Nominations Open for Bloomberg Law’s 2025 Pro Bono Innovators

Nominations for the 2025 edition of Bloomberg Law’s Pro Bono Innovators are now open. Apply through October 3.

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 service—legal work undertaken on behalf of clients and/or communities lacking access to legal services.

We seek to celebrate lawyers across the U.S. and beyond successfully working on impactful pro bono matters on behalf of underserved clients across a range of practice areas.

Examples of work completed by successful Pro Bono Innovator honorees may be found here in our 2024, 2023, and 2022 editions.

The successful resolution of nominated matters should include 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 resolutions of the matters benefited from the perspectives of legal teams with a range of legal practice and life experiences. That may include, but is not limited to, teams that worked across practices and offices in various geographic areas to achieve favorable outcomes.

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 20, 2024 and August 19, 2025. For each client matter, list the lawyers involved and identify the lead attorneys. If co-counsel participated from another organization, 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 four 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. Make it clear 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. (The summary of your organization’s pro bono history does not need to be written from the perspective of the primary attorneys.)

Other Details

• Nomination Limits: A law firm, company or non-profit may send in one submission representative of its work for pro bono clients in matters concluded between April 20, 2024 and August 19, 2025.
  
• Optional Materials: In addition to the required materials listed above, nominators 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 limit the total length of supplemental documents to a maximum of five pages.)
  
• Word count: Please note, word count will be strictly observed.
  

Deadline

To apply, please visit this link to send your submissions by 3 p.m. EST on Friday, October 3, 2025.

Questions?

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