We are a helping profession. We’ve been trained to provide services to people in need. Whether it’s a requirement to maintain your license or not, pro bono is part of our ethos. The subject of this Product Watch column is Paladin. It’s a service built with advanced technology to take the burden out of matching pro bono volunteers with legal services organizations and pro bono matters. Not only does this product help lawyers and law firms find pro bono work, but it also provides a benefit to legal services organizations that typically undergo a laborious and manual process to match volunteers with pro bono work. Of course, for firms, there is great benefit in having lawyers do pro bono work including: helping associates develop skills, assisting with recruiting, partnering with corporate clients and sharing their impact through marketing.
How It Works: Personalized Pro Bono
Paladin takes a personalized and on-demand approach to pro bono. Once a firm or legal department adopts Paladin, its attorneys fill out a short survey indicating their pro bono interests around practice areas, communities to serve and types of work to be done. On the other side of the equation, partner legal services organizations tag inbound cases across the same criteria, including information like key skills required and acquired and training offered. This creates a unified taxonomy that provides for better matching and helps capture data in a consistent manner.