PRO BONO WEEK 3rd - 7th November 2025 PART 2

Peace Partners trustee secretary Katherine Russell considers potential beneficial collaborations between charities and legal professionals volunteering on a ‘Pro Bono’ basis. In Part 1 Katherine concluded by asking: 

‘Charities help people to access services that they might not be able to afford. Charities access legal services offered to them Pro Bono. Rather than these two amenities of public interest fostering a commercial relationship, is it possible that charities and Pro Bono groups can co-exist, with the people they help being their shared objective?’ ​

Part 2 
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Before answering that question, it is pertinent to mention how Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the landscape of the legal industry. With anticipated job cuts imminent for legal support workers, lawyers are also aware that their jobs are at risk in the future. However, this threat isn’t taken too seriously and there is a lack of preparedness by legal professionals, because the AI takeover hasn’t happened yet.

Together with professional reticence, is a denial of the impact that AI will have on the service user, particularly those people that Pro Bono groups and charities aim to help. As the profession becomes more dehumanised, so too access to justice becomes more difficult for disadvantaged people.

A window of opportunity exists for legal professionals who accept that their future in the industry might be Pro Bono focussed in the advancing digital age.

People with the greatest need turn to charities for help with lifetime necessities like food, housing and employment. Those same people turn to Pro Bono groups for help when life becomes problematic and they need help navigating the issue to make the problem manageable. Your writer does not believe that a chatbot offers any help when trying to make a problem manageable. 

My take away from Pro Bono week this year is that there is a lot of unmet need which can be addressed if legal professionals commit to Pro Bono. The demand for Pro Bono has increased but due to lack of volunteers the service is spiralling out of control.  

If charities and Pro Bono groups can work together in partnership with a shared language that speaks to ‘their’ service user, then legal groups and charities will not be seen as two separate entities, but rather as ways in which social welfare assistance can be claimed. In the context of Peace Partners' work there is no doubt many people need help with everyday issues which can prevent them from finding personal peace.

As a law student, Paralegal and the Trustee secretary for Peace Partners, I see huge potential for the partnership between charities and Pro Bono lawyers to work. The USP (Unique Selling Point) for a relationship between charities and lawyers is the fact that every charity, whatever its charitable purpose, has legal responsibilities to fulfill. The law demands this, so I would argue that a legal trustee should be as commonplace as the charity treasurer.
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