PILnet’s Global Awards recognize the best pro bono legal projects undertaken in a global context. Through the awards, PILnet also seeks to encourage the development of long-lasting and substantial networks through which the legal community can better serve the public interest and advance social change.
Afghanistan Women’s Team Political Asylum Case: Greenberg Traurig Mexico
In this case, a team of 18 lawyers from the Greenberg Traurig office in Mexico City obtained political asylum for the players of the Afghanistan women's flag football team and their families. A total of 70 people benefited, evacuated from that country, and transferred safely to Mexico. In addition, it was possible to offer shelter, food, and health services and their immigration documents were processed so that they can reside in Mexico permanently.
View videoAgeing with Rights; Age Should Not be a Limit: Fundación Fernando Pombo, Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, Fundación Grandes Amigos and Legal Clinic University Alcalá de Henerares
The project aims to provide legal empowerment to elderly people by promoting their rights, their dignity and tackling age discrimination. After a practical socio-legal investigation, the 5th of July 2022 we launch 13 legal guides and audio guides - Spotify and Ivoox- which adrees fundamental rights. We complement our materials with legal workshops for elderly people given by the teams project together with pro bono lawyers from Gómez-Acebo & Pombo.
View videoAli's Story: Hogan Lovells
Shortly after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, 250+ students from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music were evacuated to Portugal in Dec 2021. Among them was 14-year-old Ali. He was accommodated in a center for young people and was separated from his family, which had fled to Germany. When his older sisters reached out to Hogan Lovells, a local team of lawyers took on Ali's case and helped reunite him with his family after more than a year of being separated.
View videoAssistance in Legal Advice Deserts: Charles Russell Speechlys LLP; Citizens Advice Plymouth; and University House (Legal Advice Centre)
Charles Russell Speechlys has been working with Plymouth Citizens Advice and University House Legal Advice Centres to staff weekly family and employment law clinic appointments. Assisting vulnerable members of the community, the Family team advise on issues such as domestic abuse and divorce. The Employment team support individuals who are often in low-paid and precarious jobs. We have also just expanded the project to include other specialist family law firms (Hunters & Withers).
View videoCreating Bhutan's First and Only Law School: White & Case
For 15 years, White & Case has collaborated pro bono with the Kingdom of Bhutan to help conceptualize, design, and create the country's first and only law school. Following unprecedented democratic reforms in the 2000s, Bhutan had a tiny legal profession and no domestic school to train future lawyers to preserve its new democracy and rule of law. After years of preparatory work, the Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law opened its doors in 2017, and the first class graduated in in Fall 2022.
View videoThe Domestic Abuse Response Alliance (DARA): The Domestic Abuse Response Alliance: Travers Smith LLP, Reed Smith LLP, Hogan Lovells International LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, Slaughter and May, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, DLA Piper UK LLP Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP and Akin Gump.
In England and Wales, a woman is assaulted in her home every 6 seconds. DARA's goal is two-fold: (i) to build the largest alliance of pro bono lawyers to provide advocacy for domestic abuse survivors; and (ii) to extract real-time learning around the challenges faced in the Family Courts to inform policy. DARA lawyers provide end-to-end support to particularly vulnerable clients, who would otherwise be left to defend themselves against their abuser in court. www.daraproject.org
View videoThe Immigration Project: University of Chester Community Law Project
The Immigration Project is a partnership between the University of Chester and Eastgate Chambers. Between July 22 and July 23, student volunteers assisted over 50 immigrants to be granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, with a further 10 being granted Permission to Work whilst they await a decision on their case. This project has been life-changing in a number of cases, most notably by preventing deportation to Syria where refugees would typically be at high risk of harm.
