PBI to Host First Semi-Annual Pro Bono Forum
PBI will host its first semi-annual Pro Bono Forum on Thursday, April 26, 2007 from 4:00 until 6:30 p.m. at the CBA Headquarters. Pro bono leaders from each law firm and corporate legal department and a representative from each legal aid agency have been invited to attend the program. There will be three panel discussions about the dynamics affecting pro bono work and relationships at agencies, firms and corporations affecting pro bono work. Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) will demonstrate the newly launched version of IllinoisProBono.org. There will also be time available to share ideas and best practices with your colleagues and to discuss ways to improve pro bono relationships and opportunities. For more information and the program's agenda, please visit our website.

Registration is required for this event and space is limited. Please contact Michael Bergmann at 312/832-5129 or mbergmann@pili-law.org to register.

Nominations Sought for CBF/CBA 9th Annual Pro Bono and Public Service Awards
The Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF) is accepting nominations for the Chicago legal community's most prestigious pro bono and public service awards through May 1, 2007. These awards celebrate exemplary members of the legal profession who have used their talents and resources to improve access to justice for the less fortunate in our community. Recognizing the outstanding leadership and commitment of attorneys whose dedication to the public interest is a hallmark of their careers, the recipients will be honored on July 9, 2007 at the Ninth Annual Pro Bono and Public Service Luncheon hosted by The Chicago Bar Foundation and The Chicago Bar Association. Nomination criteria and application instructions for the awards are available online at www.chicagobarfoundation.org.

The six individual awards are: The Thomas H. Morsch Public Service Award, The Edward J. Lewis II Pro Bono Service Award, The Exelon Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award, The Leonard Jay Schrager Award of Excellence, The Richard J. Phelan Public Service Award, and The Maurice Weigle Exceptional Young Lawyer Award. With the exception of The Thomas H. Morsch Award, all of the recipients can designate a special CBF grant to the Chicago legal aid or public interest law organization of his or her choice. The Thomas H. Morsch Public Service Award includes a $10,000 cash prize for the recipient generously provided by the Morsch family.

The deadline for nominations is May 1, 2007. The nomination packet and other information about each award, including history and past recipients, are available at www.chicagobarfoundation.org. For additional information, please contact Dina Merrell at 312-554-1206 or dmerrell@chicagobar.org.

DLA Piper Chicago Office Holds Pro Bono Awards Dinner On February 27th, the Chicago office of DLA Piper held its annual pro bono awards dinner to recognize that office’s outstanding pro bono achievements during 2006. William A. Rudnick was named Partner of the Year for his ongoing commitment to feeding the hungry, including serving on the boards of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, America’s Second Harvest, and the Global FoodBanking Network. Alice A. Kelly and Christopher N. Skey were named Senior Associates of the Year. Alice was honored for her tireless work to help administer Chicago’s Signature Project in Juvenile Justice, and her representation of a child who fled his abusive family in Guatemala to seek asylum in the United States. Chris served as an integral member of the team representing the Greater Chicago Food Depository in a multi-party, complex, and contentious federal lawsuit surrounding the infestation of the LaGrou Food Storage Facility. Ann Pille, also a former PILI Fellow, was named Junior Associate of the Year for her role in the firm’s representation of the Greater Chicago Food Depository as well. Staci Dorman and Maggie Naylor were named Staff/Paralegal of the Year, for their roles in planning and coordinating the Firm’s activities at Barry Elementary School. Finally, DLA Piper Fellow Carolyn Frazier was recognized for her outstanding efforts at developing and administering the Chicago Office’s Signature Project in Juvenile Justice.

Illinois Legal Aid Online Launches Redesigned Website to Help Attorneys Find and Do Pro Bono Work
Since 2002, thousands of Illinois lawyers who do pro bono legal work have turned to a website, www.IllinoisProBono.org, to help them more easily find and do volunteer work. The website helps attorneys and other legal professionals across the state find appropriate volunteer opportunities and obtain the training and support needed to handle pro bono cases.

This month the website received a complete overhaul. On April 1st, Illinois Legal Aid Online launched a new and improved version of www.IllinoisProBono.org. The new website is more user-friendly and includes numerous new features, which are described in this article.

A key improvement is the new Volunteer Opportunity Search. Those seeking pro bono work can now more easily find volunteer opportunities that better meet their needs. Users can search based on a variety of factors, including who they are, location, type of opportunity, area of law, skills they would like to acquire, specific client type, and their time availability. The Volunteer Opportunity Search recommends opportunities based upon volunteering preferences that users identify when they register. Registered users also automatically receive email alerts for pro bono opportunities that may be of interest to them.

The new www.IllinoisProBono.org contains thousands of legal resources in 24 areas of law. The largest volume of practice support information is concentrated in the areas of greatest need for lower-income clients, including housing, family law, and consumer law. Website users can now sort the legal resources library by practice area or by type of resource, so finding forms or video training presentations is easier. Furthermore, each time a user logs onto the website it gets smarter, and will push relevant legal content, news and events to the user based on his or her usage history and identified preferences.

Registered website users have the opportunity to personalize the website in several ways. My Favorites allows users to save links to favorite web pages on www.IllinoisProBono.org and any other website for quick one-stop access. My Contacts allows users to add contact information for colleagues and friends, which is then available from any web browser. Users can designate one or more pro bono or legal aid programs as a favorite in My Program Space and then receive information directly from those organizations.

