Mission Driven and Impact Focused
At Thomas - Oakley, we are redefining what it means to be a successful law firm. We provide sophisticated legal representation in high value markets and leverage our for-profit practice to provide public interest services in areas vital to a just society: socio-economic inequity, systemic racism and bias, LGBTQ+ rights, protection of refugees and asylum seekers, voting rights, environmental justice, and law enforcement accountability. While our corporate clients work with us because we are among the best lawyers at what we do, we are committed to being the best lawyers in our industry because of our mission. Our commercial practice makes it possible for us to make an impact with our public interest work.
Our goal is to develop a model that meaningfully increases the number of hours that law firms devote to public interest causes. We pay our attorneys enough to live comfortably in the communities where we work and devote excess profit to funding work for the public interest. The non-profit legal services industry serves a vital and important part of the legal market. However, there is a fixed number of grant dollars available to fund these enterprises. Public interest attorneys, passionate about making a difference in the world, are willing to work long hours, for low wages, handling emotionally challenging legal matters. All too often, the result is some mix of burn-out, life-long student loan repayments, and inability to live in, let alone purchase a home in the communities they serve. Our firm does not seek to maximize partner profits; instead, we provide sufficient compensation to all of our attorneys and leverage the surplus from our corporate practice to fund our public interest work.
As a small firm, we have invested in our first full-time public interest attorney, now accounting for 20% of our staff, and all attorneys dedicate significant time to public interest work. As a result, the firm dedicates about a quarter of its productive time to public interest causes. As we grow, we expect to maintain or increase this balance, as well as continue to develop a sustainable source of revenue for public interest work.
Current and recent examples of our public interest work include:
representation of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers
criminal appeals for indigent defendants
corporate representation of local artist collectives
corporate representation of impact focused non-profits
immigration representation of unaccompanied minor children
impact litigation related to law enforcement accountability