PILnet’s Program Director for Forced Displacement, Jasmine Simperingham, leads a transformative global legal collaboration; the Global Refugee Forum Legal Community Pledge. In this piece, Jasmine reflects on what it took to save the Pledge, and what she thinks that experience reveals about the future of pro bono.
Something is shifting in pro bono. For decades, the model was straightforward: a law firm took on a matter, completed it, closed the file, and tracked the number of pro bono hours provided. That model has delivered real value. Firms have secured outcomes that changed lives, and nonprofits have received high-quality legal assistance they could not have accessed otherwise. But, today, that model is no longer enough. The scale of injustice around the world and the needs of the organizations working at the forefront of social change require a different pro bono response.
Systemic barriers and structural inequities are too entrenched to be dismantled one isolated case at a time. Addressing injustice at its roots requires looking beyond discrete matters to the patterns and gaps beneath them. It demands collective action that leverages diverse capabilities within a connected ecosystem, while centering the unique expertise of those who have experienced injustice.
No single firm can do this alone. But many leading law firms already recognize that this shift is vital. We are hearing more and more from our partners that they want to move away from transactional assistance toward transformational partnerships. We see them increasingly investing in pro bono infrastructure, making long-term commitments to communities, and co-creating solutions alongside people with lived experience of injustice.
A Global Movement Toward Collaboration
This evolution is visible across the pro bono profession globally. Beyond the rise of dedicated law firm pro bono networks, we are seeing new infrastructure designed specifically to increase knowledge-sharing, standard-setting, and collective impact:
- National & Regional Benchmarks: The UK Collaborative Plan and the recently launched Framework for Collaborative Pro Bono in Aotearoa/New Zealand are prime examples of law firms coming together at a national level to establish pro bono benchmarks and shared commitments, while the Pro Bono Declaration of the Americas shows a similar model taking root across an entire region.
- Cause-Driven Alliances: Initiatives like the Law Firm Anti-Racism Alliance and the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance further demonstrate how law firms are pooling their collective resources and expertise around specific causes, advancing goals that no single firm could achieve alone.
The Global Refugee Forum Legal Community Pledge (the Pledge) reflects that broader movement, while also offering something distinct. The Pledge embeds law firms’ pro bono within a wider ecosystem of legal service providers and advocates including nonprofits, refugee-led organizations, UN agencies, bar associations, and law schools. Importantly, it is increasingly designed and delivered in genuine partnership with displaced and stateless people themselves.
Pledge members have committed to provide more than one million hours of free legal assistance collectively. These members have also made other commitments, including hiring refugees and increasing their meaningful participation in the design and delivery of pro bono and other legal programming.
Why the Pledge Infrastructure Matters Now
Over 117 million people are forcibly displaced today, with millions more stateless or lacking the documentation needed to assert rights. As the erosion of the rule of law accelerates globally, driven by political instability, human rights violations, conflict, and climate change, these numbers will only grow. This reality is increasingly met by rising nationalism, corrosive anti-migrant narratives, and the politicization of refugee protection and nationality.
A global funding crisis has made things worse. Significant aid cuts have placed severe pressure on the entire refugee and statelessness response sector, leaving many nonprofits facing existential uncertainty. Even the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is managing deep staffing and programming cuts. As a result, critical legal assistance is increasingly out of reach for those who need it most, while shrinking civic space makes it harder for grassroots organizations to operate safely and in compliance with the law.
To ensure Pledge members can respond effectively, PILnet built a dedicated team combining deep legal experience in the sector with the lived experience of displacement:
- We operate the only globally accessible legal matching brokerage dedicated to connecting nonprofits in this sector with pro bono support, which has connected over 100 organizations with free legal services and have built over 200 new pro bono partnerships.
- We pioneered a pro bono pitching roundtable model, allowing nonprofits to pitch project ideas directly to law firms.
- We track pro bono hours, facilitate monthly member exchanges, host annual workshops, and coordinate joint advocacy and engagement with UN and other actors.
