Pro Bono Matters
Inclusive to the Core
Reproductive Rights
As the post-Roe v. Wade landscape in the United States continues to evolve, MoFo is there offering pro bono legal advice to providers through the Abortion Defense Network and representing patients in challenges to restrictive state laws that endanger women’s health and lives.
Criminal Justice
Connecticut officials finally agreed to stop applying metal shackles to people who are already confined to prison cells, five years after MoFo filed suit to end this brutal practice. And across the firm, MoFo lawyers help people apply to seal or expunge their criminal records so that long-ago convictions do not derail their employment, housing, and educational opportunities.
Cutting Edge Advocacy
MoFo’s wide-ranging partnership with The Nature Conservancy advances innovative approaches to climate action to build a future where nature and people can thrive. One example: advising TNC on the creation of a sustainable tuna supply chain company that partners with local governments and communities to drive sustainable fishing practices and fund community-based conservation projects.
As a proud founding member of Lawyers for a Sustainable Economy, MoFo has contributed pro bono services valued in the millions of dollars to support innovators who are testing new concepts to address global warming, like promoting investment in community solar energy projects, creating a platform to crowdsource investments in sustainable energy, and using microbiology to develop sustainable,
cultured foods.
MoFo collaborated with other law firms to develop a Model Climate Change Law for use by the African Group of Negotiators Experts Support (AGNES) as it strengthens the capacity of parliaments in Africa to take effective action in this critical area.
Immigrants and Refugees
Challenging Unlawful Detention
Immigration
Detention in Hong Kong
Supporting Survivors and Vulnerable Communities
MoFo litigators have filed writs of habeas corpus to challenge the unlawful detention of immigrants. Clients freed by our efforts include Russian parents who had been separated from their young daughter, a Nicaraguan man who was detained while pursuing lawful permanent residence through his marriage to a U.S. citizen, and a Mexican man who was racially profiled and transferred among detention facilities across the country.
Challenging Unlawful Detention
Supporting Survivors and Vulnerable Communities
Across U.S. offices, MoFo represents survivors of crime and gender-based violence, LGBTQ individuals seeking protection, and unaccompanied children pursuing humanitarian immigration relief. Through our pro bono work, we have helped clients obtain asylum, U and T visas, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, lawful permanent residence, and protection from deportation, enabling them to rebuild their lives safely in the United States.
Immigration Detention in Hong Kong
MoFo partners with Asylum Services and Knowledge (ASK) to provide information and assistance to refugees and asylum-seekers who are detained or at risk of detention, as well as the lawyers who represent them. We worked directly with the community and ASK to prepare a series of plainly written self-help toolkits about immigration detention and presented the toolkits in community information sessions. We maintain a comprehensive case law database that is available to lawyers who are representing detained immigrants and have conducted legal visits to support asylum-seekers who are in detention.
We partnered with Northrup Grumman Corporation and George Washington University Law (“GW Law”) to more meaningfully invest in the next generation of diverse leaders and launched a joint mentoring program. The program is open to highly motivated GW law students from historically underrepresented groups who expressed an interest in government contracting law; seven students are participating in the program.
Our lawyers invest time in more than 1,000 pro bono matters each year for individuals, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and social entrepreneurs.
While these pages offer a glimpse at what pro bono matters are, it would take volumes to tell the
whole story.
But why does pro bono matter? That we can answer.
Pro Bono Matters...
Give a voice to the unrepresented.
Bring justice to individuals.
Help small businesses thrive.
Empower visionaries to create change.
Tackle urgent social issues.
Uplift our communities.
Introduction
Cutting Edge Advocacy
Sustainability and the Environment
Immigrants and Refugees
Additional Matters
Pro bono matters change lives—those of our clients as well as our lawyers.
MoFo doesn't hold back when justice demands bold advocacy.
Safe Housing
Many tenants who survived the Los Angeles fires returned to homes damaged by potentially toxic smoke and soot, but
landlords and local governments ignored their pleas for help. MoFo’s lawsuits against the City of Pasadena and Los Angeles County resulted in agreements to ensure habitability inspections of rental units and prompt, professional remediation of residential hazards.
Sustainability and the Environment
© 2026 Morrison & Foerster LLP
Providing pro bono legal assistance is a core value of Morrison Foerster – a value that our attorneys live out every day, in every one of our offices. Pro bono work engages our lawyers’ intellects and develops their professional skills.
And perhaps most important, these close encounters with society’s most pressing needs teach lessons of the heart that last throughout a lawyer’s career.
Pro Bono Matters
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Social Enterprises
Helping Small Businesses Survive and Thrive
Youth and Education
Social Enterprise
Helping Small Business Survive and Thrive
And So Much More
MoFo transactions lawyers work with small businesses that are referred by community partners such as Start Small, Think Big and Volunteers of Legal Service, advising owners on legal needs like adopting the right type of business entity and reviewing leases and vendor contracts.
London transactions attorneys regularly volunteer at qLegal, guiding law students as they advise
startups and entrepreneurs on legal issues at a clinic sponsored by Queen Mary University of London..
Social entrepreneurs reach beyond traditional nonprofit structures to tackle significant social problems in ways that are financially sustainable. Our guides for social enterprise, published in conjunction with TrustLaw and the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, help social enterprises get off the ground. Here are examples of our social enterprise work:
Providing corporate, transactional and patent services to VisionSpring, an award-winning social
enterprise that aims to close the “clear vision gap” experienced by one billion people globally
through creative strategies to test vision and reach people with affordable eyeglasses.
Patenting inventions for Prakti, whose highly efficient cookstoves address the enormous
burden that fuel-gathering places on millions of women and children; Angaza, whose pay-as-
you-go solar systems allow low-income families in sub-Saharan Africa access to electricity; and
Participant Assistive Products (PAP), whose low-cost wheelchairs for children and adults are
easily transportable and adaptable for recreational activities. Shanghai and Hong Kong lawyers
also worked with PAP on a license agreement to allow the manufacture of its products in China.
MoFo has worked for decades alongside advocates at Public Counsel and other nonprofits to improve education for low-income children in California. One of our lawsuits led to funding to advance literacy education in schools where as few as 4% of children were reading proficiently, and another resulted in allocating $2 billion for evidence-based programs to address Covid-related learning loss among students in the state.
Children in foster care in California, Hawaii and New York are reaping the lasting benefits of litigation brought by MoFo to require that foster parents receive financial support sufficient to meet the requirements of the federal Child Welfare Act.
Youth and Education
Protecting the Vote
MoFo’s lawsuit on behalf of Georgia voters led the
state to abolish its antiquated, electronic-only voting
system that was highly vulnerable to cyberattack,
and to adopt a system that includes paper ballot
back-ups.
Supporting Nonprofit Organizations
Supporting Nonprofit Organizations
MoFo supports a variety of nonprofits that are providing life enriching and critical services in our communities. From advising a community mental health group in San Francisco on a merger, to handling a complex real estate transaction for Embrace Boston, to offering intellectual property advice to a German nonprofit founded by a prominent Holocaust survivor, to counseling Ashoka Japan on governance, our lawyers answer legal questions that enable these organizations to focus on their important missions.