2025 Chesterfield Smith Award

PBI is pleased to honor James L. Volling, Senior Counsel, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, with the 2025 Chesterfield Smith Award at the PBI Annual Conference on February 27, in Washington, D.C.

This award recognizes extraordinary courage and commitment to pro bono by a legal leader. The award is not given annually, rather only when warranted by outstanding achievement.

Jim has dedicated much of his professional life to the development and delivery of pro bono legal services, focusing efforts largely in three areas: children, post-conviction representation, and prisoner reentry.

The impetus for Jim’s dedication to pro bono came while serving as a Supreme Court law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger working on the majority opinion in a Texas death penalty case, Estelle v. Smith, which held unconstitutional the state’s use of psychiatric testimony at the trial’s penalty phase on the issue of the defendant’s future dangerousness. In working on this case and other death penalty appeals that relied on the Court’s decision in Estelle v. Smith, Jim was shocked by the inadequate and inexperienced defense in numerous cases, particularly with life or death at stake, and vowed to do something to rectify that injustice.

Jim’s post-conviction work, which began more than four decades ago, continues to the present day. Since 2003, Jim has led a team of lawyers in Minnesota and Colorado representing a man in post-conviction proceedings challenging his convictions for second-degree murder and arson. Jim is currently working on community confinement and parole issues for the client, as well as pursuing commutation of his sentence. As a further extension of his post-conviction work, Jim currently serves on and Chairs the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP) and helps guide that organization in its mission of remedying and preventing wrongful criminal convictions. Jim is also leading a team of firm attorneys in various offices working with a GNIP staff attorney in representing in Mississippi post-conviction proceedings a woman who was convicted of murdering an infant in her care and sentenced to life imprisonment. The client professes her innocence, and an evidentiary hearing was held in Mississippi in June 2023, where Jim and his team presented her compelling case. Following post-hearing submissions in October 2023, they are awaiting a decision from the court.

In 2017, Jim became lead plaintiffs’ counsel in a putative class action filed in federal court on behalf of certain minor children against Hennepin County in Minnesota and various government officials challenging on constitutional grounds the County’s child protection and child welfare system. The hotly contested litigation was ultimately resolved with a landmark settlement mandating a four-year settlement period, requiring sweeping reforms, and providing for a Settlement Subcommittee headed by an Independent Neutral (a former judge) to monitor compliance with the settlement terms.

Working with PBI, Jim serves on the Steering Committee of the Minnesota Collaborative Justice Project, which is focused on prisoner reentry. The Project was initiated several years ago, and Jim was the driving force behind choosing prisoner reentry as the theme. He also chairs the Access to Services Working Group and its Civil Legal Needs Initiative Subcommittee, which addresses needs and barriers regarding civil legal services, housing, employment, health care, transportation, etc. Jim has led the effort to provide civil legal services to participants in Federal Reentry Court in Minnesota, to federal releasees at halfway houses or under supervision in Minnesota, and to certain inmates at federal correctional facilities in Minnesota.

Following the judicial clerkships that began his legal career, Jim joined the law firm now known as Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP where he was a Partner for 37 years and now serves as Senior Counsel. Faegre Drinker is a founding member of the PBI Law Firm Pro Bono Project and a Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge® Signatory.

Jim is an attorney in the Business Litigation Group of Faegre Drinker in Minneapolis and practices in the areas of complex civil and criminal commercial litigation and internal and government investigations. Jim has also been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota Law School and has been trained and has worked as a qualified neutral. He has served in various leadership roles at the firm, including as a member of the Legal Personnel Committee, as Chair of the Pro Bono and Community Service Committee, as Chair of the Governance Task Force, as Head of the Business Litigation Group, as a member of the Management Committee, and as a member of the Management Board. Jim has been recognized in Best Lawyers in America (selected in 2017, 2022, and 2023 as a Lawyer of the Year, twice for Securities Litigation and once for Antitrust Litigation), Chambers U.S.A., Super Lawyers, and Benchmark Litigation as an exceptional business litigator.

Jim serves on the Advisory Committee of the PBI Law Firm Pro Bono Project initiative, which supports and enhances the pro bono culture and performance of major law firms in the U.S. and around the world promoting partner and associate participation in pro bono service. As the Law Firm Pro Bono Project celebrates its 30th anniversary of the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge initiative in 2025, it is especially fitting to recognize Jim for his commitment and leadership in law firm pro bono.

About the Chesterfield Smith Award

The Chesterfield Smith Award is named after the late Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Holland & Knight LLP, who believed passionately and completely in equal justice for all, while standing firm in his conviction that public service and pro bono are absolutely essential elements in the lives of lawyers and in the work of great law firms.