Pro Bono

In 2020, Crowell created a Racial Justice Pro Bono Task Force and committed to providing $1 million in pro bono legal services in 2021 to advance the cause of racial equity and justice. Since its inception, the firm has dramatically increased its work in the areas of voting rights, police misconduct, and criminal justice reform.

Crowell has been involved in a number of complex and challenging pro bono matters. In recent years, our pro bono work has included:

• Securing a groundbreaking First Amendment victory in Overbey v. Mayor of Baltimore, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that Baltimore’s practice of prohibiting plaintiffs who have settled police misconduct cases from publicly discussing their experiences violates the First Amendment.
• Obtaining a favorable settlement on behalf of residents of Baltimore’s Harlem Park after their constitutional rights were violated during a six-day neighborhood lockdown by the Baltimore Police Department.
• Challenging the constitutionality of the last remaining confederate monument on public land in Maryland, which ultimately resulted in its removal.

In 2022, Crowell created a Reproductive Rights Task Force and committed to increasing its pro bono work protecting reproductive rights and abortion access. The firm has joined the Legal Alliance for Reproductive Rights, a volunteer effort by law firms led by the Bar Association of San Francisco that seeks to provide free legal services to those affected in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Crowell has authored three separate U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs in support of reproductive health rights, first in 2016 in Whole Women’s Health, et al. v. Kirk Cole, et al., on behalf of the Society for Hospital Medicine; then in 2020 in June Medical on behalf of the American Bar Association; and again in 2021 in Dobbs on behalf of the ABA.

Crowell collaborates with in-house legal departments on a variety of pro bono matters, from offering legal clinics to direct representation of individuals. Some of our recent collaborations include:

• Working with a client and Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area to assist individual asylum seekers who fled persecution in their home countries in a pro se asylum clinic.
• Working with a small group of outside counsel, the firm is serving as co-counsel in a prisoner’s rights lawsuit referred by the Equal Justice Initiative on behalf of an individual who is currently incarcerated at Ventress Correctional Facility in Alabama.
• Collaborating with a client to counsel nonprofit organizations on contracts and leases, intellectual property and licensing, and other various nonprofit management issues.

Crowell serves clients from around the world who are seeking protection and safety, including asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, and unaccompanied immigrant children. Our attorneys have obtained asylum for refugees who faced persecution if returned to their home countries and have reunited families at the Mexican border. Crowell has a wide-ranging pro bono immigration practice, including asylum, VAWA, SIJS, U visa, and appellate work.

The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees every person accused of a crime the right to counsel for his defense regardless of ability to pay. The firm’s pro bono program helps ensure this constitutional right by providing representation to the indigent in a variety of criminal justice matters — representing individual defendants at trial and on appeal, handling death penalty cases, and pursuing clemency for prisoners with inordinately severe “mandatory minimum” sentences. Crowell’s efforts have resulted in successfully removing two clients from death row, both of whom have been released from prison, and subsequently securing post-conviction wins for each.

Crowell has waged campaigns to support the civil rights of all individuals — from racial minorities to members of the LGBTQ community. Our attorneys have battled racial discrimination in public spaces, housing, the rental car market, and restaurant chains. Most recently, the firm challenged the constitutionality of the last remaining confederate monument on public land in Maryland, which ultimately resulted in its removal.

Crowell believes that giving children a voice in legal matters impacting their lives is essential and thus provides representation to children in a broad swath of matters ranging from special education to immigration proceedings. Crowell’s pro bono efforts have included keeping families in their homes through eviction defense, creating “forever families” through adoption for children in the abuse and neglect system, and obtaining protection for countless survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Our attorneys handle guardian ad litem matters, child custody cases, SIJS cases, special education advocacy, and adoption proceedings.

Crowell’s pro bono efforts focus on ensuring the right to vote for all our citizens. The firm represented Voice of the Experienced in challenging a Louisiana statute that effectively suspended voting rights for individuals sentenced only to probation and obtaining a legislative fix by which the voting rights of over 40,000 individuals were restored. Crowell’s other efforts to protect the right to vote include representation of a coalition of Black churches in Georgia in litigation challenging that state’s enacted Election Integrity Act of 2021 that places restrictions on voting; representation of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP as co-counsel with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in litigation challenging congressional, state senate, and state house redistricting plans in Georgia; and provision of assistance to the Advancement Project in drafting a report that was part of the Congressional Record in support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.  

Crowell’s pro bono attorneys have worked on a wide array of pro bono matters to help keep our neighbors housed. The firm was a founding member of the Housing Right to Counsel Project, a multipronged initiative focused on dramatically reducing evictions by increasing access to pro bono representation for people living in subsidized housing. Our attorneys have also helped unhoused and at-risk community members navigate complicated judicial and administrative systems. The firm also fights for the rights of low-income tenants to live in habitable conditions through representation of tenants’ associations in low-income housing buildings and individual tenants in pursuing litigation to obtain rectification of unsafe and unhealthy conditions.

Crowell believes that a life free of violence is a basic human right. The firm works to achieve this goal through direct legal services, advocacy, participation in hotlines and clinics, and appellate work. We have represented survivors in obtaining civil protection orders and in child custody litigation as well as at the state and federal levels.

Crowell extends our sincere thanks to all who have served in our armed services for their bravery and sacrifice, which makes our freedom and way of life possible. The firm recognizes the importance of supporting our veterans, both within our community and in our pro bono work. We are proud to help veterans fight for the government benefits they deserve, representing them in their appeals to obtain disability benefits and in military discharge upgrades, which also impacts their benefits.