Winston & Strawn Paris Recognized for Pro Bono Achievements

Paris – The Paris office of Winston & Strawn LLP has been recognized by the Paris Bar Association for Best Pro Bono Action Abroad for the firm's legal support of Zanmi Lasanté – Paris. The award, which is the first ever Pro Bono Award from the Paris Bar, was organized by the Barreau de Paris Solidarité endowment fund, and is aimed at honoring the most remarkable solidarity initiatives of Paris law firms in the fields of access to law and the defense of human rights in France or abroad.

Zanmi Lasanté – Paris, a sister organization to the Boston-based Partners In Health, operates out of Cange in Central Haiti. The organization was built in 1985 to treat patients incapable of paying hospital fees and today servers over 500,000 people through eight sites in the area of the central plateau of Haiti. Winston & Strawn's Paris office has assisted in the economic development of Haiti through Zanmi Lasanté – Paris, and more recently aided recovery efforts from the devastating earthquake which struck Port-au-Prince in January 2010 by implementing large-scale development plans in the fields of health, education, environment and renewable energies, as well as employment and access to housing.

"This award highlights the solidarity action of all the persons who have trusted us and given us the means to act for 20 years, and especially all the persons in Haiti who cooperate and carry out our projects day after day," said Patrick Murray, Winston & Strawn partner and co-founder with his wife, Christine Murray, of Zanmi Lasanté – Paris. "We will tell them the news of this award and how Paris lawyers, and particularly Winston lawyers, discovered and acknowledged a small part of the reality of the Haitian rural environment."

Winston & Strawn was one of the first firms in the Paris market to adopt a solidarity approach. In this regard, the firm is involved in many charity projects, locally as well as internationally, and acts in various fields such as child protection, the respect of human and civil rights, the protection of asylum-seekers or the prevention and reduction of violence. In 2011, the firm donated more than 62,000 hours to aid agencies, or an average of 74 working hours per Winston & Strawn attorney, with more than 60% of these attorneys devoting at least 35 volunteer hours to a charity.