NEW YORK, June 7, 2021: Morgan Lewis today begins its signature annual event of robust programming and service opportunities addressing critical issues facing our communities around the globe. This year’s theme, homelessness and housing, will be expanded from its historically one week of programming to the month of June as Community Impact Month 2021. We will explore and address these borderless issues, which have dramatically worsened throughout the communities where we live, work, and serve as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our firm has long been committed to serving those affected by or vulnerable to homelessness or the lack of affordable quality housing,” Morgan Lewis Firm Chair Jami McKeon said. “This year, these challenges have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic uncertainty, leaving those without shelter no safe reprieve from its spread and others to lose or jeopardize the homes they once had. We hope that focusing our dedicated resources to helping course-correct from the hardships the pandemic has brought on for so many will bring both greater awareness to the struggle of so many in our communities and relief to those most in need.”
Community Impact Month 2021 features educational programming from Habitat for Humanity and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, as well as service and pro bono opportunities such as eviction and housing defense training, asylum and veterans benefits clinics, and various donation drives—all developed to help our lawyers and professional staff make a more substantial impact on their communities.
In the fiscal year 2020, 100% of Morgan Lewis’s eligible lawyers firmwide met the firm’s annual Pro Bono Challenge to dedicate at least 20 hours to pro bono service. In total, our lawyers contributed more than 137,000 hours to the pro bono representation of individuals and nonprofit organizations and averaged 66 hours per lawyer—more than three times the number required to meet the challenge. They and our professional staff came together to support the firm’s nonprofit partners, legal service providers, and neighborhoods in a number of critical ways, including by providing counsel on COVID-19 stimulus funding access and donating personal protective equipment and food items to frontline responders.