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From our beginnings in 1904 as a single lawyer operation to our status as one of the top international law firms, Hogan & Hartson carries on a tradition of excellence established by our founder, Frank J. Hogan. As the economy and our clients’ businesses have globalized, so, too, has Hogan & Hartson. What remains constant, however, are the transcending professional and cultural values that distinguish us from other major law firms: our unwavering commitment to client service, excellence, integrity, community service, and diversity, and our recognized industry focus and team-oriented approach.

With more than 1,100 lawyers practicing in 27 offices worldwide, we work seamlessly across multiple practices and offices to provide our clients with exceptional service and creative advice. Working at the intersection of business and government, both domestically and internationally, we help our clients structure and complete their projects and transactions; vigorously represent their interests in all kinds of complex litigation, arbitration, and dispute resolution; guide them and their businesses through the maze of government regulation; and secure, protect, and defend their intellectual property. Because our clients’ success and satisfaction are paramount goals for all Hogan & Hartson lawyers, our teams create a working experience that evolves into enduring relationships.

More than 35 years ago, Hogan & Hartson became the first major firm to establish a separate practice group devoted exclusively to providing pro bono legal services. Since its inception in 1970, our Community Services Department (CSD) has been charged with attracting and staffing both high impact matters raising issues of public importance, as well as smaller cases addressing individual problems. Although a few firms have followed our model in recent years, we believe the CSD remains the finest institutionalization of pro bono commitment.

Hogan & Hartson's CSD has been honored with such tributes as the American Bar Association "Pro Bono Publico Award" and the District of Columbia Bar's "Pro Bono Law Firm of the Year Award," and with such press descriptions as "The Power Program" in pro bono and the "paradigm" for pro bono service by law firms.

Since Hogan & Hartson established the CSD, it has achieved a nationwide reputation among civil rights, environmental, homeless and other public interest groups. Over the years, the CSD has earned the allegiance of major organizations, which now often approach the CSD on critical public interest matters. Among these groups are the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Grand Canyon Trust, Legal Counsel for the Elderly, the National Parks Conservation Association, Public Counsel, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Human Rights First, the International Rescue Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc (LDF). The firm also receives numerous court appointments from the local and federal judiciary in civil, and occasionally criminal, cases at both the trial and appellate levels.

The CSD has handled hundreds of matters in recent years, including some high-profile "impact cases" of national importance. Most recently, the firm achieved significant victories in two separate pro bono cases for six Washington, D.C. homeowners who were facing the loss of their homes after falling prey to an aggressive mortgage foreclosure “rescue” scam. Both cases alleged that individuals would persuade homeowners on the verge of foreclosure to sign over deeds to their homes by falsely representing that the homeowners were borrowing money from the defendants to save their homes. In fact, the homeowners were misled into signing confusing documents that purported to transfer title to their homes and required them to lease back their homes from the defendants at inflated prices, despite the fact that the homeowners were still responsible to the banks for their original mortgages.

A D.C. Superior Court jury found that the defendants had defrauded one homeowner and violated the D.C. Consumer Protection Act, and awarded punitive and compensatory damages totaling more than $3.3 million. Shortly after the successful verdict, we teamed with the AARP Legal Foundation and Legal Counsel for the Elderly to obtain very favorable settlements from many of the same defendants for five other D.C. homeowners. Under the terms of the settlement, the defendants returned the homes of several of the plaintiffs (many of them cleared of their old mortgages), and paid more than $455,000 in cash compensation.

Our historic commitment to immigration work, and experience in cross-border matters involving Latin America and the United States, led to a victory for a client seeking an adjustment of his immigration status to lawful permanent status in the United States under the Cuban Adjustment Act. Our client came to us after his petition had been denied by the District Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in Miami. He was denied on the grounds that he was not considered a Cuban citizen entitled to consideration for permanent resident status under the act because, although he was born to Cuban parents who fled Cuba, he had not resided in Cuba. Our lawyers succeeded in convincing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in Miami to adopt a new standard for the adjudication of residency petitions under the act for any applicant born outside of Cuba who acquired Cuban citizenship on the basis that at least one parent was a Cuban citizen at the time of the applicant’s birth. This is a significant victory not only for our client, but also for many others whose parents fled Cuba to countries other than the United States before their birth.

There are many recent examples of litigation accomplishments through the firm’s pro bono work. In November 2006, the firm’s Miami office prevailed in a jury trial that resulted in a $2.5 million award in favor of our pro bono client, Ulysses Hudson, in what has been hailed as a record verdict for a case referred from the Volunteer Lawyers’ Project for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Mr. Hudson claimed that he was discriminated against based on his disability by having his workplace accommodation taken away and then by being refused another workplace accommodation so he could return to work. The government resolved all post-trial issues, so Mr. Hudson’s claim is fully resolved.

In a complete victory for environmental groups, Hogan & Hartson won a historic battle to protect a national park from federal and private interests. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is one of the newest U.S. national parks, renowned for spectacular gorges created by the flow of the Gunnison River. When a 2003 Interior Department agreement threatened to divert that flow to build subdivisions, highways, and shopping malls, an environmental coalition turned to us for assistance. After three years of hard-fought litigation, the court blocked the federal government from giving away the Gunnison, holding that the National Park Service has a responsibility to preserve water rights reserved to its parks.

Issues involving children and families are of special importance to the firm. Hogan & Hartson played a vital role in the recent settlement of a case that brought a happy and stable resolution to the contested custody of a young girl residing in Florida while her father was living in Cuba. We represented the guardian ad litem, who was charged with advocating for the best interests of the five-year-old girl who came here legally from Cuba. The girl had been placed in foster care after her mentally disturbed mother attempted suicide in her and her brother’s presence. Though the children thrived together in the stable and loving home of the foster parents, her father wanted her back in Cuba. The dispute over custody of the child was very public and highly charged. After six months of intensive international discovery and emergency hearings, and day after day of a trial spanning six weeks in a packed courtroom under the scrutiny of television cameras, the parties reached a settlement. The child and her father will stay in the United States for at least three years and she will spend every other weekend with her brother and her foster family.

We filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court during the last two Terms in cases raising significant issues, including the Voting Rights Act, and the constitutionality of voter identification laws. In the United States courts of appeals, recent cases and amicus briefs have involved the appropriate duration for a consent decree governing the child welfare system in Alabama, the impact of the government’s consideration of legal fee-advancement policies as part of the decision whether or not to indict in a criminal case, and the constitutionality of a state prison program that involves religious teachings and commitment.

Our pro bono activities extend beyond litigation. One of the firm's major pro bono projects in recent years has been a collaboration with the DC Appleseed Center on a research study and report on the District of Columbia's response to HIV/AIDS: HIV/AIDS in the Nation's Capital: Improving the District of Columbia's Response to a Public Health Crisis. Issued in August 2005, the report was widely reported in the media and acclaimed by the health care community. The mayor quickly agreed to establish a task force on the response to HIV/AIDS. The Washington Post business columnist Stephen Pearlstein concluded in his 2005 year-end wrap up of charitable activities that "any list

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