Alice Tsier

Alice Tsier is pro bono counsel at White & Case and an experienced litigator. Throughout her career at the Firm, Alice has demonstrated a strong commitment to pro bono work, spanning a broad array of issues such as reproductive rights, education, the death penalty and debtors' prison.

For example, Alice worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington State in a case against a public hospital district that refused to comply with legislation ensuring neutrality with respect to women's reproductive rights, securing a complete victory and a reversal of the district's subsequent compliance with the law. She has also spearheaded multiple projects for a global reproductive rights NGO, leading a team of more than 50 lawyers across fifteen White & Case offices.

Together with the Education Law Center, Alice represented parents in Schenectady and Syracuse in a case against the state of New York, seeking to compel the State to fulfil its constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools in those districts. In the course of this high-stakes litigation the plaintiffs successfully beat back the State's proposed pandemic-era budget cuts that would have gutted Schenectady's education efforts and ultimately secured a landmark settlement that locked in the State's commitment to increase school funding by $4.2 billion. More recently, Alice was part of a White & Case team that helped obtain a significant pro bono win for public school children in New Hampshire, upholding their rights under the state constitution to equal educational funding, together with co-counsel from the Education Law Center.

Alice has acted as pro bono counsel for the Federal Republic of Germany in several cases involving German citizens on death row in the United States. Most notably, Alice successfully argued in the 4th Circuit that a German-U.S. citizen’s death sentence should be vacated in light of the petitioner's Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: a form of organic brain damage that so seriously affected his cognitive abilities that he has the emotional, social, and coping skills of a nine-year-old child.

Alice was also involved in the Firm's representation of citizens suing, on a class-wide basis, the City of Ferguson, Missouri, in connection with its municipal ordinance enforcement and jailing practices, including appearing before the 8th Circuit on Plaintiffs' behalf and successfully beating back the City's efforts to overturn a district court decision that denied the City's motion to dismiss on all of Plaintiffs' counts.

Prior to joining the pro bono team as full-time pro bono counsel, Alice was in the Firm's Americas Commercial Litigation Group. As a commercial litigator, Alice's practice focused on complex commercial disputes and bankruptcy litigation in various courts across the country. She has particular experience assisting clients in navigating the challenges and complexities of cross-border disputes. In her bankruptcy litigation work, Alice represented a diverse array of parties in large chapter 11 cases including, most recently, an ad hoc group of over 60,000 personal injury victims in the restructuring of Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.