The Mintz Levin 2008 Pro Bono Report 33 The Sports Legacy Institute The Sports Legacy Institute (SLI) is dedicated to studying the effects of concussions and other sports-related brain injuries. Through its efforts, SLI aims to keep athletes safe and promote awareness of the risks of concussions. Mintz Levin and SLI worked together to secure SLI’s tax-exempt status. Brian Dunphy has also worked closely with SLI in its formative years and provided guidance and advice as it has grown. Recently, SLI established a Coaches Concussion Clinic, a concussion education program for youth sports coaches. Working with Mintz Levin, SLI expanded this important program to many states, and hopes to continue its expansion. Child Welfare League of America Active since 1920, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) is the nation’s oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization. It is an organization with nearly 800 public and private child-serving agencies with programs and expertise spanning adoption, adolescent pregnancy prevention and teen parenting, child day care, child protection, children affected by incarceration, family foster care, group residential care, housing and homelessness, kinship care, juvenile justice, mental health, positive youth development, substance abuse prevention and treatment, and a range of community services that strengthen and support parents and families. CWLA operates in a variety of ways, including sharing expertise to strengthen management and operation of local agencies, promoting policies on Capitol Hill and at state houses that benefit children and oppose those that could do them harm, and developing new approaches to working with children and families. Mintz Levin attorneys Daniel Gaquin, Allan Caggiano and Dean Atkins successfully negotiated with CWLA’s landlord and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting to reduce CWLA’s financial obligations and liability with respect to, and ultimately to sublease, its office space in Braintree, Massachusetts. Partnerships This year, Mintz Levin continued to partner with its in-house counsel clients on pro bono efforts. For example, attorneys from Liberty Mutual attended the firm’s day-long clinics with the Lawyers Clearinghouse at local homeless shelters, partnered with attorneys from Mintz Levin on a social security appeals case, and worked with us on a joint summer associate domestic violence training project. The firm also collaborated with Boston law schools—including Boston College, Boston University, and Suffolk University—on pro bono projects with law students. Dozens of law students assisted our attorneys with such research as political asylum claims and due process research for a prisoners’ rights litigation. We also benefited from a full-time semester-in-practice legal intern from Boston College Law School who worked on pro bono efforts with us.