The principal goal of the Corporate Counsel Section’s Pro Bono and Grants Committee is to promote equal access to justice through financial and volunteer support of pro bono organizations.

The Section primarily supports pro bono organizations that provide volunteer and training opportunities for in-house and other corporate counsel. The Section provides annual grants to such pro bono organizations. The Section also provides grants to the Texas Access to Justice Commission to support internships by law students in pro bono organizations and to support the annual Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Award. The Section has also supported the Justice for All calendar published by the State Bar of Texas and furnished to low income Texans, informing them of their rights and responsibilities.

Section members are motivated to participate in pro bono activities through the Section’s website, timely e-mail blasts, newsletter and annual Corporate Counsel Institute held in Houston and Dallas.

Click here for more information regarding Section grants

Report your pro bono hours here!

Volunteer today!

Attorneys are needed to accept pro bono civil law cases, act as mentors and co-counselors, volunteer as presenters at substantive law training events, serve on speaker panels, provide assistance to pro se litigants, and participate on local pro bono advisory boards. Follow the links below to learn about pro bono opportunities in your community.

Worried that you may lack expertise, malpractice insurance, time, assistance?

Texas Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Brochure and FAQ

TexasLawHelp.org is an online resource for low-income Texans providing information about legal rights, self-help resources, and legal aid.

TexasLawyersHelp.org contains resources for pro bono and legal services attorneys, law professionals, and law students to assist in representation of low-income and disadvantaged clients.

Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO): CPBO, a national pro bono partnership project of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and the Pro Bono Institute, is the premier resource for legal departments and in-house attorneys interested in doing legal pro bono work. Since 2000, CPBO has offered support to in-house lawyers and legal departments, providing technical assistance, online services, training, surveys, research materials, onsite pro bono clinics, and confidential consultation services to in-house pro bono volunteers – all at no charge.

The CPBO Website is a great place to get started if you are an in-house lawyer looking for volunteer opportunities in your area, wondering how to start a pro bono program in your legal department or ACC Chapter, or looking for quick answers to commonly asked questions about in-house pro bono. The valuable online resources include an extensive search engine for pro bono projects and events in your community, best practices profiles of the pro bono programs and policies of other legal departments, up-to-date news on developments in corporate pro bono, and a library of resources to answer any questions and concerns your legal department may encounter.

Ready to see what’s out there?

Texas C-BAR: Texas Community Building with Attorney Resources (Texas C-BAR) is the only project of its kind in Texas, providing free business law services across the state to community-based nonprofits developing affordable housing and other much-needed services in low-income communities. Texas C-BAR was founded in 2000 with the support of the Texas Bar Foundation and continues as a successful program today due to the support it receives from more than 45 law firms, hundreds of volunteer attorneys, the State Bar, and numerous other funders and participants.

Texas C-BAR’s program is modeled on established business law pro bono referral programs around the country, including programs in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Detroit, Boston, and New York. Business law pro bono projects have been endorsed by organizations such as the ABA's Section of Business Law and the Association of Corporate Counsel in recognition of the fact that these programs provide business lawyers with opportunities to volunteer their expertise in ways that many litigation-oriented pro bono programs do not offer.

Volunteer: Attorneys accepting referrals from Texas C-BAR represent community-based nonprofits in their work to transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy communities. The nonprofits assisted are engaged in a broad range of activities to better the lives of low-income persons, including building houses for low-income families, repairing houses for the elderly and disabled, creating after-school programs for at-risk children, and developing job training initiatives for women moving off of welfare.

The types of legal matters referred include: preparing incorporation documents, nonprofit tax advice, drafting personnel policy manuals, construction contract negotiation, preparing real estate documents, preparing partnership agreements, adviceon corporate governance matters, property tax exemption advice, establishing subsidiary corporations, clearing title to parcels of land, reviewing loan documents, obtaining tax exempt status.

Texas Legal Services Center

Texas Legal Services Center (TLSC) is a legal aid program which provides assistance and training to poverty law advocates and their clients in the areas of litigation support, education and communication. TLSC sponsors projects that assist individuals in Texas and, in some cases, nationwide. TLSC manages Texas Law Help and Texas Lawyers Helpwhich are statewide web initiatives to increase access to justice. Other primary areas of assistance through TLSC include: The Legal Hotline for Texans, The Health Law Project, The Facility Victims Program, The South Central Pension Rights Project and The Crime Victims Legal Hotline.

Volunteer: Attorneys volunteering with TLSC have the opportunity to work on varied types of matters including a legal hotline program that gives self-help legal advice to Texas residents who are over age 60 or who receive Medicare and programs that assist low income people who have problems accessing health care, low income victims of violent crimes, persons who have suffered abuse or neglect in residential care facilities such as nursing homes, victims of identity theft, and persons who have problems with pensions.

Justice for Children

Justice for Children’s mission is to raise the consciousness of our society about the failure of our governmental agencies to protect victims of child abuse, to provide legal advocacy for abused children and to develop and implement collaborative solutions to enhance the quality of life for these children. Justice for Children is a non-profit organization that advocates for the safety and protection of criminally abused children when the system designed to protect them fails to do so, leaving the child at unacceptable risk. Unfortunately, Justice for Children can only directly help these children when it is made aware of the children’s plight, and when qualified and willing volunteers are available. Direct casework is only one way that Justice for Children seeks to protect children. Justice for Children also works to create change on state and national levels by pursuing legislation and other public policy changes that affect and benefit abused children.

Volunteer: Justice for Children needs your help to protect the innocent. Justice for Children relies heavily on interns and volunteers. Volunteers are needed in the following areas: Campaign for the Protection of Houston's Children!; direct casework including advocating for the safety of an abused child and/or the prosecution of the abuser through any available channel (e.g.: police, CPS, courts, etc.); mentoring including assisting lawyers on cases with issues outside of their normal expertise such as family, criminal, or juvenile law; public policy including working on state and federal legislative goals with other committee members; Casework Research Team: assisting in the preparation of a case-handling manual for all volunteers, as well as planning and/or participating in training sessions for lawyers whose experience in family-law matters is minimal; Public Relations: Helping publish Justice for Children’s newsletter, maintain and update its website, and help spread the word in the community about the good work that is being done by Justice for children.

Amarillo:
Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas

Beaumont:
Jefferson County Bar Association Pro Bono Program

Corpus Christi:
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid