Kramer Levin Receives the President’s Pro Bono Service Award from the NYSBA

Kramer Levin will receive the New York State Bar Association’s President’s Pro Bono Service Award, Large Law Firm Category for the firm’s involvement in the Bail Project. The award will be presented at a ceremony on May 1, 2018.

The Bail Project Team was recognized for their work with Brooklyn Defender Services in challenging excessive money bail set in felony cases in Brooklyn criminal court. Attorneys who are part of the Bail Project represent indigent defendants in challenging onerous bail determinations at both the trial and appellate levels and at every stage of the pre-trial criminal process, from first appearance through incarceration. Judges almost always set bail in only two forms – insurance company bail bond or cash – and in an amount that most defendants who are indigent cannot pay. Thus, indigent defendants often end up in pretrial detention, not because they are a flight risk, but because they are poor. The New York bail statute is quite fulsome and give judges a range of options other than insurance bond or cash bail to assure a defendant’s appearance, including, for example, an unsecured appearance bond, which is a type of bond where no cash needs to be posted up front. Judges are often not considering those options and are instead reflexively imposing high cash bail. The Bail Project seeks to change that by selecting cases where the argument for low bail or non-cash bail is strong, and concentrating resources on challenging bail orders and trying to create precedent in those cases in the Kings County Supreme Court and in the Appellate Division.