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Ramping Up Our Impact
At Legal Aid DC, our partnerships with law firms and individual attorneys who volunteer their time allow us to connect more clients with high-quality legal representation than we could otherwise provide. Our Pro Bono Program reaches out into the legal community, refers cases to dedicated lawyers, and provides training, mentorship, and support to pro bono teams. This work doesn’t just help individual clients; it also strengthens the culture of pro bono legal services in the District. Over the past year, pro bono attorneys have represented clients in more than 200 matters including eviction defense, housing conditions, child custody, disability benefits, and criminal record sealing.
Client Spotlight: Beating the Odds with Pro Bono Help
Mariam Sanu, a 34-year-old DC resident, was twice denied Social Security disability benefits despite the severe health challenges she faced. Without those benefits and unable to work, she was forced to live in a shelter, where it was nearly impossible to improve her medical condition. She reached out to Legal Aid DC and was connected to pro bono attorneys at Vinson & Elkins. Together they fought back, compiling medical evidence showing the severity of Ms. Sanu’s conditions. As a result of their persistence, a judge ruled in her favor, granting both Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance benefits along with two years of back pay. For Ms. Sanu, the outcome was life-changing — allowing her to regain stability and focus on her health.
“I definitely would not have been able to receive my benefits without legal help,” she said.
Interested in learning more about pro bono at Legal Aid? Contact Sylvia Soltis at ssoltis@legalaiddc.org.
“Pro bono work with Legal Aid is important because it allows for the chance to provide high-quality legal services to individuals who might otherwise have no access to them.” — Monique Watson, Partner, Vinson & Elkins
Skill Building
Our team works to get attorneys involved in their firms’ pro bono initiatives and to build skills. Often, our pro bono partners take cases outside of their usual practice, creating an opportunity to learn about a new area of law. An experienced Legal Aid mentor assigned to each case provides support, guidance, and training to the pro bono team. And in 2025 Legal Aid hosted broader trainings on topics including criminal record sealing, Medicare Part D, and skills for client-centered lawyering. In addition, we hosted three tours of Landlord-Tenant Court for attorneys, during which participants observed proceedings and met with judges to help demystify the process. Pro bono attorneys from Crowell & Moring, Steptoe, Arnold & Porter, Blank Rome, and Covington & Burling also shared their own experiences representing tenants with members of the DC Council at a courthouse tour and roundtable.
A Rush for Record Sealing
Our Pro Bono team places individual cases as need arises, prioritizing clients with an upcoming hearing or deadline so they don’t have to navigate that step alone. However, this year called for a larger mobilization of pro bono support ahead of a change in DC policy. In March, a new law went into effect that reshaped the District’s criminal record sealing laws. The Second Chance Amendment Act made more residents eligible to have their record sealed and enacted automatic sealing for certain misdemeanors and non-convictions starting in 2027.
Unfortunately, the law as initially drafted created an unintentional gap, and people with certain offenses saw their pathway toward record sealing narrow, even though the law was intended to make relief more accessible.
Legal Aid and our pro bono partners, including Morgan Lewis, rushed to file as many motions for record sealing as possible on behalf of those who would fall into the gap before the new law went into effect. Nevertheless, DC Superior Court Judges denied many of them, citing the new law because the decisions were made after the change.
Legal Aid’s Reentry and Appellate Advocacy teams switched tactics. Pro bono partners including Covington & Burling amended filings and submitted new motions opposing the Court’s denials. At the same time, our Policy Advocacy team urged the DC Council to pass an emergency fix, which was eventually signed into law in July.
"With help from our pro bono partners, we responded in real time as the Courts and the DC Council worked through the early challenges in the new record sealing law,” said Sylvia Soltis, Director of the Pro Bono Program. “By advocating for individual clients and sharpening our legal strategy, we prevented our clients from being subjected to an absurd, overly restrictive interpretation that ran counter to the law’s clear intent: to broaden access to criminal record sealing.”
Since the technical issues with the law were resolved, Legal Aid and pro bono attorneys have continued to help clients have their records sealed through the new pathways to relief. Over the course of the year, the Legal Aid Pro Bono program placed 54 record sealing cases and was instrumental in making relief more accessible to DC residents with a criminal record.
