Photo: Oleksandr Lytvynenko/Shutterstock.com

It's the season of giving.

Rather than wrapping a new pair of slippers for the Christmas tree, there's a $6 million donation planned by two Texas law firms whose pro bono case declared the Texas foster care system unconstitutional.

Houston-based litigation boutique Yetter Coleman and Big Law firm Haynes and Boone want to gift their fees—$4.68 million and $1.53 million, respectively—to launch new programs for Texas foster care children.

"This case, for us, for my firm, has been a labor of love from the beginning," said Yetter Coleman managing partner Paul Yetter. "We are just on the cusp of major reform, and this has always been about the children. We thought the best use of the fee for our work would be for these children."

The donation plan is part of a total $20.81 million attorney fee award sought by a class of foster kids, who won rulings that said the Texas foster care system is unconstitutional and laid out recommendations to improve the system. The state is opposing the fees as exorbitant, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Corpus Christi is expected to decide the dispute in the new year.

Paul Yetter. Courtesy photo

Although this is the first time that Yetter's law firm has won attorney fees in a pro bono case and chosen to donate the fees to charity, the practice is somewhat common in the nonprofit law firm world. Fee donations can go a long way to meet nonprofit firms' missions.

Jim Harrington, former director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said that the nonprofit firm's pro bono counsel almost always donated their attorney fees to the group. The donated fees could range from $5,000 to tens of thousands of dollars. Those donations made up 10% of the nonprofit's general operating budget, he said.

"It was very important for us," Harrington said. "What it did was actually allow us to expand our services and provide more services around the state."

In June, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw and Pittman donated about $1.5 million in attorney fees to the nonprofit firm Disability Rights Legal Center, said firm spokesman Erik Cummins in an email. Pillsbury retired partner Christine Scheuneman of Los Angeles, who didn't return a call or email seeking comment, was the lead pro bono lawyer for the center in a case by disabled students who were physically injured at school. Staff physically restrained them or pushed and slapped them. In a 2018 settlement, the Pomona Unified School District in Los Angeles agreed to implement extensive remedial actions.

Pillsbury's fee donation was a huge deal for Disability Rights Legal Center, said Elizabeth Eubanks, the center's formal regional director.

"The real effect of this lawsuit is going to be felt over a lifetime of students," she said. "Not only did they make this commitment by assigning staff to the case. Not only did they make the commitment to providing funding for the costs, up front. But donating the fees back is particularly exceptional."

In the Texas case, Yetter Coleman and Haynes and Boone worked with New York-based nonprofits Children's Rights and A Better Childhood, which work around the nation to better the lives of foster children. Children's Rights has won social impact litigation for foster children in Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and other states.

Rather than donating the $6 million fee to those New York nonprofits, though, Yetter said he wanted the fees to focus on Texas foster children.

"We thought it could make a big difference in the lives of these children," he explained.

Haynes and Boone senior counsel Barry McNeil said major law firms have a responsibility to represent the disadvantaged.

"From the very outset my firm never thought that we would be undertaking this for any financial benefit," said McNeil. "We never thought that we would accept any attorney fees if we were so lucky to win."

Yetter noted that the two court-appointed monitors in the case are child welfare experts, and he looks forward to their recommendations and guidance on how to spend the $6 million donation. He expects to be able to fund more than one program, he said.

"One example is a program for older foster children who are about to age out of the system, and help them transition into a world that, at the moment, they are ill-prepared to go into," Yetter said.

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