawyers Committee, too. According to Citigroup special counsel Robert Underhill, there's a "long waiting list of [staff attorneys] who want to go down there." In addition, about 20 in-house lawyers are working on FEMA appeals for some 30 victims who were denied assistance or relief by the government agency.

Still, it's clear that many of Katrina's victims need more help. If Goldberg's experience in the region is any measure, that aid can't come fast enough. Gulf residents, he says, "have a long way to go."