Laura Burstein entered law school with a clear goal of helping people.
“Law is a service industry,” she said.
After 12 years at SMU Dedman School of Law, where she built and led its public interest and pro bono programs, Burstein has joined O’Melveny & Myers as pro bono counsel in Dallas.
“It’s just been the biggest honor and privilege to be able to work with students and build the pro bono program,” Burstein said. “But the opportunity to come to a place like O’Melveny and to have the comprehensive resources that firms have to really make a broader impact with pro bono work is just really exciting. O’Melveny is a phenomenal firm where the culture and the values are really focused on pro bono, giving back and recognizing that law is a service industry.”
Burstein is the firm’s first pro bono counsel in Texas.
O’Melveny attorneys logged more than 100,000 hours of pro bono work last year, averaging about 133 hours per lawyer, she said.
Since opening its Dallas office in 2021, O’Melveny has partnered with the Dedman School of Law to support its clinics with financial resources and collaborate on pro bono cases.
Her move to O’Melveny also carries personal significance. Burstein’s father worked in information technology at the firm’s Los Angeles office late in his career.
It’s a running joke in Burstein’s family that as a young student, she wasn’t good at math, so a career in medicine was ruled out. Drawn to helping people, she turned to law, following in the footsteps of her grandfather and uncle.
She attended Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C., where she interned with the Maryland attorney general. There, she worked on a special project for the governor, developing statutes for state agencies that serve children in the state’s care.
“It was this really remarkable opportunity where we got to learn the kinds of issues that faced these vulnerable children and seeing how important, really careful, equitable, ethical rules were and how they impacted their lives,” Burstein said.
That experience set her on a path in public sector work.
From there, Burstein went to the University of Michigan Law School, where she served as a staff attorney in a special partnership with the Legal Services Corporation of Michigan assisting low-income survivors of domestic violence.
After two and a half years, Burstein and her husband moved to Dallas, where he joined the faculty at UT Southwestern. Burstein became director of the multicultural legal services program at Mosaic Family Services, a nonprofit focused on human trafficking and domestic violence. She worked there for three and a half years before joining SMU, where she most recently served as assistant dean for public interest and pro bono and faculty supervisor for public sector externships.
For her work, the Texas Access to Justice Commission will honor Burstein with its Harry M. Reasoner Justice for All Award at its April 30 Champions of Justice Gala.
“The justice gap is widening and law firms are situated to really assist,” Burstein said. “It’s so hard for nonprofits. I would say that the nonprofit sector has grown in the state of Texas since I first arrived 18 years ago. There are many more agencies trying to do good, which is a beautiful thing, but law firms are a really wonderful partner for ensuring that we can get more accomplished.”