Pro Bono Partners
GNIP’s pro bono partnership program is a vital component of our mission to seek justice for the wrongfully convicted. By forming strong, collaborative partnerships with law firms and legal professionals, we ensure that our clients receive the highest quality legal representation, free of cost, while fostering long-term relationships with the legal community.
GNIP’s pro bono partners generously donate hours of time, unmatched skill and expertise, and monetary support for case expenses to achieve justice for our wrongfully convicted clients.
To learn more about pro bono volunteer opportunities with the Great North Innocence project, please contact Director of Development Deandra Bieneman at dbieneman@gn-ip.org.
The Great North Innocence Project’s 2024-2025 Pro Bono Partners
- Mark Bradford (Bradford Andresen Norrie & Camarotto)
- Dane DeKrey (Ringstrom DeKrey)
- Faegre Drinker
- Fish & Richardson
- Fredrikson & Byron
- Husch Blackwell
- Julie Jonas (University of St. Thomas School of Law)
- Maslon LLP
- Nilan Johnson Lewis
- Kevin Riach (Law Office of Kevin Riach)
- Taft
Pro Bono Champions
Each year at the Great North Innocence Project’s Benefit for Innocence, the organization awards the Pro Bono Champions of the Year Award to an individual or team of pro bono volunteers who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to innocence work, dedicating their time, expertise, and passion to investigating and litigating innocence cases in partnership with the Great North Innocence Project.
2025 Pro Bono Champions
The 2025 Pro Bono Champions Award was awarded to attorneys Mark Bradford and Kevin Riach for their extraordinary advocacy as pro bono counsel supporting GNIP’s legal team in our organization’s first-ever retrial of an innocent client. Over a four-week retrial in St. Cloud, Minnesota, their work helped secure Robert Kaiser’s full acquittal on May 2, 2025.
2024 Pro Bono Champions
The 2024 Pro Bono Champions Award was awarded to a remarkable team of attorneys at Fish & Richardson. Their unwavering dedication and exceptional advocacy on behalf of GNIP client Jennifer Baldwin have truly set them apart. Mike Kane, Stuart Nelson, Kiersten Batzli, Grayson Sundermeir, Jon Bell, Jodi Soucek, and Ryan Petty have worked tirelessly to seek justice for Jennifer, who is currently serving a 21-year sentence in Minnesota for charges related to the tragic death of an infant in her care in 2019.
Education Partners
The Great North Innocence Project legal team teaches at four law schools across the Great North region: University of Minnesota Law School, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, University of North Dakota Law School, and University of South Dakota Law School.
Each year, GNIP lawyers teach courses on wrongful convictions and supervise innocence clinics. Through these courses, our region’s future lawyers and judges are trained to spot the main causes of wrongful convictions and remedy wrongful convictions through post conviction litigation. By participating in the innocence clinics, law students gain hands-on experience investigating and supporting the litigation of actual innocence cases.
The Innocence Network
The Great North Innocence Project (formerly the Innocence Project of Minnesota), is a founding member of the Innocence Network.
Established in 2005, the Innocence Network is an informal coalition of independent innocence organizations dedicated to combating wrongful convictions worldwide and reforming the criminal legal system.
Today, the Network is composed of over 70 independent innocence organizations from around the United States and the world. Innocence organizations use a variety of strategies to free wrongfully convicted people and improve the criminal legal system including investigation and litigation, policy advocacy, education, and reentry support for freed people.
Each year, Network members, along with freed and exonerated people and their supporters, gather at the Innocence Network Conference to share ideas, build the innocence movement, and support one another.
Justice for All Coalition
The Great North Innocence Project is a member of the Justice for All Coalition (JFA), a collection of organizations and community leaders in Minnesota seeking to reimagine public safety through policy change. The Coalition includes a wide variety of members who focus on different aspects of the criminal legal system and public safety. Other members include the Minnesota Justice Research Center, Violence Free Minnesota, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, African American Leadership Forum, the ACLU of Minnesota, the League of Women Voters, and the Legal Rights Center, among others. Each year, JFA chooses a slate of public safety-focused policy proposals from its member organizations and champions these proposals through legislative advocacy efforts at the state legislature.