Rita Celebrezze D’Souza is a Special Counsel in Tax at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, and a member of the VOLS Pro Bono Advocates Council, a VOLS initiative that plays an integral role in raising awareness and support for VOLS’ pro bono programs. We sat down with Rita to speak about her start in pro bono work, how it fits into her experience as a lawyer, and the importance of service during difficult times.
What made you interested in volunteering and doing pro bono work?
Like many attorneys, I entered law school and my legal career with an interest in justice. As a tax attorney in Big Law, I saw volunteering as an opportunity to leverage the experience and resources that I was so fortunate to have in order to pursue goals of justice for individual New Yorkers.
How has your experience as an attorney been enriched by volunteering?
I get immense personal and professional gratification from applying my professional skills to help individuals with legal needs. I have also learned a lot of substantive and procedural law that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to learn.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, why do you think this type of work is particularly important today?
The pandemic has really highlighted a lot of the economic disparities that people face and the systemic injustices that we can try to chip away at, one case at a time. People have been struggling with their benefits, their housing, their unemployment-all kinds of issues that people in poverty were definitely facing before, but came into a laser focus because of the pandemic. And it’s also a time that me and other lawyers, I think, are feeling a little isolated. To have an opportunity to do the little bits of work that make you feel connected to your community-it’s even more rewarding than it was before.
If you had a colleague who was on the fence about volunteering, how would you engage them to pursue volunteering with VOLS?
It’s never been an issue at Kramer Levin-we’re very pro bono minded. But the attorneys who do express a little more resistance, I think sometimes need to be convinced that they’ll actually get legal skills and experience that will translate to their billable work, no matter their practice area. You will learn how to draft documents with more precision, interact with clients in ways that build trust and transparency, work on a team more effectively and efficiently and you will be in a leadership and strategic role earlier in your career than you might on a billable matter.