Florida Bar News

Sosa wins YLD’s Pro Bono Service Award

Rebecca Lauren Sosa
Miami

Rebecca Lauren Sosa, a Miami litigation associate attorney at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, is the recipient of the 2013 Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Pro Bono Service Award.

Sosa is a dedicated public interest advocate with a passion for assisting low-income women, children, and immigrants. Her practice focuses on complex products liability litigation in federal and state courts. She began her career in her hometown, at Hughes Hubbard’s New York office, and transferred to its Miami office in March 2012.

After law school, Sosa went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to learn basic Spanish to expand the range of people she could work with. There, she met her husband, Luciano, and as they navigated their own immigration path to bring him to the United States, she began to see how she could realize her dreams of working on behalf of low-income families in crisis.

Sosa’s commitment to pro bono work is one that she shares with her firm, which she credits for providing essential support and encouragement. Her pro bono work spans several different areas of substantive law, and includes direct services and appellate work.

In 2010, Sosa contributed more than 1,000 pro bono hours, the highest number of hours in her firm. She began working with her first Spanish-speaking client, a Guatemalan woman who had survived abuse from her U.S. spouse, to obtain legal permanent residence through the Violence Against Women Act. Nearly two years later, the client won her case and was able to become a U.S. resident.

Sosa also helped a non-profit organization respond to various government subpoenas relating to its grant work and advocacy on behalf of low-income individuals. Legal Aid honored Sosa and the Hughes Hubbard team with a Pro Bono Publico Award for their work. Other pro bono matters include assisting a prisoner appeal his case to the Second Circuit and working on three cases before the Social Security Administration to obtain survivor benefits for posthumously conceived children. She also volunteered with the Office of Corporate Counsel in New York, where she took and defended depositions in the city’s tort cases.

Since transferring to Miami, she has begun participating in the Miami Pro Bono Roundtable meeting, and works to recruit and arrange training for Hughes Hubbard attorneys to take on additional immigration cases from Catholic Charities of Greater Miami.