Steven H. Schulman leads Akin Gump’s pro bono practice worldwide. Steve maintains a substantive practice in many areas of public interest law, including human rights, immigration, assistance to military personnel and poverty law matters. He has handled dozens of asylum and other immigration cases, and is also a lead counsel in Mamani v. Sanchez de Lozada. This case was brought in federal court under the Alien Tort Statute on behalf of nine Bolivian families who lost relatives in military massacres in 2003, when Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was the President and Commander in Chief of the Bolivian Military. The firm has partnered on this case with the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and other human rights organizations and lawyers.
Steve joined Akin Gump in 2006 as its first full-time pro bono partner. Since he joined the firm, participation in the pro bono practice has increased substantially in every office, with Akin Gump lawyers now devoting an average of more than 80 hours annually to pro bono client matters. Under his leadership, the firm has also built strong relationships with local and national legal services organizations and has developed experience in several areas of pro bono practice, such as representing charter schools, working with refugees and victims of human rights abuses and providing legal counsel to military personnel and their families. Since 2008, Schulman has led and supervised the firm’s Washington Office Summer Pro Bono Scholars Program, a program to identify and develop top law students into the next generation of Akin Gump attorneys committed to building the pro bono practice.
Prior to joining Akin Gump, Schulman led the pro bono practice at Latham & Watkins from 2001 to 2004. While at that firm, he developed and implemented that firm’s signature Child Refugee Project, assisting unaccompanied alien children in the United States through individual representation, legislative advocacy and systemic reform. As a result of this project, thousands of children were moved from detention to foster care.
Schulman also has extensive experience in antitrust and white collar criminal matters. In private antitrust litigation, he has represented clients in a variety of industries, including defense contracting and health care. In mergers and acquisitions, he has represented clients in dozens of transactions before the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. His reported merger cases include FTC v. Libbey and FTC v. Swedish Match. He also has represented corporations in criminal matters and internal investigations, including the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee in its defense of a federal criminal probe into its Olympic bidding practices. He conducted an internal investigation for the board of directors of an automobile manufacturer concerning tread separations on tires used on its vehicles.
Schulman received his B.A. cum laude in 1989 from Brandeis University and his J.D. cum laude in 1994 from the Northwestern University School of Law, where he was the associate note and comment editor of the Northwestern University Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia and Maryland bars and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Courts for the District of Maryland and the District of Columbia, and the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd, 4th, 9th and 10th Circuits. He is secretary and a member of the Leadership Council of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel (APBCo) and an inaugural member of the Human Rights First Board of Advocates. He is a member of the board of directors for Appleseed, a nonprofit network of 16 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico; the legal advisory board of the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition; and the board of directors of Buildable Hours, a law firm partnership with Habitat for Humanity. He has also served as co-chair of the ABA Section of Litigation Pro Bono and Public Interest Litigation Committee (2002-2005) and on the ABA Commission on Immigration (2004-2005). Mr. Schulman is an adjunct professor at the Stanford Law School and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches seminars on law firm economics and pro bono practice.
Steve has served as Commissioner of the NHL Rotisserie Baseball League since its establishment in 1990. Schulman’s team, the Stevie Wonders, have consistently been the second best team in the league, the best, of course, being the Jo.M.Organs, run by The RP.
