WilmerHale’s pro bono practice ranked third in the US, according to The American Lawyer’s 2024 Pro Bono Scorecard. The annual scorecard analyzes and ranks the nation’s most prestigious law firms based on the legal services the firms have donated to organizations or individuals over the past year.
WilmerHale is one of only five firms whose lawyers averaged more than 100 hours of pro bono work in 2023, with over 98% of lawyers donating more than 20 hours of pro bono legal services. WilmerHale’s ranking is indicative of our continued commitment to pro bono representation, which has been a hallmark of the firm for over a century.
In 2023, WilmerHale continued to concentrate its pro bono impact litigation around racial justice, reproductive rights, voting rights and disability rights. Some of our recent pro bono representations have included:
- Achieved a 2.6-million-dollar settlement to compensate Black police officers wrongfully terminated from the Boston police force based on a racially discriminatory drug test;
- Secured an important voting rights victory in federal district court in Georgia, which ruled that the state’s legislative district maps had to be redrawn because they unlawfully diluted the voting strength of Black Georgians, violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; and
- Won at trial in a class action on behalf of 600 deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC). The federal district court found a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and ordered the DOC to remedy it.
In the post-Dobbs landscape, WilmerHale has also been successfully litigating challenges to laws across various states that restrict access to reproductive health care:
- Since 2022, the firm has been litigating on behalf of several abortion providers seeking to enjoin a law that would ban nearly all abortions in Indiana;
- As of February 2024, WilmerHale has secured permanent injunctions against three laws, and preliminary injunctions against two further laws, all of which would have severely limited abortion access in Montana; and
- As of May 2024, the firm filed an amended complaint challenging several Ohio restrictions on medication abortion under a new Ohio constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion.
At the same time, the firm has maintained a commitment to representing veterans in combat related special compensation and other benefits petitions, as well as immigrant individuals and families seeking humanitarian relief. Our work in these fields benefited hundreds of clients in 2023 alone.
Visit the Public Service and Pro Bono page to learn more about WilmerHale’s commitment to ensure equal access to justice.