Karen Grisez, DC-based immigration advocate, to be honoured at ABA annual meeting in Toronto
The American Bar Association (ABA) has announced that Karen T. Grisez – pro bono counsel in Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP’s Washington, DC, office – is this year’s winner of the John H. Pickering Award of Achievement.
At Fried Frank, Grisez joined as a litigation associate in 1990 and managed the Washington office’s pro bono program for over two decades. In this position, she supervised and represented pro bono clients in traditional civil poverty law matters, including veterans’ benefits, social security disability, family law, and housing.
She became increasingly involved in immigration matters, including those involving asylum. She has worked exclusively on Fried Frank’s immigration pro bono docket in the New York and Washington offices since early 2023.
In a news release, the ABA said it would honour Grisez at 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 9 at its annual meeting, running from Aug. 6–12 in Toronto.
Created in 2007 by the ABA senior lawyers division, the award commemorates the life and achievements of John Pickering, co-founder of the Washington, DC-based law firm WilmerHale, formerly known as Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.
The ABA annually bestows the Pickering Award on a recipient who has displayed brilliant legal work, an advocacy of pro bono service, a dedication to equal justice, and the promotion of high standards of legal ethics and professionalism.
The ABA provided more information on Grisez in its news release.
She has experience handling litigation before the federal courts, immigration courts, and the Board of Immigration Appeals in the US. She has testified thrice before the US Congress and once before the US Commission on Civil Rights as the ABA’s representative on immigration-related topics.
She has been a speaker and trainer on legal subjects relating to asylum, other immigration relief, immigration court reforms, detention, ethics, and the representation of victims of torture and trauma.
At the ABA, Grisez has been chair and member of its Commission on Immigration and the Working Group on Unaccompanied Minor Immigrants, an advisory board member of its Immigration Justice Project in San Diego, and a member of the Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service.
At the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), she has served on its national Pro Bono Committee and the District of Columbia chapter’s Pro Bono Committee. She has also represented the AILA before the ABA House of Delegates.
Grisez has been chair of the District of Columbia’s Advisory Committee on Pro Se Litigation, a member and chair of the board of trustees of the Center for Migration Studies of New York, and a member of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
She has also been a board member of the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (now the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights), the Washington Council of Lawyers, and the Indigent Civil Litigation Fund of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Grisez earned her JD from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. She received the 2025 Michael Maggio Memorial Pro Bono Award from the AILA and the 2024 Humanitarian Service Award from the Center for Migration Studies of New York.