In partnership with pro bono management platform Paladin, the OBA will make a centralized, easy-to-navigate portal available for free to all lawyers and law firms in Ontario. The initiative will connect thousands of lawyers with organizations looking for pro bono or volunteer help from lawyers — everything from litigation support through Pro Bono Ontario (PBO) projects, to serving on boards, to helping entrepreneurs get their businesses up and running.
Ontario Bar Association president Kathryn Manning
“And they are busy,” she said. “We wanted to provide a one-stop shop that leverages the inherent desire to give back while taking the time and effort out of searching for the right opportunity. We are excited to partner with leaders in this work, including Paladin and PBO.”
The OBA and its partners, including Louis Frapporti, a lawyer at Gowling WLG and an early advocate for Paladin’s launch in Canada, will be working to engage service organizations, corporations and governments to ensure the portal offers a wide variety of opportunities.
“The pro bono community in Canada is quickly advancing, and we are honoured to be able to leverage our technology to support the growth of pro bono in Ontario,” said Paladin co-founder and CEO Kristen Sonday. “We look forward to working closely with the OBA on a tech blueprint that we can scale nationwide to help even more Canadians in need.”
Founded in 2015, Paladin’s mission is to “make it easier for lawyers to connect with pro bono that they’re passionate about, increase the impact of pro bono and make the world a more just place.” By using Paladin, lawyers have access to a personalized database and weekly digests enabling them to easily find and sign up for relevant pro bono opportunities.
The client list feature can track the pro bono interests of key clients and in-house legal teams. Paladin will recommend tailored opportunities to share, strengthening relationships and expanding their program’s impact. Paladin integrates with a firm’s time and billing system via nightly data imports, giving pro bono teams easy access to real-time hours data to report impact and make data-driven decisions.
Frapporti said Paladin — and the new partnerships it is inspiring — hold “enormous promise in demonstrating to the profession, as a whole, that doing good can be good business.”
“As with every other economic sector and the legal industry, generally, innovation holds the key to transformative change, as does making purpose a key element of our industry’s value proposition,” he said.
Lawyers looking to provide pro bono legal services can view opportunities and sign up at www.oba.org/probono.
Photo of Kathryn Manning courtesy of the Ontario Bar Association.
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