Washington, DC, July 28, 2014 – Venable LLP has announced the creation of the Gerry Treanor Pro Bono Fellowship. Named in honor of the firm’s late pro bono chair, the fellowship will begin this Fall at Bread for the City in DC.
In making the announcement, the firm’s current pro bono chair, Seth Rosenthal said, “We are creating the Treanor fellowship to reinforce and grow the firm’s tradition of pro bono service.
The quality of our pro bono work is first-rate, and the amount of time we collectively devote to pro bono service is steadily increasing, yet we remain committed to making even more of an impact than we already do in the communities in which we live and work. Establishing the Treanor fellowship is one of the ways we aim to make good on that commitment.”
Gerry Treanor, a long-time partner and one of the City’s leading litigators, passed away in 2013. He was deeply committed to pro bono work. One of the most prominent members of the criminal trial bar in both Virginia and the District of Columbia, Treanor devoted considerable time to pro bono representation of impoverished clients. In 2002, when he was forced to scale back his trial practice for health reasons, he took over Venable’s pro bono program. For more than eight years, Treanor devoted all of his time to building the program and mentoring firm lawyers who engaged in pro bono work.
Through the Treanor fellowship, Venable will send one firm attorney full-time to a legal
services provider every six months. At the end of the six month period, each fellow will return to the firm and resume his or her full-time practice. The fellowships, which will be awarded through a competitive application process, will rotate every 18 months between Bread for the City and Maryland Legal Aid.
“We hope that Venable’s pro bono fellowship will meaningfully help to fill the need for additional legal services in our communities and, at the same time, provide our most talented associates with a new and fulfilling experience. We are extremely grateful to Bread for the City and Maryland Legal Aid for giving us the chance to do more, and we look forward to working closely with both organizations for years to come,” said Rosenthal.
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