Every year summer associates at leading New York City law firms represent Legal Aid clients who are seeking disability benefits and are fighting to preserve their subsidized apartments. This summer, pro bono participation reached a new level when summer associates from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, LLP, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, Kaye Scholer LLP, O'Melveny & Myers LLP, Shearman & Sterling LLP, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP volunteered to provide comprehensive legal representation for fifty (50) low income New Yorkers.

In addition to individual representation, Cadwalader provided two summer associate externs to work in understaffed Legal Aid practice areas. John English worked with the Consumer Law Project in Queens, under the supervision of Legal Aid staff attorney Susan Shin, and Matthew Oliver assisted John Volpe, director of Legal Aid's Mentally Ill Chemically Addicted (MICA) Project.

Proskauer Rose initiated a new summer associate project to augment Legal Aid's efforts to provide advice to low income New Yorkers about their rights pursuant to a newly enacted New York City law banning discrimination by landlords based on source of income. The firm's summer associates also assisted tenants whose Section 8 rent vouchers were suspended because their landlords failed to maintain housing quality standards. Rounding out Legal Aid's busy pro bono summer associate program, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz created two-week externships for their summer associates to work with Legal Aid's law reform units.

All of these firms and their talented summer associates made a major contribution to the provision of legal services to our clients. We look forward to working with them when they become first year associates at their respective law firms.