Produced in conjunction with CeriFi, PBI offers a series of webinars helpful to firms and in-house departments. These programs, which generally offer CLE credits, focus on topics ranging from reprising sessions from PBI’s most recent Annual Conference to current and evolving issues in pro bono.
Registration Information:
Registration is free for Law Firm Pro Bono Project® Member Law Firms. Law firm members should contact the Law Firm Pro Bono Project initiative for the promotional code to register for the live programs or get them on demand free-of-charge once they have aired. If you are not a member, you can access the webinars through the West LegalEdcenter site, and pay a fee.
Corporate participants should contact the CPBO project for registration information.
Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Legal aid organizations have been on the front lines of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion to enhance legal services and better represent marginalized communities. This includes efforts to improve workplace values, develop cultural competency, and empower communities. This session will explore innovative DEI strategies of legal services organizations and lessons learned that legal aid and their pro bono partners can adopt to strengthen their efforts to promote DEI and advance racial equity.
A Blueprint for Addressing Legal Deserts
About 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas with more than 17 percent living below 125 percent of the poverty level; yet only 2 percent of lawyers practice in rural areas. This engaging case study will highlight Georgia Legal Services Program’s Wills and Estates Signature Project, which partners with large law firms and corporate legal departments to provide remote legal assistance in rural Georgia counties. Learn about GLSP’s impactful program and discuss strategies to leverage scare resources to better serve rural communities near you.
Deepening the Impact of In-House Pro Bono Programs
How can in-house pro bono programs create pathways to evolve from one-time volunteers to experienced pro bono volunteers and advocates? This interactive session will explore how legal departments can partner with law firms and legal service organizations to engage volunteers in meaningful “bite-size projects,” while developing pathways for volunteers to take on deeper work. Examples of successful partnerships will include immigration and long-term legal research.
Excessive Sentencing in the Deep South: How Pro Bono Attorneys Can Make a Difference
This session will cover the mechanisms that drive extreme and excessive sentences in Louisiana and other Southern states (such as aggressive habitual offender laws and mandatory sentencing); developments in the law that are providing opportunities to challenge these sentences; and ways that pro bono attorneys can assist to make our sentences less extreme and more equitable.
Executive Presence: What Matters & What Gets in the Way
Pro bono and access to justice leaders will understand how enhancing their executive presence can counteract bias as a barrier to their leadership advancement and effectiveness. This session will cover characteristics and behaviors that matter least and most in conveying confidence and power with others.
Increasing Access to Justice Through Regulatory Reform
Over the past several years, several states have opened the door to legal regulatory reform to address the gap in access to justice and legally empower communities. Innovation for Justice (i4J), housed at both Arizona and the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, is a social justice lab working across states to pilot legal reform initiatives. As part of its work, i4J has developed an actionable, replicable framework to stand up reform innovations that serve communities experiencing problems in areas of domestic violence, housing instability, and debt collection. Join i4J for this session and discuss how its framework can be used to design, test, and launch pilot programs to equip advocates to provide upstream, trauma-informed, limited-scope legal advice to low-income communities, as well as opportunities for law firms, in-house legal departments, and legal services organizations to get involved in these legal reform efforts.
Innovations in Access to Justice
In 2022, the Legal Services Corporation reported that 92 percent of low-income Americans do not receive the civil legal help needed in disputes where losing their job, livelihood, home, or children, or seek a restraining order against an abuser were at risk. The need for projects to support, implement, and assess sustainable innovations to improve access to justice is great. Leaders in access to justice will discuss important work that is being done or could be done to improve access to justice and better serve low-income and underserved communities.
Innovative Ways to Support the Justice-Involved Community
Seeking to make a difference for the justice-involved community? Join Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative to learn about its unique programs, including a paralegal program for returning citizens, a wrongful conviction clinic involving undergraduate students, and the importance of pro bono representation at every level of the criminal legal system. You will hear from speakers with lived experience – getting to the heart of criminal justice reform pro bono work. Attendees may later participate in an in-person visit to the DC Jail or a virtual visit to a Colorado state facility through the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice.
Opportunities in Pro Bono – Eviction Record Sealing
Eviction record sealing can increase individuals’ and families’ access to safe and stable housing. In this session, pro bono advocates will share how they successfully drafted a permanent eviction record-sealing bill in Washington, D.C., and created a brand-new pro bono record-sealing project to help tenants access the benefits of the law. Attendees will walk away with a step-by-step guide to create their own eviction-sealing projects, including a toolbox for legislative advocacy.
Post-Roe Reproductive Rights & Pro Bono
Abortion has been the third rail of law firm pro bono for years, despite legislative and judicial action chipping away at abortion access, leading to a reversal of Roe v. Wade. This decision will have a disparate and profound impact on poor and BIPOC communities. Examine how law firms and other pro bono leaders can effectively engage to help address this crisis.
Pro Bono Ethics – Aesop’s Fables Edition
Join this lively session and learn how to anticipate, resolve, and understand pro bono ethics through the “moral of the story” format used in timeless Aesop’s Fables. This session will cover the top ethics issues in pro bono for law firms, legal departments, and public interest organizations.
Remote and Bite-Size Immigration Pro Bono
Remote and bite-size pro bono has taken on new importance since the pandemic. This session will discuss how to leverage remote work, collaborative partnerships, and innovation to expand access to counsel for immigrants, how to motivate more attorneys to volunteer, and how service providers can adapt projects to new and ongoing needs.
Supreme Court – Reflections on the Current Term
The work of the Supreme Court of the United States continues to be ripe for discussion and debate. This session will cover the role that the Court’s newest Justice, Justice Jackson, has played so far, as well as the Court’s current dynamics. The panelists will discuss high-profile cases with potentially far-reaching ramifications in the areas of affirmative action, free speech and LGBTQ rights, administrative law, social media companies’ immunity from suit under Section 230, and voting rights. This session will address these important questions and more.
Those Were the Best Days of My Summer – Ramping Up for Summer Pro Bono Programs: Time for a Refresh
Looking to involve your “summers” in your pro bono program through more meaningful experiences? This session will provide law firm, legal department, and public interest organization perspectives on several successful programs, plus practical tools, including timelines, logistics and incentives for multi-office participation, post-event surveys, and impact-measurement methods.
Transactional Pro Bono
As the nonprofit sector works hard to address pressing social justice, economic, and other challenges, there are many ways business and transactional lawyers can help, especially if they know where and how to do so. Join us for an interactive discussion of factors that can affect pro bono capacity and interest, client needs, pro bono delivery models, potential growth areas, and resources for addressing timely business law and transactional legal needs of mission-driven nonprofits.