The Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association will
create a statewide pro bono website with a $68,000 Legal Services
Corp. grant that was endorsed by the Massachusetts Bar
Association.
The VLP will use the Technology Initiative Grant, which runs from
January 2012 through June 2013, to expand the availability of
quality pro bono representation for low-income Massachusetts
residents by creating a website that increases the efficiency and
productivity of pro bono programs and helps match up clients with
volunteer attorneys.
The immediate goal is to create a robust, sustainable and widely
used statewide website that increases the overall efficiency and
productivity of pro bono programs and facilitates pro bono
participation by the private bar. The ultimate purpose of the
project is to leverage technology to expand the availability of
quality pro bono representation for low-income clients in
Massachusetts.
"Busy attorneys want and will appreciate this one-stop, coordinated
approach to pro bono," Denise Squillante wrote to the Washington,
D.C.-based LSC when she was MBA president in 2010. She noted the
MBA's "unqualified support" for the project, saying that the online
resource would help connect lawyers with clients badly in need of
help. The grant application had been endorsed by the MBA's House of
Delegates in 2009
and 2010.
The VLP's application states that the effort has the support of all
of the Massachusetts legal aid programs (including both LSC-funded
and non-LSC funded programs), the courts and other legal
organizations.
The courts had already expanded its efforts to improve access to
justice and were enthusiastic about the proposal. In particular,
project noted that the new website has been embraced by the Access
to Justice (A2J) Commission, which is led by Supreme Judicial Court
Justice Ralph Gants and attorney David Rosenberg, as well as by
Housing Court Judge Dina E. Fein, the special advisor to the Trial
Court for Access to Justice
Initiatives.
The application also included a section devoted to the potential
for collaboration with the MBA, both through its Community Services
Dept. and its Access to Justice Section Council. Specifically,
there was interest in jointly developing an online pro bono
opportunities guide to enhance the MBA's existing and "extensive"
pro bono opportunities listings