Global impact for our Pro Bono Portal
23 Jun 2020
We’re scaling our impact globally and supporting access to justice by sharing our award-winning Pro Bono Portal around the world.
The Pro Bono Portal was developed by Justice Connect’s in-house innovation team through our Gateway Project and has been operating in Australia for over 12 months. Since its launch, we’ve posted over 1000 pro bono opportunities and increased our pro bono referrals by 50%. Over 160 law firms across Australia use the Portal to accept pro bono referrals. The Pro Bono Portal is a Google Impact Challenge grant recipient, a Gold Good Design Australia Award recipient (2019) and the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Design Award in Service Design (2019).
After 12 months of research and consultation, we have identified significant opportunities for our Pro Bono Portal to help coordinate and build out pro bono ecosystems internationally. Our experience in Australia has shown that more coordination in pro bono ecosystems means more people and not-for-profits receive legal assistance from pro bono lawyers, and pro bono resources can be deployed strategically.
With support from a range of philanthropic, corporate and not-for-profit partners, we have designed an ambitious roll-out plan that will deliver access to the Pro Bono Portal around the world over the next two years. A key aim is to ensure we can provide access for the hosting organisations at no/low cost so that we can deliver on the promise of ecosystem-wide technology.
We have already started work on two international pilots with local partners:
We have a number of further pilots identified and will be working with local organisations to plan for and deliver them over the next two years.
We are particularly grateful to our project partner PILnet for their support during our scoping and research phase. As an Australian organisation, we know this project will only succeed if we partner with organisations that have local context and relationships.
We also want to acknowledge the many international firms, clearinghouses and technology partners that have contributed to our research and project planning.
You can read more about our global project at probonoportal.org
If you are interested in rolling out the Pro Bono Portal in your jurisdiction please register your interest.
