Linda Coberly Honored with Chicago Bar Association’s 2018 Edward J. Lewis II Pro Bono Service Award

Winston & Strawn Chicago Office Managing Partner and Appellate & Critical Motions Practice Chair Linda Coberly is the recipient of the Chicago Bar Foundation/Chicago Bar Association’s 2018 Edward J. Lewis II Pro Bono Service Award. The CBA/CBF Pro Bono & Public Service Awards will be presented on July 12 to “honor lawyers from a broad cross-section of the legal community, whose passion for serving others is reflected in their extraordinary commitment to the ideals of equal access to justice.” Linda is also the immediate past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights (the parent organization of National Immigrant Justice Center) and a member of Winston & Strawn’s Executive Committee.

Linda is the rare combination of lawyer, advocate, and leader who has used pro bono as a vehicle for integrating her professional skills, law firm responsibilities, and commitment to her community into a powerful force for change. Since joining pro bono Winston in 2004, Linda has touched on more than 90 cases, most of them appeals and other impact cases. Working closely with NIJC, she has served as lead counsel on touchstone cases that successfully challenged (and minimized) the use of unlawful detainers by federal immigration authorities and changed federal immigration policy. She assumed the role of Constitutional authority, providing technical knowledge to the coalition of Illinois legislators and women’s groups advocating for Illinois’ ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Working in collaboration with prisoner rights advocates and the Uptown People’s Law Center, she has also focused substantial time to assisting inmates and criminal defendants. Among other matters, she convinced the Illinois Supreme Court to stop the practice of charging penniless Illinois inmates a co-pay for their health care services.

Linda has leveraged her personal commitment as a firm leader to meaningfully expand the pro bono efforts of Winston lawyers and build the culture of pro bono participation throughout the firm. Linda became Chicago Office Managing Partner in December 2015 (the first female to hold this position of leadership over the firm’s largest office comprised of approximately 300 attorneys and most of the firm’s administrative groups). Among her initial priorities was to increase pro bono participation among attorneys in the Chicago office. She instituted regular pro bono reports to associates and partners informing them of their progress and reporting on significant successes. She also created a moot panel among partners to prepare associates handling pro bono appeals for their oral argument. And, of course, she contributed significant amounts of her own time. As a result, 97% of attorneys in Winston’s Chicago office contributed at least 20 hours during 2017, an increase from 74% in 2015 when she took over the Managing Partner role.

As chair of the firm’s Appellate & Critical Motions practice group since 2004, Linda has promoted appellate pro bono as a means for young attorneys to secure demanding but meaningful pro bono opportunities while also providing an invaluable service to the court by ensuring that pro se litigants receive adequate counsel in habeas and similarly complex matters. Since that time, the firm has accepted more than 50 appeals from the Seventh Circuit and nearly 100 appeals in total. Linda herself has assisted in some capacity, either as lead counsel or in reviewing briefs, on more than 30 appeals that were referred by the Seventh Circuit.