At Munger, Tolles & Olson we view our pro bono work as a responsibility that we have as professionals and as citizens to assure a fair and just legal system. Since our firm was founded, MTO lawyers have been committed to providing high quality pro bono service. The firm was one of the charter signatories to the American Bar Association's pro bono challenge, and consistently devotes more than of 3% of all attorney time to delivering needed pro bono legal assistance. In recognition of our pro bono service, Munger Tolles received the ABA's coveted Pro bono Publico Award. The firm has received several other honors, including the State Bar of California's law firm pro bono award, in recognition of our pro bono contributions. In 2002, individual attorneys at MTO received the 2002 Voting Rights Award of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights for the Bay Area's Robert Sproul Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award.

As part of our pro bono commitment, we frequently represent indigent and other under-represented individuals. We have successfully tried cases on behalf of a class of capital prisoners in Oklahoma and Texas challenging the method of execution, a class of homeless people in San Francisco who were arrested for resting or sleeping in public, and we prevailed in an appeal before the Ninth Circuit establishing that an expunged foreign criminal conviction for a minor drug possession offense cannot be the basis for deportation. We also have staffed legal clinics for Bet Tzedek, Public Counsel, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights for the Bay Area, and the Federal Court Referral Panel. These matters have included providing legal assistance to indigent individuals on matters involving landlord-tenant disputes, government benefits, political asylum, school expulsions, mortgage fraud, and credit problems. In addition, we have successfully represented inmates in actions against the Pelican Bay State Prison, including a recent case in which an inmate sued a prison doctor for diagnosing him with Hepatitis C and then failing to tell him that he had contracted the disease or provide him with any treatment for it.

Extending to Broader Communities
While we have a strong  pro bono commitment to representing indigent individuals and the organizations that assist them, our pro bono practice extends to activities that benefit broader communities as well. Some recent cases include the following:

• MTO represents the Senate and House sponsors of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as "McCain-Feingold" or "Shays-Meehan") as intervenor-defendants in the D.C. federal court lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of that law. The cases are pending before a three-judge court, and the decision of that court is subject to a direct appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Previously, MTO represented the sponsors of Proposition 68 and Proposition 208, the 1988 and 1996 campaign finance reform initiatives passed by California voters.

• MTO lawyers were instrumental in a recent decision requiring California to retire outdated chad-producing punch card voting machines before the 2004 presidential election.

• We represent the Real Parties in Interest in an action by Ward Connerly against five state agencies seeking to prevent collection of data relating to race and gender under Prop 209. The 3rd Appellate District recently upheld all of the data collection provisions against Connerly's federal and state constitutional attacks.

• From 2000 to 2002, we have worked with the Alliance for Children's Rights Adoption Day program to finalize 65 adoptions that have languished in the system, sometimes for years, for want of attorneys to help parents with completing the necessary forms.

• We served as a principal drafter of the Christopher Commission report on police conduct in Los Angeles and on the Commission's follow-up report to monitor progress in correcting deficiencies in police conduct. MTO lawyers served as General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel of the Task Force created by the Los Angeles Police Commission to study the LAPD with regard to various issues raised by the Rampart Division corruption scandal. After a thorough investigation of the culture and operation of the LAPD, the Task Force issued a lengthy Report which included recommendations for improving the LAPD. Many of those recommendations for change were incorporated into a U.S. Justice Department consent decree. An MTO attorney currently serves on the Los Angeles County Bar Association's Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform.

• We represented classes of individuals with hearing and mobility impairments in an action against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, CalTrans and the California Highway Patrol seeking to make the 4300 freeway callboxes in Los Angeles County accessible. In the settlement, the defendants agreed install devices in all of those callboxes to permit people with hearing impairments use them and to upgrade the callboxes to make the wheelchair accessible.

We have also served as amicus counsel on a pro bono basis in various matters before the United States Supreme Court, submitting briefs for the American Bar Association in support of immigrants' rights and in opposition to the exclusion of gays from the Boy Scouts, the National Association of Attorneys General regarding measures to address gang violence, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights on voting rights issues, the Minority Business Enterprise Legal Defense and Education Fund with respect to minority business set-aside programs established by Congress for federal construction contracts, and the governments of Ecuador and other nations regarding the rights of aliens under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations. In the Circuit Courts, the firm has represented gay and lesbian servicemember organizations challenging limits on military service, Common Cause in advocating campaign finance reform, the Alliance for Children's Rights in cases to protect the rights of homeless children and families, and the Western Law Center for Disability Rights regarding the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act to public sidewalks.

Investing in the Clients We Serve
Our commitment to pro bono also includes investing ourselves in the clients we serve. Several attorneys serve on the boards of directors and provide direct services to organizations, including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in the Bay Area, Public Counsel, Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, the Breastfeeding Taskforce of Greater Los Angeles, the Breast Cancer Legal Project of the California Women's Law Center, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the East Los Angeles Retarded Citizens Association, the Audubon Society, the United Counsel of Human Services, Society to Aid the Retarded, Inc., Break the Cycle, the Legislation Committee of the Jewish Community Relations Commission, International Cultural Property Society, Legal Community Against Violence, California Lawyers for the Arts, Menorah Housing Foundation, the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, the American Jewish Committee, the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, the Federalist Society, the Conference of California Public Utility Counsel, the Virginia M. Woolf Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, and numerous other local and national public interest organizations. The firm is also general counsel to Coro Southern California and My Friends Place.