PRO BONO PARTNERSHIP OF ATLANTA INC

The number one strategic priority for PBPA is to continue to strengthen Atlanta’s nonprofits by identifying and addressing legal risks. Through 16 years of operation, we know that many nonprofits operate without legal counsel because they lack the funds to pay a lawyer or the connections to find pro bono assistance. With PBPA, nonprofit organizations have access to the same high-quality and specialized legal services as private companies without having to divert funding away from their missions of serving the underserved.

Our second organizational priority is to engage more legal professionals with PBPA’s client organizations. Each year, PBPA conducts educational programs for attorneys at law firms and in-house legal departments to make them aware of the turn-key volunteer opportunities available through PBPA. These presentations and other recruitment strategies have yielded results. The number of volunteers has increased by almost 20% in year-to-date comparisons from 2016 to 2018.

Direct Legal Services – PBPA matches nonprofit clients with volunteer attorneys with the right expertise to address their legal need. In 2019, we placed 1,055 legal matters for 273 clients with the help of 710 volunteers. In 2020, we will accept 50 new clients and facilitate 830 volunteer attorneys working on 935 legal matters. Volunteers are essential to our mission. We communicate with potential volunteers through a monthly newsletter listing the legal matters that currently need attention. Once a match is made, our 5 staff attorneys guide our volunteers and clients through each legal matter.

Educational Programs - PBPA provides about 40 free educational webcasts, workshops and podcasts each year to educate nonprofits about legal issues. Webcasts and articles are available for free on our website, www.pbpatl.org. Topics include employment, technology, risk management, fundraising, and taxes. Each educational program is evaluated and topics are updated annually to ensure timeliness.

Attorneys are expected to provide about 50 hours of pro bono legal service each year, and traditionally, much of the pro bono work available takes place in a courtroom. We provide transactional attorneys, many of whom have never worked in a courtroom, with transactional pro bono projects that are similar to the work they do every day.

Furthermore, PBPA partners with corporate law departments and law firms so that our clients have access to the best legal advice in Atlanta free of charge. In 2019, PBPA engaged over 150 different law firms and corporate legal departments. Five staff attorneys provide training and technical assistance to volunteers and guide clients through each legal matter to ensure success.

In addition to client specific legal advice, PBPA sends an informational newsletter to clients and other nonprofits. The monthly newsletter contains a Legal Alert, information about upcoming workshops and webcasts and recent additions to the Resources section on our website.

Thanks to community support, PBPA continues to increase its organizational impact. In 2020, PBPA provided legal services valued over $4 million. We are on track to complete even more legal issues by the end of 2020 and currently serve over 1,000 clients. Since 2014, our nonprofit clients have served over 4.2 million individuals.

As the demand for pro bono legal services continues to increase, PBPA staff must not only spend more time working to identify and assign volunteers to assist our clients, but staff attorneys must also personally handle legal matters for which PBPA cannot find a volunteer in a timely fashion. Developing and maintaining a strong network of volunteers is critical to our success and is a daily operational challenge. An attorney recruitment committee has developed strategies over the past 18 months to attract attorney volunteers with the expertise required for our work. The growth of Fortune 1000 companies in Atlanta helps sustain this effort.