Brown Rudnick Center for the Public Interest/VLA Video

Tonight is the culmination of a lot of work from a lot of people It's the "Holiday Card Contest" sponsored by Brown Rudnick It's a time when we pull together students from all across Boston's public high schools and junior high schools and middle schools who have entered art in our contest to choose a holiday card that we send out to clients and to friends. And it's fun for the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA) - which is a program of the Arts & Business Council - every year and we've done it for 10 years +. The Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation started in 2001 and it had the opportunity for us to do pro bono legal work with the organization we're funding. The VLA "fee collection" initiative at Brown Rudnick is to provide legal services to artists who can't afford a lawyer primarily in situations where they are trying to collect amounts that they are due, for services that they have performed. We decided that we were going to make grants ...grants that we would make once a year to tax exempt organizations, nonprofit organizations to help advance inner-city education in locations where Brown Rudnick has offices, like Boston. We asked for proposals, and we selected what we thought were the best for us. One that we really liked was from the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, of Massachusetts. this initiative I think is successful because it is a partnership, and it's a partnership between a small, local nonprofit that's supporting the Arts, a law firm that supports the Arts through pro bono service, and the Boston public schools that love to partner with nonprofits and businesses to showcase their work. It isn't just one of us out there doing it - we are doing it together. I like to see that organizations are going out of their way to enrich kids with art and give them opportunities to show their skills, because sometimes they're not shown, they're overlooked. So for an organization that has nothing to do with art to reach out to us, it's a very great feeling. Brown Rudnick is focused on: what can we do about inner-city education - improving it in the cities we have offices. Our presence in this field has resonated and we've developed collaborations with other arts organizations in the city. It has given me a chance to do pro bono work, to work with dozens of my colleagues, and to provide real service to a community that needs access to justice but can't afford it. This Firm can find a way to make that compatible - not just compatible, but to celebrate it. It makes me very proud. It makes me feel good about the profession that I am in, good about the people I work with, and good about the changes in the world that we are trying to bring about.