4 months to go until UK Pro Bono Week
With just over four months to go until the UK’s Pro Bono Week, organisers today announce details of the programme with a series of events and discussions uniting the legal profession to make a lasting societal impact around three cross-cutting themes:
- Pro Bono Week will take place from 6 to 10 November 2023
- Focus this year on bringing legal professionals together to make a sustained impact
- Changing lives through pro bono
Exploring how and why lawyers and law students across the UK transform lives through pro bono, including celebrating inspiring examples of pro bono and exploring the business case for legal volunteering.
- Maximising the impact of pro bono
An opportunity to think about how to measure pro bono and to maximise its impact through, for example, collaborative projects responding to crises; focussing early advice on debt or housing; partnerships with the healthcare sector; incorporating evaluation into projects.
- Pro bono within ESG: from climate to sustainable development
Pro bono will be explored as a pillar of an Environmental, Social, and Governance strategy, including how lawyers can help tackle the climate crisis, and how the Sustainable Development Goals can be championed.
Now in its 22nd year, Pro Bono Week offers an opportunity to recognise and support the voluntary contribution made by the legal profession across the UK in giving free legal help to those in need.
Pro Bono Week will take place from 6 to 10 November 2023, and will include events involving leaders across the pro bono sector and legal community.
Chair of the national organising committee, Toby Brown, said “Pro Bono Week has become a central point in the year for the legal profession, with the charitable sector, to focus on how pro bono helps those in need. Our three themes this year will both celebrate pro bono and drive forward delivery of help in the most impactful way, whilst placing pro bono in the wider ESG context.”
Toby continued: “Pro Bono Week is also an opportunity for organisations to publish reports or launch new initiatives to an engaged pro bono audience and we encourage law firms, barristers’ chambers, legal societies, charities, in-house lawyers and law schools to begin planning events and initiatives now, ahead of Pro Bono Week in November.”
Organisations interested in engaging this year with Pro Bono Week can register their interest and get support for organising their events at https://probonoweek.org.uk/event-plans
Coinciding with today’s announcement, the organising committee has published a report summarising the discussions during last year’s Pro Bono Week, available here: probonoweek.org.uk/2022report
Last year’s Pro Bono Week saw 68 external and internal events, both online and in person, involving an estimated 5,000 attendees.
