Through its Pro Bono Initiative project, PILI facilitates the sharing of best practices through pro bono resources and programming, serving as a hub for pro bono within the Illinois legal community. A hallmark of this project since nearly its inception, has been PILI’s Pro Bono Reference Guide for both Law Firms and Corporations. Both of these guides are intended to provide support in developing and enhancing a formal pro bono program. Included in each guide is a compilation of best practices, resources and relevant samples to help either in-house corporate legal departments or law firms in building or reinvigorating their pro bono program.
Although PILI regularly reviews and updates the Pro Bono Reference Guide, this year PILI underwent a larger overhauling of both the Law Firm Pro Bono Reference Guide and Corporate Pro Bono Reference Guide. In conjunction with law firm and corporate leaders from PILI’s Board of Directors, PILI revised and modernized each guide. In addition to extensive editing and updating of articles, an executive summary and several new articles were also written for each guide including “Special Considerations for Entering the Illinois Market in Designing a Pro Bono Program” as well as “Pro Bono Activity Throughout Illinois.”
Each guides provide a summary of pro bono in Illinois, reviews the considerations when developing a pro bono program as well as general administration of the program, explains how to find pro bono matters, describes partnering with other entities, as well as providing additional resources and ideas. Whether you are just beginning to develop a pro bono program at your firm or corporation, or you are seeking ideas to refresh or bolster your program, this updated guide should be a useful resource.