Pro Bono

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Julia Bihary has recently joined Proskauer’s pro bono team in London. She has practiced as a litigator for six years (three of which were spent at Proskauer) prior to this move, specializing in complex commercial litigation and arbitration matters. She is also a solicitor advocate with Higher Rights of Audience, which enables her to appear in the higher courts of England and Wales. In this short interview, Julia explains more about her passion for pro bono and the transition to this new role.

Pro bono work regularly makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives, whether by securing a favorable outcome for an individual or resolving a class action case affecting thousands. While it’s important to recognize and support pro bono efforts in and of themselves, we also need to be able to take a…

A Proskauer London-based team, consisting of partner Paul Tannenbaum and associates Julia Bihary, Shameelah Khan, and Antonia George, were recently successful in a pro bono personal independence payment (“PIP”) appeal case. PIP is a benefit awarded by the Department for Work & Pensions (“DWP”) for people who need help with…

To signal the official launch of Proskauer’s 2024 Election Protection efforts, Proskauer hosted a panel presentation on voting rights.

With a presidential election coming up this fall, protecting the right to vote has never been more important. Proskauer’s panel event highlighted numerous present threats to American democracy, including voter suppression…

Since 2018, Proskauer has acted as pro bono legal counsel for a veteran who experienced racial discrimination during his service in the U.S. Marine Corps. Our client was stationed at Camp Pendleton in the mid-1970s. At that time, members of the Ku Klux Klan (“KKK”) served openly and actively at Camp Pendleton. Our client faced a pattern of severe harassment, beatings and threats of sexual harm and death by his immediate superior and others on his base, many of whom were active members of the KKK. In fear for his life and safety, he eventually went absent without leave, causing him to be unfavorably discharged from service.

Bloomberg and Proskauer are sponsoring Equal Justice Works Fellow Clay Pierce, who will work at the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project. Clay, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School, will work to advance voting rights for people with disabilities who are adversely affected by state laws that limit and criminalize voter assistance.

Last week, Proskauer prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of our client, Stuart Harrow, in an appeal that determined that the statutory deadlines for appealing administrative decisions are not automatically jurisdictional and do not prevent claims challenging a furlough from being heard in the Federal Circuit. Following a furlough in 2013, Department of Defense employee Stuart Harrow appealed to the Merits Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent agency established to adjudicate federal employment disputes, for a hardship exemption. He argued that he was prevented from finding other work due to a discontinuous six-day furlough and, as a result, should receive lost pay. After waiting several years for a decision, during which time the MSPB lost its quorum and temporarily stopped deciding cases, Mr. Harrow’s claim was eventually denied. Even then, it took some time for Mr. Harrow to learn of this decision, as it was sent to a DOD email address that had been deactivated.