Community Involvement

Service to the community is a highly valued and long-standing tradition at Sullivan & Worcester. Members of the firm provide pro bono or reduced-fee legal services, volunteer their time, and make financial donations to numerous public interest organizations and charity causes including educational and cultural institutions, environmental initiatives, civil rights agencies, and organizations against domestic violence and child abuse.

Community Initiatives

A great example of the work we do with specific communities is our work in Dorchester, MA. In 1965, Sullivan & Worcester lawyers helped create Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses, Inc. by merging several settlement houses, including The Little House, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Since that time, countless lawyers and paralegals have devoted thousands of hours of pro bono time to Federated Dorchester in a variety of disciplines including tax, litigation, real estate, general corporate, financing, employment and benefits. In the mid-1990s, Federated established and later spun-off the Neighborhood House Charter School, a model of success within the charter school movement. Neighborhood House just celebrated its 10th anniversary and recently moved in to its new home, the Charles C. Cabot, Jr. Building. Our lawyers fully support the legal needs of Neighborhood House, which have included real estate, general corporate, financing, tax, employment and benefits work. Several of our lawyers have also served as clerks and/or trustees of each of these organizations.

Civil Rights

The firm has an ongoing working relationship with the Boston Bar Association's Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. For more than a decade, at least one of our partners has been a member of the steering committee, and we have acted as co-counsel with the committee on numerous important civil rights cases involving such matters as racial discrimination, bilingual education, housing integration, and public transportation.

Children's Welfare, Law and Policy

In September 2006, Sullivan & Worcester launched a new program, called the S&W International ChildFind Program. Under the program, S&W attorneys will provide legal assistance to parents of limited financial means, whose children have been abducted across sovereign borders. More than 200,000 children are abducted by family members each year. A growing number of these abductions cross international borders making it extremely difficult for left-behind parents to locate and recover their children. With the help of S&W attorneys, left-behind parents can pursue remedies under an international treaty designed to protect parental rights and to return abducted children to their prior place of residence.

As a member of the International Child Abduction Attorney Network formed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, S&W attorneys have litigated many proceedings under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the International Child Abduction Remedies Act. The program also provides our younger litigation attorneys with an opportunity to get involved in the cause, obtain courtroom experience and hone their trial skills with the guidance of experienced trial lawyers.

Learn more about the S&W International ChildFind Program

Domestic Violence

In conjunction with Greater Boston Legal Services, our lawyers provide direct representation to victims of domestic violence seeking restraining orders, child support, and custody. We also participate in and host meetings of the Domestic Violence Council (DVC), an unincorporated association of legal service providers. For more than ten years, the DVC has been instrumental in creating and strengthening Massachusetts case law to protect victims of domestic violence.

Civil Liberties

On numerous occasions, Sullivan & Worcester has acted as co-counsel with the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. As a result of one such action, Massachusetts lawmakers modified regulations to ensure that individuals alleged to have committed abuse have the right to a hearing to contest that finding.

Environment

Sullivan & Worcester has provided extensive corporate, real estate and environmental representation to the Conservation Law Foundation, New England's leading environmental advocacy organization. In addition, we have advised the CLF on a number of their environmental protection efforts.