Leonard, Street and Deinard was recently selected to receive The Jefferson Award for Public Service, a prestigious recognition system honoring community and public service in America on a local and national level.

Created in 1972, the Jefferson Awards were co-founded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, U.S. Sen. Robert Taft, Jr., and Sam Beard, founder and chairman of the National Development Council, to establish a Nobel Prize for public service. Today, the awards serve as a “Call to Action for Volunteers” in local communities. In the Twin Cities, the award is facilitated by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

The firm was singled out among Twin Cities-area businesses for our “outstanding philanthropic efforts”—namely, a history of extensive community outreach and pro bono service dating back almost 90 years. Some of the firm’s ongoing contributions to the community include:

• People Serving People. For more than 15 years, the Leonard, Street and Deinard employees have volunteered with the organization, which serves homeless children and their families, including serving meals, reading to children and colleting and donating school supplies at the beginning of each school year. 
• Hearts & Hammers. For more than 11 years, the firm has sent teams of volunteers to help with exterior home improvement at residents of the elderly and disabled.
• Catholic Charities. Each quarter for more than 15 years, Leonard, Street and Deinard attorneys and staff volunteer with Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis to prepare and serve a spaghetti supper for the homeless and near-homeless in the neighborhood.
• Equal Justice Works Fellow. Leonard, Street and Deinard and the family of Minneapolis attorney Hyman Edelman jointly sponsor an Equal Justice Works fellow—a two-year fellowship that allows a recent law school graduate to focus on an area of law in the public interest.
• Memorial Blood Centers Blood Drive. The firm’s employees regularly donate blood quarterly through Memorial Blood Centers.

This is on top of the firm’s pro bono legal service which, in 2009, included 13,575 hours and $1.7 million in legal services in pro bono legal representation to some of the Twin Cities’ most underserved citizens.

The firm was profiled in the Oct. 15, 2010, issue of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal and will be recognized at a special event in December 2010. You can view the article here.