The importance of pro bono work from the U.S. legal industry was thrown into stark relief at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the demand for legal services on problems from housing to unemployment insurance spiked. Timing has become critical over the past year. It isn't enough for a firm to commit resources to certain legal needs; it needs to be done quickly, said Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP attorney Kerry Cooperman.

Cooperman in May became the director of Stroock's Public Service Project, a national pro bono program whose core focuses include housing, education, family law, nonprofits and small businesses, as well as anti-racism and immigration work. The program partners with legal aid organizations and others, in addition to leading clinics and taking on individual matters.

The work expanded in 2020, in wake of the pandemic as well as the racial injustice protests that swept the nation. The firm last year launched the Small Business Legal Relief Alliance that has offered counsel to hundreds of nonprofits and small businesses in the New York region. Stroock was also one of over 100 firms to join the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance last summer in wake of the police killing of George Floyd. The alliance's goal is to bring firms and legal groups together to fight racism.

In an interview with Law360, Cooperman opened up about how pro bono practices responded to the pandemic. He also spoke about the looming housing crisis and the firm's pro bono anti-racism work. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

During the pandemic, the demand for free legal services skyrocketed. What is your sense on how law firms responded to this crisis?

I think, on the whole, law firms did a remarkable job. The firms themselves and the attorneys and staff who work at the firms were experiencing many of the same personal and other challenges as any other businesses; however, we also know that many firms have the resources to step up. This is true at Stroock and I think it's true of many other firms; they had the infrastructure in place through their pro bono programs to step up quickly, which is as important as making resources available. Because small businesses and individuals and families and nonprofits were facing, in many cases, existential crises where decisions had to be made and many decisions had to be made quickly.

As it relates to housing, concerns are mounting about a possible eviction crisis with a moratorium possibly being lifted soon. Is the firm doing anything in that area to prepare for it?

Stroock is well positioned to help in keeping people in their homes and also keeping businesses in their facilities as well. What we are doing, which I think will become especially critical in the coming months, is getting knowledge and information to homeowners. That's one piece of this puzzle. We do regular legal clinics, we work with organizations, and we also work independently. And that's one of the ways we're going to continue to help homeowners and I think it's going to be especially important in the second half of this year and into next year. What we're inevitably going to see is a spike in eviction cases, residential and commercial, and law firms that have active housing practices are going to have to step up. This is an area where timing is critical.

What are some cases that you think are indicative of the firm's pro bono work of the past year?

We created the Small Business Legal Relief Alliance. This is a coalition that we created just as the pandemic was emerging. We're up to 26 law firms and seven public interest legal service organizations, and it was created basically when the world was paralyzed. This coalition has the objective of using rapid-response teams of lawyers and financial professionals to help small businesses and nonprofits in the New York area that were in an existential crisis. And where I think we've stood out was not only getting it early and getting this up and running right away, but the speed in which we operate.

Stroock also signed onto the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance in June 2020. It's been over a year since that was formed, what has the firm done as part of that initiative?

The alliance largely operates through 19 working groups in a wide range of areas. I'm a co-chair of the education group, [which includes] a handful of attorneys at Stroock. We are right now engaged in a project in collaboration with the LFAA to examine and identify ways to challenge state laws and legislation that either ban or constrain the discussion and teaching of critical race theory and anti-racism issues generally in public school. We do a lot of this work through our own anti-racism initiative within Stroock, and it will be our own program that we'll be connecting with doing work in collaboration with the LFAA.

Do you have any goals for this program and how many hours the firm is dedicating to pro bono?

My goals are not hours-based. The principal goal is using our resources and structuring our program to have the greatest net benefit on real lives. We track hours. Those metrics are important, but it is my view that it's not the most important factor. For me, it is the value of those hours and how we use those hours.

All Access is a series of discussions with leaders in the access to justice field. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Have a story idea for Access to Justice? Reach us at accesstojustice@law360.com.

--Editing by Katherine Rautenberg.