Nassau Attorney Making 'Exceptional' Impact With Pro Bono Work: Award

PORT WASHINGTON, NY — Kerry Cooperman, a Great Neck native who now lives in Port Washington with his family, was named to City & State NY's Responsible 100 list, an annual roundup of New Yorkers improving their communities in "exceptional" ways. Cooperman heads the pro bono division of a national law firm, helping hundreds of attorneys find ways to make an impact on underserved communities through pro bono legal work.

Cooperman told Patch that his work is an extension of a passion he had since law school, where he got involved in juvenile justice, helping those in the juvenile justice system. After law school, he saw first-hand the legal needs underserved communities had while teaching at a charter school, he said.

"Being inside an inner-city Baltimore public school, and seeing the amount of need and how underserved the students and families were, I knew that would be part of my practice."

At Stroock, Cooperman oversees the firm's pro bono program, connecting attorneys across the country with opportunities to address social, economic and racial injustice through a range of legal services. Attorneys can help people get asylum or a domestic protection order, or help reduce excessive sentences, or get needed services in public schools, Cooperman explained.

Cooperman sees that work as a moral and ethical obligation, he told Patch.

"I think all attorneys have a responsibility to provide pro bono counsel to communities that can't afford it when they can," he said.

"These are our neighbors, and some of them cannot afford counsel or competent counsel for basic human needs."

Cooperman said he sees a trend in the legal world toward incentivizing and valuing pro bono work, and pointed to pro bono work Stroock did that had wide-ranging implications, like helping to change a police digital "stop-and-frisk" practice that was challenged as unconstitutional by the Legal Aid Society and others.

Cooperman also remembered helping a medically frail child with multiple disabilities who was "languishing" without needed services get full tuition at a private school suited to his needs paid for by a city public school district.

"Behind every one person we help, there's a family, there's a community," he said.