Richard is a member of ARIAS-US, the reinsurance arbitration organization, and is certified as a reinsurance arbitrator. He is active in the New York City Bar Association where he is past chair of the Products Liability Committee and, as a former member of the Federal Courts Committee, helped write the Committee's report: "The Indefinite Detention of Enemy Combatants: Balancing Due Process and National Security in the Context of the War on Terror." He is currently a member of the Arbitration Committee.
Richard also serves as a court-appointed mediator in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Richard has been recognized by clients and his peers as a leading insurance and reinsurance law adviser in the 2002, 2004, 2006, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018 Guide to the World’s Leading Insurance and Reinsurance Lawyers (Legal Media Group).
Richard is also a member of the board of directors of the Friends of American Mission Hospital (2017-present) and the City Bar Fund of the New York City Bar Association (2018- ).
Pro Bono and Public Service
Richard is a committed contributor to Willkie’s pro bono program. In 2018, he was recognized by the New York State Unified Court System’s Attorney Emeritus Program for his substantial pro bono contributions over the past year. In February 2017, he led a Willkie team in the successful representation of a 12-year old Iranian national who, in the face of President Trump’s travel ban, sought entry into the United States for an urgent and time-sensitive surgery needed to save her vision. The case, and the child’s reunion with her mother at JFK Airport, received significant media attention (click here for the CNN video clip).
Richard was recently named to the shortlist for “Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year” at the upcoming Chambers Diversity and Inclusion Awards: USA 2019. In 2015, Richard received the New York City Bar Justice Center's Jeremy G. Epstein Award for Outstanding Pro Bono Service in recognition of his work on a challenging asylum case. In 2014, The New York Law Journal named Richard among the distinguished group of “Lawyers Who Lead by Example” for his “outstanding record of providing crucial legal services to poor or nearly poor New Yorkers,” and the New York State Bar Association recognized him as one of the Empire State Counsel® honorees for extraordinary pro bono contributions in 2014. On December 31, 2014, he obtained an appellate victory for Great Oaks Charter School - New York in a matter against the New York City Department of Education involving obtaining much-needed rental assistance under a new law.
Richard's pro bono work also contributed to Willkie’s selection by Law360 as “Pro Bono Firm of 2012,” in which two of his cases were singled out for special recognition. In Favors v. Cuomo, a voting rights case, a three-judge federal panel granted judgment for Willkie’s pro bono clients on claims that New York's previously existing congressional districts were unconstitutional under the “one-person, one-vote” requirement of the U.S. Constitution and, as requested by Willkie, redrew New York's congressional districts by following neutral redistricting principles that did not favor incumbents. See Favors v. Cuomo, 866 F. Supp. 2d 176 (E.D.N.Y. 2012) (panel upheld Willkie’s complaint against ripeness and standing challenges); No. 11-CV-5632, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25707 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2012) (panel granted Willkie’s clients' application to appoint special master to draw New York’s congressional districts applying neutral redistricting principles); 2012 WL 928223 (E.D.N.Y. March 19, 2012) (panel adopted Magistrate Judge’s plan and affirmed rejection of protection of incumbents as applicable redistricting factor).
In the other, Richard led a pro bono team's submission of an amicus brief on behalf of the National Center for Science Education in the Ohio Supreme Court in a case raising issues concerning a public junior high school teacher's inappropriate injection of religious beliefs and Creationism in his teaching of evolution. NCSE argued that appellant’s teaching methods served no legitimate pedagogical purpose in a public school science class, were scientifically unsound, and “served only impermissibly to advance a sectarian purpose, namely to teach creationism in its traditional version of creation science or its modern incarnation of intelligent design.”
Richard's work on behalf of pro bono political asylum clients also led to his and his team’s recognition in 2013 by Sanctuary for Families at its 10th Annual Above & Beyond Pro Bono Achievement Awards & Benefit. Richard and his Willkie colleagues obtained political asylum for a family that fled Mexico to escape domestic violence, in the process persuading the Department of Homeland Security to recognize a path-breaking definition of persecution on the basis of social group for juvenile domestic violence victims. In another recent pro bono matter, Richard submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Innocence Project urging the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize a constitutional claim of actual innocence in criminal habeas corpus cases.
Richard also represented 56 scientific organizations as amici curiae in an appeal before the Eleventh Circuit involving the constitutionality of school board’s affixing a disclaimer to biology textbooks regarding evolutionary theory. Selman v. Cobb County School District, No. 05-11725 (11th Cir. 2006). And he also represented pro bono a New Jersey public high school student in his successful challenge of a teacher's unconstitutional religious instruction and denigration of the science of evolution. See “Student, 16, Finds Allies In His Fight Over Religion,” N.Y. Times (Feb. 20, 2007) (“Richard Mancino, a partner with Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which is representing the family, said he did not understand why school officials would not ‘stand up for this student, who had the guts to raise this constitutional issue.’”).