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Community Builder

April 2007

"It is important to our firm to have pro bono opportunities that are within the interest and related to the experience of our transactional lawyers, and indeed that can expand their experience,” explained Gerald Spedale of Baker Botts L.L.P.. Baker Botts was one of the first law firms to volunteer their services through Texas C-BAR when it was first begun seven years ago. They have continued this practice of community consciousness and in the last five years have taken on at least seventeen new cases a year. The cases have varied from the simple to the complex but have all been a great help to Texas communities. Mr. Kassahun Bisrat, Director of The Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, describes them as being “extremely helpful from initial consultation to drawing up the documents and advising us to post merger advice on technical questions.”

One of the larger and more demanding of these cases put Baker Botts in partnership with the legal department of CenterPoint Energy in order to help The Alliance for Multicultural Community Services. The nonprofit, which provides comprehensive services to immigrants and refugees in the Houston area, created a separate housing development nonprofit, Multicultural CDC a couple of years previously. After the two nonprofits engaged in strategic planning in what turned out to be too precipitous a move. In 2005 the two nonprofits voluntarily decided to merge back together. And this was where Baker Botts and CenterPoint Energy attorneys came in to help show them how.

Three Baker Botts attorneys spent more than 60 hours to bring this corporate reconciliation about. Bisrat recalls how “they drew up all the merger documents and all the corporation documents and advised us on how and where to submit it, how and when to submit it, until it was done.” The assistance that Baker Botts has offered to Texas communities is not limited to specific defined cases. Bisrat continues to recount how “Even post merger we have called them and consulted them regularly, “What does this mean? What does this mean? ” and get legal interpretations on legal issues.”

Spedale best summed up the benefits of pro bono endeavors when he wrote, “it is great to have a chance to fulfill our professional responsibility to give back to the community thru Texas C-BAR, and increase our lawyers' value to our paying clients, all while we learn about others who are volunteering their time and expertise to better our community; like the people we met at the Alliance and MCDC who are working to improve the refugee and immigrant communities in the Greater Houston Area."

For the last seven years Texas C-BAR and Baker Botts L.L.P. have had a wonderfully successful partnership working to make Texas a better state to live and do business in. We look forward to continuing this partnership for the next seven years and beyond.

Baker Botts L.L.P. first opened its doors under the name of Gray, Botts & Baker in 1840 in the newly founded city of Houston, Texas. Since then the firm has grown and changed to what it is today, with a world wide network of offices made up of approximately 750 lawyers. Three of these offices are in Texas: Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Each office continues to do its part in volunteering time and energy to nonprofits directly serving the Texas poor.