Help defend and support families in New York City as a pro bono attorney with CFR.

The Center for Family Representation (CFR) offers a unique professional environment and handles impactful cases that you can contribute to, whether you are already with a firm and looking for challenging pro bono opportunities or working toward the New York requirement of 50 hours of pro bono work to join the Bar. As a pro bono attorney with CFR, you contribute to our important mission, helping more families stay together for good in New York City—and around the country through our nationwide trainings.

In our groundbreaking, interdisciplinary practice, you will find attorneys, social workers, and parent advocates (who have been through the family policing system themselves) working closely together in a field of law that is deeply important, yet still largely misunderstood by the public.

For firms, pro bono projects can include:

• Writing and arguing a final appeal on behalf of a CFR client
• Reviewing an appeal and participating in a moot session to help prepare a staff or pro bono attorney for an appellate argument
• Litigating complicated neglect or abuse matters as of counsel to CFR, co-presenting the cases with a CFR attorney
• Assisting CFR in negotiating contracts and leases and on administrative and HR projects

For law graduates entering the legal profession, pro bono projects can include:

• Researching a novel area of procedure, evidence or substantive law
• Writing or updating a practice memo
• Augmenting CFR’s resources in a focused area of family, criminal or youth defense
• Developing training tools for practitioners in other states who are replicating CFR’s model

Law firms that have assisted CFR with pro bono work include Cantor Fitzgerald, Debevoise Plimpton, Dorsey & Whitney, DLA Piper, Latham & Watkins, Leader Berkon Colao & Silverstein, Proskauer Rose, Schulte Roth & Zabel, Seyfarth Shaw, Sidley Austin, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Kirkland & Ellis, and Winston & Strawn.

If you are interested in doing pro bono work with CFR, please contact Christine Waer at cwaer@cfrny.org.