About

Representative Clients

Pro Bono & Community Involvement

• Dain Torpy Works with Boston’s Heading Home

  Many of Dain Torpy’s associates heard from Heading Home‘s Director of Major Gifts, Joseph Gravellese, about Heading Home’s incredible work in our community. Then they packed hygiene kits for Heading Home’s residents. Dain Torpy is delighted to support such an outstanding organization! 

  

  

• Cantata Singers

  Cantata Singers is a Boston-based chorus and orchestra inspired by the musical genius of Johann Sebastian Bach. Their education program teaches songwriting and choral singing to underserved Boston schoolchildren, guided by the belief that all children deserve the means to express their creative voices. Susan Murphy is on the Board of Trustees and has provided pro bono legal representation on real estate lease and contract matters for the Cantata Singers

• Presenting to Students

  Dan Dain presenting as part of the BBA visit to the Land Court program for students and new lawyers.

  

• Ugandan Sexual Orientation Asylee Client

  Dain Torpy attorneys Michael McDermott and Kate Moran Carter recently won asylum for their client in a removal hearing before the United States Immigration Court. Their client, a Ugandan refugee, fled to the United States last year after being publicly outed by the media on account of his sexual orientation and having endured repeated attacks on his home by vigilante mobs. The Immigration Judge granted the client’s application for asylum on the grounds that a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of sexual orientation had been established

• All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Braintree

  After years of research and dedication by its members, All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Braintree, Massachusetts, was recently honored with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Along the way, the Church applied for and was granted Community Preservation funds from the Town of Braintree for repair of portions of the Church’s unique stone exterior. In order to receive the CPA funds, the Church was required to grant an Historic Preservation Restriction to the Town subject to the approval of the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Attorney Susan Murphy of Dain Torpy provided pro bono assistance to the Church in its preparation and negotiation of the Restriction. While such Historic Preservation Restrictions start with a standard form, each must be tailored to the historic aspects of the property. In addition, to address the structure’s religious purpose, the Restriction had to be modified so that the restrictions did not interfere with the Church’s Constitutional rights to free exercise of religion. With the cooperation of the Town, the Church, with Attorney Murphy’s assistance, was able to secure the funding necessary to preserve this beautiful and historic structure in a manner consistent with its mission. READ MORE

• Heading Home Holiday Decorating

  As a firm Dain Torpy decorated a support home for homeless women in Cambridge for the holidays.

  

• Passport to Pairings

  Dain Torpy is a proud sponsor of this year’s annual Passport to Pairings event put on by the Boston Bar Foundation. The annual event welcomes hundreds of area attorneys, law students, and summer associates for a food-filled evening to support the Public Service programs of the BBA.

• Urbanity Dance

  Kate Moran Carter assisted Urbanity Dance in moving to their new location at 1180 Washington Street in the South End. Ms. Carter assisted Urbanity in negotiating with the City of Boston and the Trustees of the mixed-use condominium in which Urbanity’s space is now located, renegotiating the terms of Urbanity’s lease, and addressing construction-related issues stemming from Urbanity’s build-out in the new space. See more about Urbanity Dance’s move and their mission to grant access to dance and art to all in the article published by Boston.com: Urbanity Dance Builds Community Through Movement

• BBA Summer Jobs Program and Greater Boston Area Charities

  Dain Torpy is a proud funder the Boston Bar Association’s Summer Jobs program. This summer from the help of its funders the BBA was able to fund summer jobs for 14 Boston High school students. Dain Torpy is also a proud supporter of numerous Boston charities and nonprofit organizations, including but not limited to: Heading Home, a charity dedicated to ending homelessness in Greater Boston, Cans for Charity, a nonprofit that uses money from recycling cans to help others in need, and More Than Words, a nonprofit empowering youth in the foster care system, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their life. Dain Torpy also sponsors events held by various Boston organizations. This year we have sponsored events like the Boston Bar Association Diversity Dinner, the Boston Bar Association Annual Luncheon, Town of Hingham’s 4th of July Parade, and the Lawyers for Transgender Rights Fundraiser for the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Dain Torpy also participates in the American Heart Association’s Lawyers Have Heart 5K each year, which raises money and awareness for heart disease and stroke victims.

• Boys and Girls Club of Boston’s YouthConnect Program

  Dain Torpy was a sponsor of this year’s YouthConnect Fall Partnership Breakfast, which celebrated YouthConnect’s 18th year of helping our communities’ most at-risk youth through Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston’s partnership with the Boston Police Department. Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston’s YouthConnect program is an advocacy and intervention program of BGCB whose mission is to help the most at-risk young people make positive life choices through trusting relationships with skilled and compassionate social workers.

• Uganda Political Dissident Asylee Client

  Dain Torpy attorneys Kate Moran Carter and Michael McDermott recently won political asylum for their client in a removal hearing before the United States Immigration Court. The firm’s client, a Ugandan refugee and a member of the oppositional political party, the Forum for Democratic Change, fled to the United States in 2009 after being detained and tortured on two separate occasions because of his membership within the FDC. After presentation of the client’s direct testimony, cross-examination, and re-direct, the Immigration Judge granted the client’s application for asylum on the grounds that she found his testimony to be credible and that he had established his well-founded fear of future persecution by the government of Uganda on account of his membership in the FDC. The United States Department of Homeland Security immediately waived its right to appeal the decision. Ms. Carter and Mr. McDermott will now work to seek derivative asylum for the client’s wife and five children, whom he has not seen in five years and who continue to live in hiding in Uganda.

• Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project

  Since 2005, Kate Moran Carter has worked with the Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project (PAIR) to represent applicants seeking asylum here in the United States on account of past persecution or future persecution that they have or will face in their home countries. Currently Kate is representing two clients. The first was granted asylum on account of the past persecution he faced in his home country of Togo for his work on behalf of a political opposition party, after Kate successfully represented him at the time of his removal hearing. Kate is now working with this client to bring over his wife and children, whom he has not seen in eight years, and to apply for his green card so that he can begin the naturalization process and become an American citizen. Kate’s second client is currently seeking asylum on account of past persecution he faced in his home country of Uganda as a result of his membership and work on behalf of a political opposition party. Kate will represent him in a removal hearing before the Immigration Court.
  POLITICAL ASYLUM IMMIGRATION REPRESENTATION PROJECT

• Maud Morgan Visual Arts Center

  Dan Dain provided pro bono legal representation to the Agassiz Baldwin Community Center in Cambridge in successfully defending against two different appeals of permits for the renovation of an existing dilapidated old carriage house into the planned new Maud Morgan Visual Arts Center, to serve children in after-school art programs.
  

• New England Innocence Project

  Nancer Ballard worked as an insurance specialist with Joe Savage and others at Goodwin Procter, LLP to settle a civil case brought on behalf of a man who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for over nineteen years before being exonerated through the efforts of the New England Innocence Project.

• Cameroonian Refugee Clients

  Dan Pasquarello successfully represented a Cameroonian refugee couple seeking political asylum as lead counsel during two-day hearing before Immigration Court. He conducted extensive client interviews, submitted briefing, expert reports, and affidavits, and prepared clients, fact witnesses, and expert witnesses for trial; he continued his representation of the clients with respect to derivative asylum status for the children they were forced to leave behind in Cameroon, and assisted clients in obtaining permanent residency status.

• Boston Public Market Association

  Donald W. Wiest serves as the Vice Chair of the Boston Public Market Association, a non-profit with a mission of establishing a permanent, year-round public food hall in downtown Boston. He previously served as the Chair from 2007-2013.