Pro Bono Adventures
Featured Volunteer: Judge Lino Lipinsky
July 2026
We’re spreading tales of pro bono adventures to highlight the impact that pro bono work can have on someone’s life. This month’s featured volunteer is Judge Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov.
Judge Lipinsky’s Story
From our first days as lawyers in the 1980s, my wife and I committed ourselves to providing pro bono representation for members of our community who could not afford a lawyer. My wife and I realized these cases could be more rewarding than our matters for paying clients.
I represented a young Denver employee who had requested three days of sick leave to care for her grievously injured same-sex domestic partner. The city denied my client’s request because, at the time, domestic partners were not included in the Denver Career Service Authority’s definition of “immediate family,” which determined which family members city workers could take sick leave to care for. The employee could not afford a lawyer, and I agreed to represent her without charge.
I argued to a hearing officer that my client’s domestic partner was an “immediate family” member under the plain language of the city’s sick leave policy and that my client should not have been penalized for using her own earned sick leave to remain at her partner’s bedside.
Although I won the case before the hearing officer and, later, a Denver District Court judge, a division of the court of appeals reversed. The division concluded that my client had been discriminated against based on her marital status—conduct that, at the time, the city rules permitted.
But there was a happy ending. Although I could not convince the court of appeals judges that the Authority had engaged in illegal discrimination under the city rules, the city eventually changed its definition of “immediate family” to expressly encompass life partners. After the US Supreme Court held that marriage equality was the law of the land, my client married her partner. They are now parents of two grown daughters who share their parents’ dedication to justice.
Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov is a judge on the Colorado Court of Appeals. He serves as chair of the Standing Committee on the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct and the Legal Technology Advisory Committee, and he is a member of the Colorado Access to Justice Commission, the Commission’s Technology Committee, and the Appellate Courts Technology Committee.
Have a pro bono story to share? Send to Casey Frank at probono@caseyfrank.com.
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