Tell me about your regular practice area: Where do you practice and what do you do? What do you love most about your job?
I primarily focus on commercial and municipal litigation. I enjoy helping clients solve complex problems and making arguments in court.
What is your most recent pro bono experience?
I am currently helping a North Carolina resident receive hurricane relief funding, another client with a pothole claim, and participating in the ABA’s Free Legal Answers program.
How has engaging in pro bono legal service enriched your career, or enriched you personally or professionally?
Pro bono matters give me an opportunity to learn new strategies that I would not otherwise encounter representing my private clients. For example, I did pro bono work for a client seeking to get out of a contract due to COVID. This project taught me how to apply the frustration of purpose doctrine. I later applied the frustration of purpose doctrine based on COVID to help a private client keep important litigation stay in place.
Of what moment(s) from your pro bono work are you the most proud?
In an earlier project, I worked on a team at my firm that reunited an abducted child with his mother. The biological father had removed the child from his native country and kept the child in the United States. My firm’s team had experience with similar matters and we were able to get the child returned back home to his mother.
What advice would you give someone who has not yet provided any pro bono work?
Pro bono is to lawyers what racing is to auto manufacturers. Pro bono gives you unique opportunities to apply your legal knowledge and build your competence in ways you would otherwise be unable to do while working for private clients. Auto manufacturers don’t make any money racing, but their products are much better for it and the best ones all do it. The same is true for lawyers.