Khalas and Nada contacted Marcia Maack, the director of pro-bono activities for the law firm Mayer Brown, the primary legal partner to the List Project, who agreed to take on their cases.
The plaintiffs are eight children, aged between 10 and 17, who are facing deportation proceedings but have been unable to find pro bono lawyers to take on their cases.
For years, Ingle had been meeting with death row inmates in southern states and recruiting lawyers to take on their cases.
Normally, they want to know about their own immigration cases — how long they'll be stuck in detention, or whether Garcia and her colleagues at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center could take on their cases.
"This approach allows the cases to go forward, but it also allows the companies to be unshackled to put on their cases," said one House Democratic staff member who has been involved in the negotiations but received anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
And because the team members in every unit spend one morning a week sharing information on their cases, the idea is that if someone contacts us, the unit co-ordinator will have direct knowledge of that family's circumstances and will be able to help, certainly with some of the practical matters they may be concerned about, if their own social worker isn't there.
The benefits of the program are threefold: students learn the law in action, overburdened lawyers get an extra set of hands, and defendants in one of the country's most dilapidated court systems get extra brain power on their cases.
No action had been taken on their cases, Cooper said.
Final decisions on their cases are expected this spring.
Still, some Massachusetts lawyers say the ruling will have a crushing effect on their cases.
He told Hamilton that he, Shakur, and Rincon often met in the library to work on their cases.
