Bloomberg Law Pro Bono Innovators Call for Nominations

We’re thrilled to announce our call for nominations for the 2024 Bloomberg Law Pro Bono Innovators, our third annual edition of this special report.

Purpose

We seek to recognize a selection of law firms, companies, non-profit organizations, universities and other entities that are successfully innovating in their approaches to pro bono client service. We seek to celebrate lawyers across the U.S. and beyond working to uphold the rule of law for underserved communities. (Want more background? Check out our 2023 and 2022 Pro Bono Innovators special reports.)

We’re looking for weighty, impactful pro bono client matters across a range of practice areas.

The successful resolution of these matters should include all or most of these elements:

• The unique, innovative approach resulted in broad societal impact, through a legal or policy change.
• The legal teams expended a significant amount of time, strategy and ingenuity to solve the issues presented.
• The innovation and successful client outcomes were the result of fruitful partnerships between law firms, companies and/or non-profits.
• The successful resolution of the matter(s) benefited from the perspectives of diverse legal teams. (Those teams may include lawyers who are diverse in gender, geography, race, culture, ability, orientation or other life or legal practice experiences.)

To Apply

• Include a brief summary of the pro bono history of your firm, company, non profit, university or other entity. (Word count: Do not exceed 500 words for this summary.)
• Include brief descriptions of at least four significant pro bono client matters that your team(s) resolved between April 19, 2023 and April 19, 2024.
• For each client matter, list the lawyers involved and identify the lead attorneys. Detail if outside co-counsel participated, and if so, indicate the respective percentage of work handled by each firm, company, non-profit or other entity. For joint client matters, you must include the percentage of work handled by the attorneys in your submission. (Word count: Do not exceed 1500 words total for the pro bono client matter descriptions and counsel listings.)
• Optional: You may also include descriptions of up to two matters that are ongoing. In that event, label these matters “ongoing” in your submission and include a description of any interim successes your team has achieved for your client(s) in these matters as of your Pro Bono Innovators submission date. (Note: If you choose to include optional descriptions of ongoing matters, they will be included in the 1500-word count limit noted above.)
• Include the answers to the following questions. Select two of the four concluded matters you detail in the 1500-word description above. Select the same two matters for each of your responses to the questions below.
  • What were the most innovative aspects of two of your client matters in your view? And who took the lead on driving innovation with the work? (Tip: The more details you can provide about the innovative aspects of your work, the better. Draw out what made your approach to the work unique.) Word count: 500 words.
  • Tell us more about the impact of these two matters on the local, national, and/or global level. Word count: 500 words.
  • Why do you think your team ultimately achieved successful results in these two matters? Word count: 500 words.
• Please compose your answers for the three questions above from the perspectives of the attorneys who completed the work. Avoid writing in the third-person in answering these three questions. (Feel free to write in the third-person for other areas of the submission, such as the summary of your organization’s pro bono history, if you so choose.)

Other Details

• Optional Materials: You may also submit supporting documents such as news clips or brief recommendation letters from pro bono clients. Word count: Letters from clients should not exceed 500 words each. Please also limit the total length of supplemental documents to a maximum of five pages.
• Nomination Limits: A law firm, company or non-profit may send in one submission representative of your work for pro bono clients from April 19, 2023 - April 19, 2024.
• Word count: Please note, word count will be strictly observed.

Deadline

To apply, please send your submissions to submissions@bloombergindustry.com by 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, July 24, 2024.

Questions?

For questions about Pro Bono Innovators, please closely review the rules listed above, then feel free to contact our team at submissions@bloombergindustry.com. Good luck!