To recognize outstanding commitment to volunteer legal services for the poor and disadvantaged, the Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services is seeking nominations for the 2008 Adams Pro Bono Publico Awards. The deadline for nominations is Friday, April 18. The awards will be presented in a ceremony at the Supreme Judicial Court in the John Adams Courthouse in the spring.

          Nominations should be submitted to: Richard McMahon, Esq., The 2008 Adams Pro Bono Publico Awards, c/o New Center for Legal Advocacy, Inc., 18 Main Street Extension, Third Floor, Plymouth, MA 02360. For further information, contact Alison Fallon at (508) 746-2777, or by email at: afallon@ncla.net . Nominations submitted in 2007 remain active for consideration in the 2008 Awards program.

          Named in honor of Attorneys John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the Adams Pro Bono Publico Awards recognizes individual lawyers, small and large law firms, government attorney offices, corporate law departments, and other institutions in the legal profession in Massachusetts that have “enhanced the human dignity of others by improving or delivering volunteer legal services to our Commonwealth’s poor and disadvantaged.”

          The Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services will select awardees from among those who have excelled in providing volunteer services in one or more of the following ways:

1)   volunteer participation in an activity or pro bono program which resulted in satisfying previously unmet needs or in extending services to underserved segments of the population;

2)   successfully litigated pro bono cases that favorably affected the provision of other services to the poor;

3)   successfully achieved legislation that contributed substantially to legal services to the poor.

          Last year, awards were presented to Attorney Leigh-Ann Patterson Durant of Lexington, Associate General Counsel of Clinical Trials and Medical Affairs for EMD Serono, Inc. in Rockland, formerly of Nixon Peabody LLP; Attorney Holly Sanborn Dyar of Kingston, a solo practitioner in Plymouth; and the Boston office of the law firm of Dechert, LLP.

          Established in August 1999, the Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services works to promote volunteer legal work in Massachusetts to help people of limited means who are in need of legal representation, in accordance with SJC Rule 6.1, Voluntary Pro Bono Publico Service ("for the public good"). Attorney Mary Ryan of Nutter, McClennen & Fish LLP chairs the Committee.