In this piece, Ana de la Cruz Cubeiro, PILnet’s Senior Legal Officer for the Global Clearinghouse, utilizes PILnet’s data to analyze global trends in the legal needs of nonprofits, civil society organizations, and other groups working for the public good.
PILnet’s clearinghouses help nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) address legal needs by connecting them with pro bono legal providers. Explaining our service to NGO leaders who are unfamiliar with PILnet can sometimes sound too good to be true—yes, any organization can come to our website and ask for legal help through our intake form, and we’ll help them find pro bono legal support. Yes, really!
The intake form on our website—available in six languages—is the entry point; it sits at the center of PILnet’s role as a bridge between lawyers and NGOs. From this initial intake we learn who the organization is, what their goals are, and what kind of lawyer they need. This form is a powerful source of data serving as a window into important trends, such as what civil society’s legal needs are right now, how they evolve, and where they are increasing, decreasing, or changing.
PILnet’s nearly thirty years of experience connecting NGOs with legal professionals has illustrated that legal needs are constantly evolving. With data from over four hundred cases per year, we are in a unique position to analyze that evolution and highlight emerging trends, shifting priorities, and the pace of change.
This September, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the cases we received in the first half of 2026. This analysis has resulted in three key observations: legal needs differ between the Global North and the Global South; Europe is emerging as an important hub for nonprofit registration; and legal compliance is becoming increasingly relevant for nonprofits seeking legal support.
Observation 1: Legal needs look different across regions.
We classify the cases we receive into two different categories: operational and programmatic. Operational legal needs are related to the organization’s legal structure, compliance, and its overall ability to operate and serve its communities. Cases related to registering a new legal entity, reviewing the organization’s articles of association, or assuring compliance in banking requirements would fall under operational needs. Programmatic legal needs directly support the organization’s work and mission, for example, conducting multijurisdictional research to inform a publication about artistic expression, or legal input into an advocacy campaign.
Using the data from the first eight months of 2026, we found that in Europe, 62% of cases were operational. In the Global South, however, the distribution is reversed: 53% of cases were programmatic.
The legal topics organizations seek assistance with are also different in these regions. In Europe, we see registration, employment, compliance, and governance as most frequently requested areas of support. In the Global South, organizations are more often seeking assistance with their programs, with forced displacement being the most frequently requested legal topic.
What is the reason behind this difference? While we cannot answer this question solely with our data, there are several factors that may contribute to an explanation. One possibility is that organizations operating in Europe face a more complex regulatory environment, which generates a greater demand for support with compliance-related requests. At the same time, organizations in Europe may have greater access to funding, including funding for legal support, or maintaining legal capacity on staff, allowing them to solve the programmatic legal needs without seeking pro bono assistance through the clearinghouses. Meanwhile, organizations operating in the Global South may face greater demand for legal support directly connected to their programs, particularly where they work in contexts affected by displacement.
Observation 2: The European Union appears as a registration hub.
Establishing a legal presence through registration of a legal entity is one of the most common legal needs we see in the clearinghouses, and demand for this type of support has increased over the past few years. This may in part be influenced by the growing pressure on civic spaces in different parts of the world, which leads organizations to move their operations to a safer jurisdiction.
During this period, registration was the most frequently requested legal topic, moreover almost 60% of all registration cases globally were to register an organization in the European Union. A notable number of organizations seeking to register in the EU were from the United States, Georgia, and Russia, illustrating how the EU is playing an important role as a destination, or safe haven, for organizations looking to establish or relocate their operations.
Observation 3: The need for support in the areas of compliance and organizational resilience is growing.
Of all the cases we received in the first eight months of 2026, 63% were operational legal needs such as reviewing the organization’s data protection or safeguarding policies, ensuring their compliance with tax law, or reviewing the intellectual property (IP) rights of a new project. We can identify a trend here: the rate of operational cases has been increasing steadily in the past years: in 2025, the percentage of operational cases was 60%, and in 2024 it was 58%.
The legal topics most frequently requested across the globe are also a reflection of this shift. Registration was the most common, appearing in 16% of cases, followed by corporate compliance (15%), employment law (13.8%), and governance concerns (13.5%). It is important to note that some cases involve more than one legal topic, so these categories are not mutually exclusive. Contracts, operational support, and tax law also featured frequently. It wasn’t until the eighth position in the list that we could find a legal topic that falls outside of the larger category of operational and compliance-related needs. This pattern is consistent with the data we saw in 2025, when registration, contracts, and compliance law also sat at the top.
When we think of NGOs’ legal needs or organizations seeking pro bono support, the first thing that usually comes to mind is strategic litigation cases, high-impact research on legal reforms, or supporting advocacy efforts to influence legislation. However, our data tells us that there is another dimension of legal needs: before an organization can work on their mission, it must be able to operate and remain compliant to serve its communities and fulfill its mission.
We need to keep this in mind as we continue to develop our resources and projects: keeping the lights on is the first step towards an organization completing its mission. Legal support is about maintaining organizations themselves, so that they can safely and effectively focus on their programs. And this is why the expertise of law firms and in-house professionals, which closely matches the topics we see as most relevant, is essential.
The growing trend reflected in PILnet’s data calls further attention of donors and supporters of organized civil society to take operational needs of nonprofits, civil society organizations, NGOs and other groups working for the public good seriously. Ability to operate and fulfill their missions is the requirement for serving their communities and affecting social change that donors and supporters value. At the same time, our data shows that legal needs look differently across regions, and while organizations in (or coming to) Europe seek support for operational needs, organizations in the Global South more often seek programmatic legal support connected to their missions. Ensuring that legal support is responsive to the different contexts and needs of NGOs around the world is essential.
Supporting NGOs is not only about investing in their missions right here and right now, it also means investing in the operational mechanisms that enable them to carry out their missions effectively and be ready for what the future brings. Funders need to look holistically at their grantees, taking into account not just the activities and outcomes that are the focus of current grant proposals and impact reports, but the overall health, capacity, and access to specific expertise needed to execute their critical work.
At PILnet, we believe it is also our responsibility to share the data we’ve collected in the course of our work supporting the sector. The more data we collect, analyze, and share, the better prepared the sector will be to understand emerging legal needs, identify trends, and make informed decisions.
Join us in this work: by supporting PILnet, partners help us ensure that NGOs can access the legal support they need to continue operating and fulfilling their missions, and also enable us to continue collecting and sharing the data that strengthens our understanding of the sector and civic society worldwide.
—Ana de la Cruz Cubeiro, PILnet Senior Legal Officer for the Global Clearinghouse