The John C. Cruden Federal Agency Pro Bono Leadership Award

The National Labor Relations Board is proud to announce that it will receive the John C. Cruden Federal Agency Pro Bono Leadership Award this week in recognition of its significant commitment to encouraging pro bono legal work among its lawyers and lawyers at other federal government agencies.
The award, which is administered by the Federal Government Interagency Pro Bono Working Group, is given every two years and the Agency will be the third recipient. NLRB lawyers have donated hundreds of hours of their own time to work with various legal clinics, primarily the D.C. Bar’s Advocacy and Justice Clinic and the Montgomery County Bar Association’s Pro Bono Legal Advice & Referral Clinic. They have represented the area’s poor in cases involving child support, child custody and visitation, evictions, wills, personal injury defense, home repair disputes, and hour and wage claims.
The Agency was selected for a variety of reasons, among them: Hosting pro bono training events for federal lawyers in the area; playing an important role in establishing a federal pro bono legal program in San Francisco; adopting a recent policy granting lawyers at NLRB headquarters up to 40 hours of administrative leave for trial appearances and other work that cannot be done on a lawyer’s own time; and long-time involvement and a strong leadership role in the Interagency Working Group begun in 1998.
The award is named in honor of John C. Cruden, a long-time Department of Justice senior official who tirelessly promoted pro bono work by government lawyers. It will be presented by Chief Judges Royce Lamberth and David B. Sentelle of the Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Circuit at a reception beginning at 5:30 p.m. this Thursday, October 27, at the U.S. Courthouse at 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
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