Pro Bono Innovators 2024 Honoree Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

In our 2024 edition of Pro Bono Innovators, Bloomberg Law honors Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison for its work last year on New York City’s emergency response to an influx of migrants bused to the city from the southern border of the US who needed shelter. The firm is also noted for its legal support to mission-focused startups at the Robin Hood Foundation, a public-private partnership aiding low-income New Yorkers, and other matters.
 
Your firm’s key matters included representing the Coalition for the Homeless with the Legal Aid Society in a March 2024 settlement that preserved New York City’s “Right to Shelter” consent decree after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused thousands of migrants to the city and the city moved to suspend aspects of the decree. You also launched a new partnership with The Robin Hood Foundation’s Catalyst Program, an accelerator that “supports mission-driven startups” using AI to improve the lives of low-income New Yorkers. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?  

Migrant housing matter: Our approach on all of these matters has been strategic. In the Right-to-Shelter case, we drew on our deep, longstanding experience in homelessness advocacy as we have focused on finding practical solutions. While we acknowledged the incredible strain on city services caused by the migrant influx, we adamantly opposed the suspension of the consent decree that would have left individuals and families in need without the guaranteed right to shelter. Instead, we worked to develop constructive alternatives, including a settlement that safeguarded the right to shelter.

Meanwhile, because the need for legal services is so great, we have looked for ways to expand our impact by facilitating public-private partnerships between the city and law firms like ours, in this case, by helping new arrivals obtain work authorization and reduce their dependence on city support.

Robin Hood Initiative: For the Robin Hood Foundation partnership, we focused on strengthening frontline nonprofits and start-up tech companies that serve low-income communities. We provided legal guidance—including data privacy, IP and governance support— to eight organizations that use AI to address routine or extraordinary challenges faced by low-income New Yorkers.

Participants included creators of an AI technology that engaged children in reading and literacy, and creators of a grocery store app to easily use SNAP benefits. By providing legal support to these innovative community-based organizations and startups, we act as a “force multiplier” and help them develop solutions that can scale their impact in fighting poverty across New York City.

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?

Migrant housing matter: Our multi-pronged strategy for addressing the linked issues of homelessness and recent arrivals to New York City was innovative in several ways.  First, we simultaneously positioned ourselves in opposition to, and in partnership with, city government.

When the city threatened to eviscerate the Right to Shelter’s critical protections for all New Yorkers and to blame recent arrivals for that loss rather than its own decades-long failure to provide affordable housing, we fought that misguided governmental action in court. Recognizing, however, that the influx of recent arrivals, in fact, was stretching city shelters to the breaking point, we simultaneously partnered with the city, dedicating our talents and resources to achieve thoughtful solutions through cooperative means.

Second, we developed, launched, and grew an enormously successful first-of-its-kind program that brought together government, the private bar, paying clients, law schools and others to address the issue underlying the migrants’ reliance upon government services—the inability to work lawfully. We helped launch a city program that secured on a large scale the immigration relief and work authorization needed to provide recent arrivals with economic stability and a way out of the shelters.

Third, again in partnership with the city, we strategically leveraged an old, largely forgotten state law to address the Texas governor’s busing scheme to break the city’s social services system to force a change in national immigration policy – an act of political theater by Governor Abbott. 
 
Fourth, we worked with the private sector to increase the supply of shelters. Through strategic innovations focused on practical solutions, we are meaningfully affecting the city’s interrelated homelessness and migration challenges.

Robin Hood Initiative: The most innovative components of our Robin Hood Initiative are the selection of clients served, the timeliness of the legal guidance provided, and the sustained and holistic aspect of the services provided. This collaboration with Robin Hood has achieved several important results.

First, our attorneys provided to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led and small, less-resourced nonprofits a level of corporate governance, tax, contract, real estate, and data privacy advice rarely available to any but the most established enterprises. By expanding those services to small mission focused startups, we are further building the capacity of the front-line providers of social services in low-income communities.

Second, by committing ourselves to the long-term health of those organizations and leaders who have strong ties to the communities they serve, we are helping to amplify the roles and effectiveness of those organizations and those leaders in the fight against poverty, and at the same time, promoting social mobility in communities impacted by structural racism and inequality.  