An enhanced news section allows visitors to obtain news from Illinois pro bono programs, and from national legal services organizations via RSS feeds. Registered website users can add their own RSS feeds, thereby integrating news from various sources into one webpage.

Other new features of www.IllinoisProBono.org include a discussion group and email list for pro bono attorneys, a more robust search engine, automated HotDocs forms, and an improved calendar of events.

Each month the homepage features the pro bono attorney of the month with a short video highlighting the exemplary pro bono work of an Illinois attorney. In April, Camille Gaffney of Champaign was selected for her work with Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation. You can nominate a colleague for this honor by e-mailing a brief explanation of why he or she is deserving to info@illinoislegalaid.org.

Illinois Legal Aid Online works with every pro bono program in the state to provide volunteer attorneys with the highest quality and most up to date information and training resources. The new website supports both pro bono attorneys and pro bono programs which are seeking volunteers.

So, what are you waiting for? Log on to www.IllinoisProBono.org, register, and make your pro bono work easier to do. Contact PBI Director Michael Bergmann at mbergmann@pili-law.org or ILAO Executive Director at lcolpoys@illinoislegalaid.org with questions.

Date Set for Annual PBI Pro Bono Celebration
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, June 5, 2007 for the annual PBI Pro Bono Celebration. The event will be from 5:30 until 8:00 p.m. and will be held in the Winter Garden Room at the Harold Washington Library. Additional details are available on PBI's website. Please contact PBI Director, Michael Bergmann at 312/832-5129 with any questions, or if you are interested in sponsoring this event. Invitations for this event will be mailed in May.

CBF Launches 1st Annual Investing In Justice Campaign
The Chicago Bar Foundation launched the 1st annual Investing in Justice Campaign last month. This is a broad-based campaign aimed at lawyers in law firms and corporations throughout the Chicago area to build the capacity of the legal aid organizations that serve our community's most vulnerable residents. In addition to providing critical legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our community, these organizations also provide the "infrastructure" to support pro bono work by lawyers, law firms and corporations, ensuring that there are appropriate pro bono opportunities for volunteer attorneys by investing in solid screening and referral structures and providing training, mentoring and support for volunteers under the supervision of expert staff attorneys. In this inaugural year of the Investing in Justice Campaign, all funds raised in the Campaign will be used to directly address a growing crisis in the pro bono and legal aid system: the combination of inadequate salaries and skyrocketing law school debt that is making it economically untenable for attorneys to pursue careers in legal aid. If you missed your organization's campaign but want to contribute, or if your firm or company is not running a campaign this year, you can still help--visit the CBF website for more information.

More About the Pro Bono Initiative and How to Get Involved
PBI is undertaking a variety of projects to achieve its goals. Learn more about these projects and how PBI Participants from law firms, corporate legal departments and legal aid and public interest law organizations can get involved with the work of PBI. Two teams, the Pro Bono Manual Team and the PBI Program Planning Team, have already been launched. As the Teams complete their work, new teams will be added based on other projects PBI will be undertaking. Read more.

Save the Date for the CBF/CBA Pro Bono and Public Service Luncheon
The 9th Annual CBF/CBA Pro Bono and Public Service Luncheon will be held on July 9, 2007 from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Hotel. More information is available on the CBF website, or by calling Meredith Lovell at 312-554-1207.

Conference Being Planned to Increase Pro Bono Outside of Cook County
The Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice is planning a pro bono conference to be held in Springfield. The conference will be held June 14-15, 2007, and will present an opportunity to assess and maximize resources for pro bono outside of Cook County. If you would like more information about this conference, contact ICEJ Director, Joe Dailing at 815/962-9050 or e-mail him at jdailing@icfej.org.

Past PBI E-newsletters Now Available Online
Did you miss a previous edition of the PBI e-newsletter? Past editions are now available on-line at the "News" page of the PBI website. Past PBI E-newsletters

In late 2004, S., the founder of Rebekah’s House, approached the Community Economic Development Law Project (CEDLP) seeking assistance to open an affordable housing facility for women recovering from drug and alcohol abuse. While the group had been distributing personal items such as clothing and toiletries out of S.’s house for many years, they wanted to offer safe, and sober transitional housing for women exiting treatment programs. In this hopeful living environment, the women would receive referrals to community organizations to help them get back on track in areas such as job training and employment, as well as medical and mental health.

Raam Jani, an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery, volunteered to represent Rebekah’s House as they applied for tax-exempt status and leased a building that is now home to five women who are continuing their recovery. Thanks to this pro bono attorney’s efforts, Rebekah’s House is a unique and powerful tool in the drug and alcohol abuse-recovery process for women.

About pro bono work generally, Mr. Jani says: “I really enjoy working with the pro bono clients referred to my law firm by CEDLP, whose attorneys are very helpful both substantively and administratively, and my firm strongly encourages and supports attorneys that do pro bono work. I went to law school committed to being a good global citizen, and pro bono work is a very tangible way of doing so. I believe that one of the responsibilities of a lawyer is to give something back to the community. A disadvantaged family buying its first home or an individual wishing to start a not-for-profit entity to serve community needs should not be precluded from doing so because of the maze of regulatory requirements that, in many cases, were put in place for the very purpose of protecting those individuals."

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In each edition, this section features stories written by pro bono attorneys about their pro bono experiences as well as perspectives from firms, corporations and legal aid agencies. Please consider submitting an article for an upcoming e-newsletter. Articles should be no more than 300 words and may be submitted electronically to mbergmann@pili-law.org.