HIAS PA’s 2023 Golden Door Awards

Honoree Spotlight: Blank Rome LLP

As a firm that was founded in Philadelphia in 1946 by lawyers who were excluded from joining other firms on the basis of their religion, Blank Rome LLP has remained committed to their vision of creating a firm where people of diverse religious and racial backgrounds could gather to practice law.

Blank Rome LLP is an American Lawyer (Am Law) 100 firm with 14 offices and more than 650 attorneys and principals who provide a full range of legal and advocacy services to clients operating around the world. Blank Rome LLP is deeply committed to local community outreach, diversity and inclusion efforts, pro bono services, and volunteer programs.

As soon as the Afghan legal crisis began to unfold following the fall of Kabul in 2021, Blank Rome LLP’s pro bono program immediately wanted to help. The firm took on several Humanitarian Parole cases for Afghans seeking to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. In early 2022, Blank Rome LLP put together teams from across the country to represent Afghan parolees who were brought to the United States as part of Operation Allies Refuge. These parolees were granted only two years of status and therefore needed to file asylum applications to remain in the United States beyond those two years.

In total, 43 Blank Rome LLP attorneys, along with many more paralegals and staff members, have helped file asylum applications for ten Afghan parolees and their family members. Since then, the teams have also filed additional applications to help these clients continue to have authorization to work legally in the United States so they can support their families.

While we continue to await the government’s decisions on all of these applications, because of Blank Rome LLP’s expertise and advocacy, HIAS PA’s Afghan clients are in the best legal position possible as they continue to build their new lives in the United States.