Foster Pepper is pleased to announce that Paul Heer, an associate in the firm’s Investment Management group, has received the 2018-2019 Public Service & Leadership Award from the Washington State Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division. The Public Service & Leadership Award highlights the work of new and young community leaders who also make a difference through public service.
From 2018 through 2019, Heer has donated more than 400 hours of legal pro bono services and more than 200 hours of community service. Most recently, Heer was congratulated for his “extraordinary advocacy skills” to help fundamentally alter the course of a pro bono client's life. His client ("E.Y.") has, from the age of eighteen, served twenty-seven years of a de facto life sentence. E.Y. and his robust community of support, with the counseling of Heer, unanimously won a clemency hearing in June of this year. As of this writing, E.Y. awaits Governor Jay Inslee’s final signature to commute the remainder of his sentence, which would be a historical exercise of the Governor’s executive clemency power.
Heer is on the board of directors for the Seattle Clemency Project, Seattle University Law School Law Alumni Board and South Asian Bar Association of Washington. He earned Foster Pepper’s “Pro Bono Attorney of the Year” award in 2017 for his commitment to pro bono work. Heer joined Foster Pepper in 2016 after earning his J.D. (magna cum laude) from Seattle University School of Law and his B.A. from the University of Washington.
