Pro Bono Net is a US nonprofit organization based in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The organization works in close partnership with nonprofit

legal aid Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right ...

organizations across the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, to increase access to justice for the millions of poor people who face legal problems every year without help from a lawyer. It does this by (i) supporting the innovative and effective use of technology by the nonprofit legal sector, (ii) increasing participation by volunteers, and (iii) facilitating collaborations among nonprofit legal organizations and advocates working on similar issues or in the same region. Founded in 1998 with a grant from the

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an American grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the s ...

, Pro Bono Net has developed a broad base of support from foundations, law firms, corporate sponsors and nonprofit partners alike, to build web platforms that offer powerful and sophisticated online tools to pro bono and legal aid advocates, and to provide critical legal information and assistance directly to the public. Its model has been adopted in 30 states and regions, reaching approximately two-thirds of the poverty population and lawyers in the United States.

Partner programs

Pro Bono Net has partnered with nonprofit legal organizations across the U.S. to develop and maintain its programs:

Probono.net

Probono.net is a national, online resource for

and

pro bono ( English: 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. The term traditionally referred to provision of legal services by legal professionals for people who a ...

attorneys, law professors and students, and related social services advocates. The site promotes collaboration and makes it easier for pro bono attorneys to get involved, saving them time and connecting them with opportunities, training events, mentors, and searchable libraries of practice resources they won't find anywhere else. The site is organized by topical "practice areas" and geographic regions, built and maintained by public interest legal organizations and law firms throughout the country. Members include more than 50,000 advocates from hundreds of public interest organizations and private firms. The prototype of the probono.net site was launched in March 1999, with two practice areas in New York City.

LawHelp.org

LawHelp is an online resource that helps low and moderate-income people find free legal aid programs in their communities, answers to questions about their legal rights, court information, links to social service agencies, and more. This resource was built and is maintained in partnership with hundreds of legal aid, pro bono and court-based programs across the country. LawHelp.org was recognized with the 2007

Webby Award The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...

for Best Law site and nominated for the 2008

in the same category. The first LawHelp site designed to serve the information needs of the public was launched in New York City in April 2001.

LawHelp Interactive

Pro Bono Net leads a national, centralized effort to provide online legal document assembly for poverty law and court access to justice programs across the country. This site allows subject matter experts to create interview templates that can be used to assemble court forms and other legal documents in

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

Rich Text Format ) As an example, the following RTF code would be rendered as follows: This is some bold text. Character encoding A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. ...

based on a user's input. The LawHelp Interactive system increases opportunities for self-represented litigants to achieve justice on their own and improves efficiency for legal aid, pro bono and courts-based access to justice programs. This project is in collaboration with Ohio State Legal Services Association, with funding by the

Legal Services Corporation The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a publicly funded, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress. It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by funding organizations providing c ...

, and using HotDocs software donated by

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

Pro Bono Manager

With the support of the

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation The Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be the third largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $ ...

,Crain's Business, http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051019/FREE/510190716 Pro Bono Net has developed a customized, hosted

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

to increase law firms' pro bono

program management Program management deals with overseeing a group or several projects that align with a company’s organizational strategy, goals, and mission. These Project, projects, are intended to improve an Organizational performance, organization's perfo ...

capacity. Operating as a secure, seamless extension of a law firm's intranet, the platform integrates content from the public interest legal community regarding training events, volunteer opportunities and news with powerful reporting,

knowledge management Knowledge management (KM) is the set of procedures for producing, disseminating, utilizing, and overseeing an organization's knowledge and data. It alludes to a multidisciplinary strategy that maximizes knowledge utilization to accomplish organ ...

and lawyer matching tools that draw on data from the law firm's internal personnel, billing, time keeping and docketing systems. Pro Bono Manager is being used by leading large law firms and is available as a subscription service.

Notes

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External links

Pro Bono NetLawHelp.orgLawHelp InteractivePro Bono Manager
Legal aid in the United States Legal organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in New York City