FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 21, 2010
Contact: Kimberly Schmitt
512-320-0099 or kschmitt@teajf.org

Texas Access to Justice Commission Recognizes Pro Bono Efforts of Corporate Counsel

Karen Lukin of Marathon Oil Company Honored

Austin, Texas – The Texas Access to Justice (ATJ) Commission honored Karen Lukin, senior counsel with Marathon Oil Company in Houston, with the second annual ATJ Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Award at the State Bar Corporate Counsel and Business Law Annual Meeting held June 10 in Fort Worth. Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht presented the award on behalf of the Commission.  

The ATJ Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Award was established in 2009 to recognize an outstanding corporate counsel attorney who actively provides pro bono legal services for the poor and promotes this pro bono culture within the corporate framework.    The award includes a $2,000 grant to be donated to a pro bono program on Lukin’s behalf.  Lukin has designated the grant, which was made possible in part from a contribution of the State Bar Corporate Counsel Section, to the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program.

Lukin led a program for Marathon’s Houston Law Organization to offer its law employees the opportunity to provide legal services to the indigent, elderly, and others in need.  In only the second year of the Marathon’s Houston pro bono program, 77 percent of the attorneys and 65 percent of the staff worked more than 1,100 pro bono hours.  Under Lukin’s leadership, employees from Marathon’s Houston Law Organization staffed more than seven clinics of the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program, including complicated Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) cases whose goal is to prevent the deportation of children to their home countries where they were abandoned, abused or neglected.  Lukin also set up the logistics for Marathon to be one of the largest staffers of the Houston Bar’s Senior Citizen Will-a-Thon.  

In the Houston legal community, Lukin became one of the founding members of the Pro Bono Joint Initiative, a collaboration between corporate law departments and law firm pro bono coordinators to develop pro bono activities across all firms and corporate legal groups to better serve the legal needs of those in the Houston area.

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The Texas Access to Justice Commission was created in 2001 by the Supreme Court of Texas to develop and implement policy initiatives designed to expand access to and enhance the quality of justice in civil legal matters for low-income Texans. The Commission has created several initiatives to increase resources and awareness of legal aid. For more information, please visit www.TexasATJ.org.