View videoiProbono's Equality Law Program in Sri Lanka: iProbono
iProbono’s Equality Law Program strengthens access to justice for LGBT+ individuals across South Asia. In Sri Lanka, this program advocates for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, legislation protecting the rights of the transgender community and strengthening the implementation of fundamental rights of LGBT+ persons, women and children. This work is led by Aritha Wickramasinghe, a legal team on the ground, along with a carefully curated and trained panel of pro bono lawyers
View videoProjects to Help Fight Discrimination: TozziniFreire Advogados
To embrace law for inclusion, TozziniFreire Advogados have been working on projects to help fight discrimination. Their initiatives include affirmative action vacancies for minority groups, as well as relying on a majority of female professionals (65%); educational incentives, such as scholarships and other ways to support professional development; pro bono legal advisory services for judicialized cases or to contribute to advocacy strategies, among others.
View videoRachel's Voice: Fieldfisher LLP and the Royal Mencap Society
Rachel’s Voice works to reduce avoidable deaths of people with a learning disability in healthcare settings with the mission of driving health equality. We do this by providing legal advice to families and carers of people with a learning disability who have suffered an avoidable death in an acute hospital setting due to failures in medical care, whether the death has occurred in the hospital, or in the community after discharge. The programme is a partnership between Fieldfisher LLP and Mencap.
View videoUkraine Pro Bono Collaborative (UPBC): Allen & Overy, Bird & Bird, Dentons, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright, White & Case and European Lawyers in Lesvos (ELIL)
The Ukraine Pro Bono Collaborative (UPBC) sees Polish and Ukrainian pro bono lawyers from six law firms provide free legal assistance to refugees from Ukraine. The project is based in Warsaw and works in six locations across city. The lawyers assist on a wide-range of legal issues on a drop-in basis, including access to housing, employment, financial support and education, as well as more complex legal matters. Over 45 lawyers have volunteered, assisting over 4,500 people.
View videoWe-Speak -An Online Platform to Empower Survivors: Dublin Rape Crisis Centre
The We-Speak platform is part of a long term national campaign by the Dublin Rape Crisis to inform, educate and engage all members of society about consent. The anonymous online platform aims to empower survivors of sexual violence to safely tell their own stories, in their own time and in their own words. Lawyers from A&L Goodbody with technical expertise in data privacy and commercial contracts were called upon to put in place the framework documents to ensure the organization was protected.
View videoWomen's Employment Rights Project: Pregnant Then Screwed and The University of Chester Law School
This project is a collaboration between the charity Pregnant Then Screwed and the University of Chester. A team of 8 students from the Law School researched and produced a series of 12 guidance documents for use by women who face discrimination at work by reason of being pregnant or being a parent. The guidance, housed on the PTS website, was downloaded 20,258 times between March and July 2023, demonstrating huge impact on empowering women to challenge discrimination at work and advance change.
View videoWomen's Legal Center Amsterdam: Amsterdam Law Hub, Muncipality Amsterdam, Bureau Clara Wichmann
The Women's Legal Center opened in 2021 and provides free legal assistance to women who usually struggle to get legal support. Law students give advice supervised by legal experts. The first location was so successful, and the demand proved to be so significant that in January 2023 two more locations opened in areas of the city that were known to have many women living in vulnerable situations. So far, the Center could help about 600 women with various issues. They hope to reach many more women!
View videoThe Asia Pro Bono RT Consortium Initiative: The Asia Pro Bono Roundtable Consortium
The Asia Pro Bono Roundtable (RT) Consortium Initiative is the forerunner of the pro bono (PB) movement in Asia. The focus of the RTI is on the role of legal service providers, and how they affect society through the impact of PB in A2J and strengthening ROL, by focusing on specific PB initiatives and processes. Over the past year the RT was organised quarterly, focusing on diverse issues, which led to a broader collaborative network of culturally diverse partners, leading to at-scale impact.
View videoKenya Resentencing Project: Linklaters, Reprieve, and Lineal
Reprieve, its Fellows in Kenya, Linklaters & Lineal collaborated to create an innovative database to facilitate the resentencing of 5,000 death row prisoners, after Kenya’s Supreme Court held the mandatory death penalty for murder unconstitutional. In 2023 we drafted template submissions to assist Kenyan lawyers and self-represented litigants; sentencing guidelines were introduced; Reprieve ran workshops with Kenyan judges and lawyers. Project learnings are being used in contexts beyond Kenya.
