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Pro Bono

Full-Service Experience

Goulston & Storrs provides full-service to every client, bringing all our resources to bear on any pro bono case or project we handle. We bring that full-service experience to individuals in need and nonprofit organizations that serve those individuals, including community development corporations and other organizations dedicated to environmental protection, reproductive rights, disaster relief, and other worthy causes.

Our pro bono clients, like all our other clients, get the full support of our entire legal team. That means we brainstorm solutions to their problems, we collaborate to produce the best possible results for them, and we proactively look for additional ways to help, introducing them to other providers and opportunities whenever possible.

Just some of the many pro bono services we perform for individuals include:

  • Facilitating compromises with creditors and landlords for low-income clients in debt
  • Defending tenants from eviction proceedings
  • Providing immigration services to international refugees and child immigrants
  • Providing services to families and individuals victimized by domestic abuse

The more than 100 nonprofit organizations that we partner with also receive a host of services from lawyers in every department of our firm. The projects they bring to us frequently involve complex legal structures, creative financing, a host of real estate issues, and unique risks that give us some of our greatest professional challenges. Among the many types of pro bono projects that we have handled are the following:

  • Representing Jubilee Housing, Inc. on various projects, including the acquisition of a 66-unit residential building for their affordable housing portfolio in Washington, D.C.
  • Handling land acquisition, environmental cleanup, HUD loans, construction contract reviews, creation of condominium structures and other complex aspects of a long-term, multi-phase, mixed-use development project known as Quincy Commons in Quincy, Massachusetts.
  • Providing full-service assistance related to corporate, real estate and financing work for HOMECorp, a community-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and improving affordable housing in New Jersey.
  • Acting as outside general counsel to the Rose Fitzgerald Greenway Conservancy, which involved creating, and now advising the organization at the center of the public-private partnership that manages Boston’s most innovative downtown park, working mostly with private donations and a base of government seed money.
  • Handling ongoing work, as well as original formation of and Section 501(c)(3) filing for Civic Consulting USA in New York, an organization that facilitates sustainable investing and transformation of government culture and process to better accomplish longstanding social improvement objectives.
  • Resolving zoning matters, obtaining certificate of occupancy, facilitating the updating of a building to meet code, and securing construction financing for International Arts & Artists in Washington, D.C., an organization that propagates cross-cultural exposure to and collaboration on various forms of art.
  • Securing new markets tax credits and financing, and performing various other real-estate related services for Horizons for Homeless Children, which provides high-quality early education opportunities and comprehensive family support services to those in need.
  • Representing Roca, Inc. on a range of legal matters, including corporate structuring and board governance, employment matters, and the creation of the “Pay for Success” social innovation financing project with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and private funders, designed to reduce incarceration and provide job readiness for at-risk young men. 

Our pro bono clients challenge us in new and infinite ways, making us better comprehensive service providers and collaborators. For their benefit, we come together to perform every imaginable task related to all our professional disciplines, working on projects with unique and interesting issues related to:

  • Affordable housing
  • Banking and finance
  • Charitable planning
  • Development, land use, and zoning issues
  • Employment law
  • End-of-life estate services for terminally ill patients
  • Environmental matters
  • Foundation and fund-raising matters
  • Intellectual property matters
  • Leasing activities
  • Litigation
  • Public-private partnerships
  • Real estate acquisitions and dispositions
  • Tax matters, including tax credits and tax exemptions

In addition to providing legal services some of our lawyers and members of our professional staff work with hammers and nails to build homes, and to build beds for children who don’t have them. We have volunteered to provide shoes and clothing to those in need, and some of us have even flown into disaster zones to help rebuild schools, community centers, and other structures. We also frequently serve on nonprofit boards and assist with strategic planning and other public activities.