Cindy Pan is an Associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP. During law school, she worked with low-income clients regarding consumer protection issues such as student loans, debt collection, and credit reporting, as well as disability rights issues in the workplace. Cindy has extensive experience of working with vulnerable communities and pro bono work. She has worked alongside many different projects – including litigation protecting abortion rights in Texas and Idaho, litigation expanding voting rights in North Carolina, immigration matters assisting individuals seeking asylum and victims of sex trafficking seeking T-nonimmigrant status, and clemency petitions for incarcerated individuals. She is a member of the VOLS Pro Bono Advocates Council, a group of dedicated attorneys who provide and promote pro bono legal services to people in our community. This month, we sat down with Cindy to discuss pro bono work and the importance of giving back.
What interested you in volunteering and doing pro bono work?
In law school, I started off by volunteering a few hours a week at the public defender’s office by our law school. During that time, I had the opportunity to work with several individuals, one-on-one. It made me realize that it takes so little of our time to make such a big difference in someone else’s life. And both through my law school and through my law firm, I have felt very fortunate that I have had the chance to focus on using the legal skills I’ve developed to help individuals in my community.
How has your experience as an attorney been enriched by volunteering?
I truly believe that every attorney should spend time volunteering. During my volunteering work, I have been able to speak with individuals, empathize with them, help them with their cases, and develop a plan of action based on those conversations. I have met people who have really inspired me and have taught me to develop skills that have been valuable to the way I have grown as an attorney.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, why do you think this type of work is particularly important today?
Volunteering during this time is especially important because it may help make life easier, even if it’s only by a small amount, for someone who has been facing unimaginable difficulties over the last two and a half years. During COVID-19, socioeconomic inequalities were magnified and amplified. And that especially came true in the legal atmosphere. For example, many small businesses, which were already struggling to make ends meet, suddenly had to face a global pandemic that likely significantly decreased their revenue. Additionally, as a result of the pandemic, many individuals lost their jobs, and were struggling to pay their expenses. While the government provided relief for both small businesses and unemployed individuals during the pandemic, most of the relief required a significant amount of paperwork and jumping through legal loopholes. I think in those moments, having a legal advocate is especially helpful, not only to help navigate through the seemingly never-ending paperwork, but to have someone who functions as a support system when things are becoming difficult
If you had a colleague who was on the fence about volunteering, how would you engage them to pursue volunteering with VOLS?
I have been lucky to be at a firm where almost all my colleagues participate in pro bono work – the firm constantly encourages us and provides opportunities for us to engage in volunteering. However, I think generally, it’s important to remind people that every individual can make such a large difference. It may only take a few days of our time to help someone file an asylum application, but if that application is granted, it will change their lives forever. And that’s the same with many of the projects that VOLS is involved with. So many of the projects that VOLS is involved in relate to helping individuals with immigration, microenterprise, and unemployment. These projects, while taking only a few days of a volunteer’s time, will likely impact individuals for years, or even decades, to come.