Category: Pro Bono

This month, the American Bar Association (ABA) will mark the 10th Annual National Celebration of Pro Bono on October 21 – 27, 2018. The event is not only an occasion to celebrate the efforts of pro bono volunteers but also a week to inspire, educate, and train members of the private bar on the importance of their contribution to closing the justice gap. This year, the ABA’s national celebration has a special focus on disaster resiliency – a particularly salient topic one year after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria, and one month after Hurricane Florence. This year’s focal point is

Check out our most recent webinar produced in partnership with West LegalEdcenter, Ferguson, Fines, and Fees, to explore inspiring developments in the effort to decriminalize poverty and how pro bono lawyers can be of help.  Since the killing of Michael Brown in August 2014, St. Louis and its neighboring municipalities including Ferguson, Missouri, have been frequently cited for legal and moral failings in the region’s municipal justice system, which routinely sends thousands of people to jail because they cannot pay legal fines and fees. Poor and African-American people are disproportionately affected. The events in Ferguson, Missouri shined a spotlight on

Looking for a good read for the last long weekend of the summer? Check out Stand Tall: Fighting for My Life, Inside and Outside the Ring by Dewey Bozella, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 26 years until he was freed with the help of pro bono counsel from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr*† and the Innocence Project. From 1983 until 2009, Bozella was incarcerated in Sing Sing Correctional Facility for the murder of a 92 year-old woman in upstate New York. His memoir, Stand Tall, details his path to freedom through his perseverance, dedication, and resilience.  Bozella’s story from

After five years as Solicitor General of the United States, Donald Verrilli will be stepping down from the position. Verrilli is well known not only as a gifted orator but a staunch advocate for pro bono. PBI was honored to have him join us at the 2015 PBI Annual Conference to discuss his passion for access to justice and his hopes for the future of pro bono. When asked about whether he advises others to share his personal goal of spending at least 10 percent of his hours on pro bono matters he said: The way it looks to me now

March is Women’s History Month, dedicated to the many achievements and contributions of women throughout American history, including women in the legal profession. Among the women to have pioneered access to justice in law is Clara Shortridge Foltz, a once-celebrated but now largely forgotten public servant. Foltz was the first woman on the Pacific Coast to pass the bar after first lobbying the California legislature to change a legal code that allowed only white males to become lawyers. Foltz had a successful corporate practice and also represented many indigent defendants in criminal trials where she witnessed rampant prosecutorial misconduct and

Eleven years ago today, the U.S. experienced a trauma like no other in our history.  We watched as a brutal and senseless attack by terrorists unfolded on innocent people who were going about their daily lives.  The events of September 11 forever changed us as individuals and as a nation.  None of us – not only those of us in New York City, near the Pentagon, or in a small town in Pennsylvania who were direct eye witnesses  – will ever forget the unspeakable horror of that day or the bravery and generosity of spirit that followed. One of the