Firm News
The 2020 edition of Benchmark Litigation recognized Husch Blackwell as a top litigation firm, listing 33 attorneys across nine offices in its 2020 directory of leading litigators. Husch Blackwell was recognized by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) as a 2019 Compass Award winner. Missouri Lawyers Media named HB as a recipient of its 2019 Top Legal Innovation Award, recognizing the firm’s cannabis law practice.
In a major expansion of its healthcare group, Husch Blackwell announced in early January that 12 attorneys had joined the firm’s Healthcare, Life Sciences & Education industry team. The incoming lawyers are all primarily based in Madison, Wisconsin, and join Husch Blackwell from two other law firms.
The ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service has recognized HB as an ABA Free Legal Answers Pro Bono Leader for 2019, the second year in a row the firm has been recognized. Benchmark Litigation recognized Husch Blackwell as its 2020 Law Firm of the Year in the state of Nebraska.
The U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health and Husch Blackwell announced the launch of Athletics Healthspace, an athletic healthcare platform that promotes compliance with the interassociation guidelines addressing health and safety in college student-athletes.
Pro Bono News
In 2019, Husch Blackwell donated 23,131 pro bono hours totaling $8.4 million. HB attorneys continue to provide pro bono legal services to help meet the critical needs of individuals, nonprofits and organizations by providing access to justice across the firm’s footprint.
The firm, along with the MacArthur Justice Center, brought a class action lawsuit on behalf of juveniles sentenced to life without parole in Missouri. The judge granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, finding that Missouri was not providing a meaningful opportunity for release. As a result of this ruling, juveniles sentenced to life without parole will get more access to their rehabilitation programs and files and will be allowed to attend hearings accompanied by attorneys. Husch Blackwell attorneys Jordan Ault, Denyse Jones, Matthew Knepper, Theresa Mullineaux and Sarah Zimmerman were recognized as Legal Champions by Missouri Lawyers Weekly for their work on this class action.
Attorneys in our Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, offices filed an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of a wide array of Wisconsin-based advocacy organizations committed to the well-being of LGBT+ individuals. The amicus brief urged the Justices to protect the civil rights of LGBTQ individuals in the workplace.
In February, the firm sponsored a private screening and panel discussion of the movie “Just Mercy” in Kansas City. This event was organized as a joint effort by Husch Blackwell, Lathrop GPM and Stinson. The event was completely sold out, with almost 200 guests. “Just Mercy” stars Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson and is based on the award-winning book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The film chronicles one of Stevenson’s first legal cases where he fought to free Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), who was wrongfully accused of murder and placed on death row.
Diversity
Husch Blackwell’s work to meet all of the Corporate Equality Index’s ranking criteria once again resulted in the firm’s 100 percent ranking and designation as a Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality in 2020. HB earned a perfect score for the fifth year in a row.
Be sure to visit the firm’s diversity page on our public website. You’ll find interesting facts, such as 55% of HB’s associates are women, how we’ve been voted as a Best Law Firm for Women three times by Working Mother magazine, and how we once again rated 100% on the Corporate Equality Index for 2020. We’re proud of these accomplishments!
Innovation
HB’s IT group has onboarded a new tool that allows the firm to automate a complex business process, thereby resulting in faster and more efficient workflow on a variety of matters. The process was utilized for a large client, reengineering the onboarding efforts in the asbestos practice. The new process utilizes Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a form of business process automation technology based on artificial intelligence and bots. The system watches a user perform a certain repeatable task and then programs a bot to perform the automation by repeating those tasks.
The firm has selected edison365, an idea management platform, for a pilot project to assist with managing our innovation pipeline. About 100 attorneys and staff will be asked to participate in various idea challenges, submit creative ideas, and comment and rate others’ ideas.
Two Innovation team members, Dean Boeschen and Rebecca Holdredge, recently contributed a chapter to The Future of Legal Innovation, published by ARK Group. The book features contributions from law firms that are pushing innovation and showcases approaches to dealing with market disruption. Boeschen and Holdredge authored the chapter entitled “Driving innovation – Ideas Are the Key.”
David Stauss and the Data Privacy team successfully launched the Data Inventory Tool in response to the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The CCPA Compliance Tool provides a customized client portal that facilitates the collection of consumer personal information. This will help give HB attorneys an understanding of client CCPA exposure and any measures needed for compliance. We partnered with an outside software vendor to accelerate the design and execution of the product before the January 1 effective date. Initial client feedback was very positive and led to further updates.
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