Pro Bono Report: On the Job for Poor Tenants
2004 marked the sixth full year of Kramer Levin’s Associate Service Program, in which the Firm staffs an ongoing position at South Brooklyn Legal Services. Three associates per year rotate through this position — each spending several months representing low-income tenants in Housing Court full time. Externs remain Kramer Levin employees on full salary. Litigation associates Spenser Friel and
Savvas Diacosavvas and corporate associate Sanoj Stephen served during 2004, and IP associate
Aaron Frankel took over in the spring of 2005. The Kramer Levin extern functions as a full-fledged Housing Unit lawyer, counseling individuals on emergency intake, filing motions in Housing Court to stop evictions, solving public benefits problems, and negotiating settlements with landlord attorneys. Since 1998, our associates have counseled more than 1,500 clients, represented more than 250 in active Housing Court cases, and also litigated several Article 78 proceedings in New York Supreme Court.
The program not only provides associates with unparalleled hands-on experience, it also makes an efficient use of pro bono time in meeting the legal needs of the poor, delivering services with unusual efficiency for a private firm pro bono program. Ed Josephson, South Brooklyn’s Director of Litigation, called the Kramer Levin externship “a tremendous addition to our office’s housing work that has allowed us to assist hundreds of families who otherwise would have faced homelessness due to chronic underfunding of the Legal Services program.”