Pro Bono
Promoting the rule of law and supporting access to justice around the worldWe have a moral obligation to provide access to justice, and pro bono is one of our best tools for doing so. In 2024, we gave over 250,000 hours of free legal advice, making us one of the world’s largest providers of pro bono legal services.
We help people who can’t afford a lawyer or access legal aid, NGOs, UN agencies, social entrepreneurs, and the least-developed countries. Through this work, we promote the rule of law, sound legal institutions, and social and economic development.
For individuals, we help them get access to justice and fair treatment. Much of our support goes to asylum seekers, including those who’ve been forcibly displaced by violent conflicts and natural disasters. We also support child rights and women’s advancement.
Pro bono strengthens our sustainability and diversity and inclusion efforts. And by working pro bono, our lawyers get new perspectives and experiences critical to their professional development.
“Being separated from my children was unbearable. Our reunion was ecstatic.”
Ali is a Kurdish refugee who, with his family, fled his home when ISIS took over his village. On their way from Turkey to Greece, his wife and youngest daughter died when their overcrowded boat sank. And on an overland journey to Europe, Ali was separated from his children. Two of them, Naza and Mohammed, were held by people traffickers and only located three years later. Ali's third child has never been found.
After arriving in the UK, Ali needed help to reunite with his two remaining children. This is when we met him. With no legal aid for refugee family reunions, pro bono support is essential.
With an immigration specialist at Just Right Scotland, we worked for a nearly a year on Ali’s application. In August 2021, his children were granted visas, and a month later, Ali went to Heathrow Airport to reunite with them. The family are now doing well, and the children have learnt English. Mohammed wants to work in IT, and Naza wants to be a businesswoman.
Our values underpin everything we do, and delivering high-impact pro bono work is a key way we live them. All our lawyers and trainees do at least 20 to 50 pro bono hours every year. Many do more than this.
Pro bono allows our lawyers to improve access to justice, gives them exposure to new areas of law, and improves their legal skills. For our trainee and graduate lawyers, pro bono work is a core part of their training and development.
We focus on systemic change, and have two goals when developing new projects: resolving the issue before us, and learning from the challenges. Through this identify problems in systems and work to improve the system to decrease or - ideally - remove the need for pro bono assistance.
We also think differently. Through user-centred design thinking, we engage rights holders to challenge our thinking and ensure our solutions meet our clients' needs.
Our pro bono practice also supports our ESG offering and credentials. We work with individuals, NGOs and UN agencies to promote access to justice, good governance and a more sustainable future.
“Making a difference in the lives of people who need help. That's why I do pro bono.”
Our international pro bono practice has three main focus areas:
- Supporting climate justice and conservation
- Supporting forcibly displaced people
- Good governance and shared value
In every region we operate in, we have a pro bono director and associate responsible for designing and delivering projects. These projects align to the three focus areas above, but are tailored to the particular needs of the region and location in question.
In 2021, we helped Linda to obtain birth certificates for her two young grandchildren. They've had a tough life: their father’s in prison and their mother's homeless and on the streets, both with drug and alcohol problems. Linda's given up her retirement to take the kids in and raise them. The applications were successful and the children are now enrolled to attend school.
“You were the only lawyers who actually cared and took my case on, even though it was a big job and you did it for nothing.”
Many clients with in-house legal teams approach us to collaborate on pro bono projects. Often, their lawyers are keen to help but lack pro bono opportunities in their businesses. By working with clients on pro bono, we can use the varied skills and experience of in-house teams all over the world.
