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Small Alaska Firm Recognized for DP & Other Pro Bono Work: Pro Bono Gets Northern Exposure In Small Firm

  • 1/5/2004
  • The National Law Journal

Small Alaska Firm Recognized for DP & Other Pro Bono Work

Pro Bono Gets Northern Exposure In Small Firm
By Dee McAree

The National Law Journal, 1-05-04

To all appearances, the four-lawyer firm of Feldman & Orlanksy is a small shop. That's until you check out its pro bono work. Then it looks like a giant.

The Anchorage, Alaska, firm dedicated about 12% of its billable hours to providing free legal services to needy clients in 2003.

With just two partners and two associates, the firm took on pro bono cases that range from death row representation in Texas to helping a single mother with breast cancer retain custody of her son.

The firm's major pro bono victory this year came in a legal challenge to a parental notification law on behalf of Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights. The firm's lawyers persuaded a state judge to knock down a law that required minors to get parental consent to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood of Alaska v. State, No. 3AN 97-6014 (Anchorage, Alaska, Super. Ct.).

The firm has a successful fee-generating practice that runs the gamut from mass tort to environmental defense at both the trial and appellate levels. Often it serves as co-counsel to larger out-of-state firms litigating in Alaska.

Managed by Jeff Feldman and Susan Orlansky, with associates Julie Rikelman and Ruth Botstein, the firm has a commitment to pro bono derived from the belief that such work is a privilege that comes with having a law degree, not a sacrifice, the lawyers say. "We can say that we did help people, we did have an effect," Orlansky said. "Sometimes it's on issues, sometimes on individuals."

In the abortion rights case, Rikelman and the center's lawyer, Janet Crepps, persuaded Superior Court Judge Sen K. Tan that the parental consent law violated the equal protection clause of the state's constitution. They argued that it required minors to involve a parent only in their decision to have an abortion, not in other medical decisions like giving birth. The law held a doctor criminally liable if he performed an abortion without either consent or a judicial waiver that could be obtained by the minor in special circumstances, such as instances of parental abuse. But Rikelman and Crepps convinced the judge that it would be too difficult for a minor to navigate her way through the judicial process of obtaining a waiver, particularly in small villages in Alaska where there are few lawyers and even fewer courts.

Battle in Texas

Partners Feldman and Orlansky also answered the call from the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project this year.

They flew to Texas to meet Elroy Chester, who received a death sentence for the murder of an off-duty fireman in Beaumont, Texas. The lawyers have filed a habeas application to establish that Chester is mentally retarded, and therefore cannot be executed. Ex Parte Elroy Chester, No. 76044-b (Jefferson Co., Texas, Dist. Ct.).

The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of the mentally retarded. The firm will foot the bill for the expert witnesses and Chester's psychological examinations, not to mention the travel to Texas.

"We hope it will be a long battle," Feldman said. "That's the name of the game when you are trying to keep someone alive." Feldman was motivated to take the case by a deep-rooted objection to the death penalty. "I remember when the Supreme Court said states could kill people and I remember the first execution of Gary Gilmore in 1976."

The process of how the firm chooses its pro bono clients is "organic," he said. Sometimes it takes cases through public interest groups, other times it is a needy person who walks through their office door.

Natalie Phillips, a journalist, was one such person. She walked through the office doors of Feldman & Orlansky in a dire legal situation and nearly bald from undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She was too weak, physically and financially, to fight the father of her 3-month-old child, an attorney, who was contesting her shared custody rights.

"He [the father] argued that since I was dying I should lessen the bond with my son," Phillips said through tears. "My cancer is nothing I have much control over."

Feldman represented her for the last four years, including an appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court that rejected the father's argument on all 28 points.

"I think that is a testimony to how good and how careful the lawyering was," Phillips said. She added that her case was treated as important as a paying client's.

Feldman said he is not impressed that his firm devoted nearly twice the amount of time to pro bono work than even the most generous of the large firms. "The question for me is not why we gave 12%, it's why the ABA's standard is so low," he said. "Most lawyers could afford to give more."

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