Pro Bono

Our lawyers have shown exceptional leadership in providing legal representation to clients and civic and charitable organizations unable to afford traditional legal representation.  Some examples of our recent work in these areas include:  

• Employment attorney Drew Smith, who also serves as a Captain in the Army Reserves, has been instrumental in offering free legal services through the “Wills for Heroes” program, which helps provide area law enforcement, firefighters, and medical response teams with wills.  To date, Smith and his group have provided over 600 free wills to these local heroes.
  
  
• Real estate attorney Art Howson assisted a local church in establishing an environmentally friendly "green" parking lot.  The lot, surfaced with sod instead of asphalt or concrete, provides the benefits of preserving trees, reducing stormwater runoff, and being compatible with adjoining residential neighborhoods. It is one of the first of its kind in Greenville and will serve as a model for environmentally responsible development in the future.
  
  
• Intellectual property and appellate attorney Tom Vanderbloemen has handled numerous federal court appeals for parties who could not afford representation.  In a recent case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC (also the federal appeals court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals), Vanderbloemen successfully persuaded the court to vacate an order denying compensation to a veteran who had been improperly re-employed upon returning from military service.  Vanderbloemen has handled several other matters at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, where he previously worked as a law clerk.  In one appeal, he obtained a rare reversal of a criminal conviction and, in another, succeeded in having a dismissal of a civil rights claim reversed.