Third, unlike many other pro bono clinics, the initiative involves a tailored approach for each individual organization rather than a “one-size fits all” clinic, and a continuing level of engagement across a wide array of practice areas. Finally, by counseling community nonprofits on the implications of AI, we are preparing nonprofits to successfully advance services using AI and helping organizations scale their ability to serve more clients and bring greater efficiencies. 

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

Migrant housing matter: The impact of our multi-faceted approach to addressing the linked issues of homelessness and recent arrivals cannot be overstated. For four decades, the Right to Shelter has meant that anyone in New York City without a place to live is guaranteed safe, decent, and appropriate shelter so they do not have to sleep on the streets.

That right is a key reason New York does not have the ongoing extensive tent encampments seen in some other large cities and is a testament to a shared value of a basic standard of humanity. When the right was recently threatened and when recent migrants were blamed for decades’-long governmental failures, a core protection was jeopardized. Through our work, the Right to Shelter remains intact.

Through our partnership with the city, we helped launch and led others to join a unique and innovative initiative that has processed over 58,000 immigration applications in its first year, showing that a coordinated response among stakeholders can yield meaningful public benefits. Our work puts recent arrivals on the path to economic self-sufficiency, positioning a population of individuals unfairly characterized as being a burden to be economic contributors to our city.

Our use of state law to thwart the inhumane political theater of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program has curbed the reckless transport of recent arrivals to New York City. And our work with SeaChange Capital is increasing the supply of high-quality purpose-built shelters. 

Robin Hood Initiative: Our Robin Hood partnership provides a unique, innovative collaboration that enables change-makers across New York to focus on their missions with confidence that they have the same organizational and operational supporting structures in place that our corporate governance practice regularly provides to our paying clients. To date, our attorneys have devoted nearly 2,000 pro bono hours to strengthen nearly 40 frontline nonprofits through this initiative. 

We are confident that our legal services have enhanced the social fabric of the city by expanding the capacity of essential social services groups, homeless shelters, immigration providers, early education programs and other community-based organizations to provide direct services to the communities in which they operate, increasing the critical impact and scale of these organizations. 

 As one attendee of the Legal Health Check-Up noted, “Thank you for organizing this amazing opportunity for us. Having this level of support on a pro bono basis is truly a game-changer for our organization and allows us to focus on the ‘real work’ with peace of mind that our legal needs are covered and that we are in compliance with all relevant law.” Our AI toolkit and training will also serve as a resource as community-based nonprofits adapt to technological change affecting them and the communities they serve. 

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

Migrant housing matter: There can be no doubt that our emergency response work achieved meaningful results: The Right to Shelter remains intact, helping keep people off the streets, including protections for new arrivals. We were able to achieve that success due to our deep understanding and decades-long engagement with this issue and our strong relationships with other key players, including the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society.

Our partnership with the city has resulted in the filing of over 58,000 asylum, work permit, and temporary protected status applications over a single year, which has opened employment opportunities to the newest New Yorkers. The success of this program is the result of our firm leadership’s commitment to civic engagement and understanding that the private bar has the responsibility, the resources, and the talent to tackle our community’s greatest challenges. 
 
We led by example, diving into an untested program and asking our peer firms, our clients, and others to join. They did, and the results are changing for the better both the lives of recent arrivals and the condition of the city.

Through creative lawyering and skilled advocacy, our lawsuit against the bus companies participating in the Texas governor’s busing scheme to shift costs from Texas to New York to force a change in national immigration policy has resulted in a reduction of those reckless transports. We used a long-forgotten state law to meet the moment and achieve a result to benefit the city overall and protect new arrivals from being used as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s political pawns.

Robin Hood Initiative: Our Robin Hood initiative has also achieved substantial success by strengthening community-based organizations that provide food, shelter, housing, job training, education and other critical services that are necessary for stable communities. Providing these organizations with legal support for their operations, contracts, data privacy policies and governance enables them to maximize their impact and effectiveness—and thereby promote the well-being of often overlooked communities. 

These representations are successful because, unlike many transactional pro bono initiatives, our lawyers engaged in sustained and holistic counseling. We identified the nonprofits and for-profits that were closest to the community, found out what legal and operational support they needed, and delivered high quality legal services to meet that need and further their capacity.

Responses provided by Steven Banks, special counsel for the Paul, Weiss pro bono program, in consultation with firm Chair Brad Karp, Litigation Partner Michele Hirshman, and Transactional Partner Ray Russo, who oversees the Robin Hood Initiative.