Former investigators from the FBI and CIA are on staff, but that's just one thing that makes Bickel & Brewer a different kind of law firm. Yes, the firm recently launched its own investigative unit, but another distinguishing factor is that it has run its own charitable foundation for more than 10 years.

Indeed, the 34-lawyer Dallas-based law firm has funded the Bickel & Brewer Foundation since 1995. Its activities have expanded to where, last year, the firm hired Kit Sawers to serve as the full-time executive director of the foundation. Sawers had previously run her own event management and consulting business.

What's more, during the past year the firm has significantly enhanced its Future Leaders Program, which offers after-school academic resources and leadership training to 80 middle school students from poor areas of Dallas. Bickel & Brewer added 10 public and private school administrators to the program, and launched a high school component providing assistance with testing, college placement and scholarship applications. They also give qualifying students the opportunity to visit college campuses in destinations such as New York and Los Angeles accompanied by Bickel & Brewer staff members.

The focus on education ties directly to the pro bono work that the firm does in its downtown "Storefront" office, where a pivotal case involved representing Hispanic civic leaders, in a federal redistricting lawsuit against the Dallas Independent School District (See "A Different Model," Small Firm Business magazine, Winter 2005).

It was partly through his work at the Storefront, bringing cases aimed at local school boards who Brewer says weren't giving local Latino families access to their decision making process, that Brewer was first inspired to found the Future Leaders Program back in 2001.

"We recognized after we started the Storefront back in the '90s that education is just vital to any emerging part of the community," says Brewer. "The public schools have to get the kids in their trust to college so that these children can return as future leaders."

The firm isn't going it alone in its attempt to impact the lives of local students. The firm has also formed partnerships with some of Dallas' wealthier private schools to provide some of the city's poorer public schools with after-school tutoring programs.

Students who have qualified for FLP can attend twice-weekly tutoring sessions co-taught by public and private school teachers. They're also encouraged to attend Sunday programs, and a three-week summer camp, which focuses on teaching leadership, technology use and mathematics. When it's at full tilt, sometime within the next six years, Brewer hopes to serve upwards of 240 students.

Last August, Brewer won an award from the Texas State Board of Education, entitled, "Hero for Children." The firm says that they retain the vast majority of students who have been enrolled in their FLP program since 2001.

Brewer says, however, that the real test of the Future Leaders Program's success will be a function of whether their students are successful years down the line. For him, that means sending the kids to "fully accredited four-year colleges and that they are graduating." Ultimately, Brewer says the core principal they try to teach students in the program is that success can be earned by having a vision of one's own path.