Boston Volunteer Legal Organizations Honor Ropes & Gray for Pro Bono Work

Boston’s Senior Partners for Justice and the Volunteer Lawyers Project gave Ropes & Gray their “MVP” (Most Valuable Partner) award for pro bono work at the organizations’ monthly luncheon on Jan. 17.

The January 2012 Meg Connolly MVP award goes to “volunteers who have gone above and beyond the call,” according to the organization. “We deeply appreciate everything Ropes is doing to further access to justice for all,” said Barbara L. Siegel, project manager at Senior Partners for Justice.

Ropes & Gray was honored in particular for its dedication to providing guardianship assistance and representation for minors and incapacitated adults. Our clients are often grandparents and other relatives of children whose parents are unavailable to care for them or clients with a relative who is intellectually disabled or suffers dementia and is in need of guardianship. Retired partner Bill Patton trained Ropes & Gray lawyers to do this important work. In total, Ropes & Gray lawyers and paralegals donated almost 1,000 hours to helping low-income clients obtain guardianships in 2011.

Founded in 2002 by the Hon. Edward M. Ginsburg, retired associate justice of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court, Senior Partners for Justice encourages lawyers to serve low-income families and individuals in divorce, paternity, child support, custody and other family law matters. The Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association provides free legal services to low-income residents of Greater Boston.

Ropes & Gray attorneys handle many types of pro bono cases including asylum, immigration, health care, housing, clinics and nonprofit assistance. The firm and its attorneys have been consistently recognized for pro bono work, including receiving the Law Firm Pro Bono Award from the D.C. Bar in June 2011 and being named one of 10 firms on the National Law Journal’s “2011 Pro Bono Hot List.”