View videoLegal Assistance Programme for Artists at Risk: Avant-Garde Lawyers
Through the project, AGL provides specialised legal assistance to artists at risk globally. These are artists who are intimidated, harassed, persecuted or prosecuted for their creative expression. To carry out the project, AGL relies on the support of its Global Network of pro-bono lawyers, who provide their expertise on a case to case basis. AGL curates a case intervention team to implement a unique strategy plan for every case. To know more about our project, visit: https://rb.gy/jawkt
View videoLegal Guides for FGM Survivors
Reed Smith partners with The AHA Foundation to produce legal guides for FGM survivors and those at risk of FGM in the U.S. The guides provide information about applicable criminal and civil laws both at federal and state level, and relevant resources for the impacted communities and those who assist them. One of the crucial aims is that the guides are written in a way that is both comprehensive and easy to understand, which helps survivors to understand and assess their legal remedies.
View videoThe Recognition of Marital Captivity: Femmes for Freedom
After our successful advocacy for the recognition of marital captivity in Dutch law we have realized a broad international support for the recognition of this injustice in France, Spain, EU Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. See our international advocacy website to fact-check our huge legal impacting the international arena https://www.femmesforfreedom.com/international and our Dutch achievements here https://www.femmesforfreedom.com/over-ons/onze-impact
View videoThe Reform Initiative For Transparent Economies: Pro Bono Europe, initiative by The Good Lobby
The Reform Initiative For Transparent Economies is a grassroots initiative born as a spontaneous movement bringing together investigative journalists, entrepreneurs, and researchers spread across the world. Their idea was to tackle Lebanon's structural crisis by monitoring publicly funded projects and therefore fighting corruption by holding accountable foreign donors and investors.
View videoRewilding Initiative: Hogan Lovells in partnership with The Wildlife Trusts, Rewilding Europe, Snowchange Cooperative and The Great Green Wall
Hogan Lovells has strategically built non-profit partnerships to tackle the rapidly advancing climate and ecological crisis. We are working with leading organisations in the field of nature restoration and wildlife comeback. Our key partners include The Wildlife Trusts (UK), Rewilding Europe, Snowchange Cooperative (Finland) and The Great Green Wall (Africa). Between 07/2022 and 07/2023, our lawyers spent over 1,000 pro bono hrs to help drive innovations of nature-based solutions.
View videoRule 39 Pro Bono Initiative: Coalizione Italiana Libertà e Diritti civili, Daria Sartori, DLA Piper, Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields, Herbert Smith Freehills, Linklaters, Orrick, Osborne Clarke, Reed Smith
Currently, changes in migration flows, including those due to the Ukrainian/Afghan crises, are leading to increased frequency of violations of the human rights of asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants. In response, 8 international law firms, Dr Daria Sartori and CILD united to deliver the Rule 39 Pro Bono Initiative, a project under which lawyers provide pro bono assistance to vulnerable foreigners, and to the NGOs working with them, in submitting cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
View videoSidley’s Emerging Enterprises Pro Bono Program: Sidley’s Emerging Enterprises Pro Bono Program
Sidley Austin LLP and the ITC SheTrades Initiative are supporting women-led businesses with dismantling legal roadblocks in their path. We are providing them with tools that can boost local economies, support climate and social action initiatives, accelerate women’s empowerment and contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This is part of Sidley’s Emerging Enterprises Pro Bono Program, which provides legal services to over 250 impact-driven businesses in over 55 developing countries.
View videoUA.SUPPORT: Linking Help z.s.
Linking Help is an international legal aid platform. It facilitates pro bono legal advice and connects volunteer lawyers with people in need around the world. Linking Help's mission is to ensure access to justice for all by offering pro bono legal assistance to those who need it the most. In response to the Russian full-scale invasion in Ukraine the project UA.SUPPORT was launched to connect Ukrainian refugees with suitable lawyers in the individual arriving countries.
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