Many law firms were doing vital work in this space before the Pledge. But the Pledge infrastructure deepens, connects, and coordinates that work to ensure it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. From advancing the rights of asylum seekers in South African courts, to helping refugee-led organizations navigate legal risk in the United States, to advocating for increased legal aid funding at the UN in Geneva, our members are putting the power of the law to work. In 2024 alone, Pledge members provided over 393,000 hours of legal assistance, a 50% increase over their commitments for the year.
Our Own Crisis, and a Collective Response
The UN Refugee Agency has described the Pledge as a “transformative initiative” that exemplifies the “power of cross-sectoral and diverse partnerships and demonstrates what becomes possible when the global legal community unites around shared purpose.” But despite this recognition and the Pledge’s impact, it is still a relatively new initiative, and in 2024 and 2025 PILnet was unable to secure sufficient philanthropic funding to sustain it.
At PILnet’s 2025 Global Forum in Rome, I stood in front of our law firm partners during the Pledge’s annual workshop and made a direct appeal: without dedicated support, the Pledge would not survive.
The response was a turning point. Firms didn’t just listen; they mobilized. They organized among themselves to make the business case for investment in the Pledge, they joined strategy discussions, and they made concrete funding commitments to ensure its sustainability.
That response was vital. But its significance reaches beyond the Pledge itself. When law firms invest in public interest law infrastructure, they are investing in the conditions that allow pro bono to function as a meaningful instrument of change. The firms that stepped forward, including some supporting PILnet for the first time, demonstrated the difference between transactional engagement and genuine commitment to a shared endeavour.
And this isn’t just about funding. What has struck me most is how open many law firms have been to exploring how pro bono is done. Through the Pledge Core Group, firms sit alongside refugee-led organizations and NGOs, bringing legal and lived expertise together to shape strategic direction. They provide counsel, associates, and future joiners to help nonprofits develop pitchable projects, and they drive shared learning across the Pledge membership.
Firms have leaned into this not as passive recipients of coordination, but as active co-creators. The result is a model shifting pro bono from individual transactions to a coordinated system of contributions, shaped by the communities it serves.
If the Pledge ceased to operate, we would lose the critical infrastructure that connects refugees and nonprofits with law firms and lawyers offering pro bono legal advice. In my view, it was incumbent on law firm members to get together and discuss whether we could collectively answer the appeal for additional support. By taking action to sustain the Pledge, law firms are contributing their expertise to a coordinated global initiative that reinforces the profession’s commitment to upholding the rule of law.
Caroline Loving, Global Head of Pro Bono & Social Impact – Clyde & Co.
Making Every Hour Count
At PILnet we know first-hand that in difficult times, the initiatives that create infrastructure to hold the legal community together are among the most important to protect. They are the connective tissue that links need with expertise, increases collaboration, and ensures that legal assistance is coordinated. They reduce duplication, maximize resources, and expand reach.
Yet, this infrastructure is often the most vulnerable. In times of scarcity, donors understandably prioritize direct, life-saving services, leaving these essential frameworks underfunded. Having now secured the Pledge’s immediate future, it feels important to share what that experience taught us, and to learn from others about what it takes to build and sustain collaborative pro bono initiatives that are genuinely inclusive of those they serve.
The number of hours committed and delivered will continue to be a key measure of pro bono engagement. But those leading pro bono are increasingly moving from measuring engagement to measuring impact. That must mean investing in the infrastructure that makes hours count: coordination, shared learning, strategic alignment, partnership building, and the genuine leadership of those with lived experience.
Ultimately, I believe the future of pro bono is collective.
If you are interested in joining the Pledge, check out the Pledge Framework and Pledging Guidance, or reach out to Jasmine ([email protected]) to discuss.
To learn more about the Pledge, check out Jasmine’s TEDx Talk, ‘Why Change Requires People-Centered Ecosystems‘ and stay up to date through our quarterly Pledge newsletters.
PILnet would like to thank our Pledge Sponsor law firms for their generous support, the Core Group, and all Pledge Members who have made and delivered on commitments to advance access to justice, rights and solutions for and with displaced and stateless people. We look forward to working with you in the lead up to the 2027 Global Refugee Forum.
If you run a collaborative initiative that leverages pro bono and want to exchange learning, do get in touch!