Reminder: CPBO Partner Award Nominations

The PBEye reminds you that time is running out to submit your nomination for the 2015 CPBO Pro Bono Partner Award! To nominate a partnership, please complete a nomination form and submit a letter of nomination no later than May 8.

The award, which will be presented at the 2015 PBI Annual Dinner in New York City, recognizes innovative team approaches to pro bono work involving in-house legal departments, law firms, and public interest groups. Recipients of the award must include at least one legal department and one or more law firms and/or public interest group partners.

For this year’s selection process, a new criteria has been added. This year’s Partner Award will consider whether the partnership addresses a critical legal need and/or particularly vulnerable community/target group. Previous criteria remain the same:

• a legal pro bono project that has a demonstrated impact on its community/target group;
• substantial involvement by in-house lawyers;
• tangible steps toward making the partnership sustained; and
• innovative substantive and/or structural (e.g. delivery model) approaches to the effort.

In addition to the new criteria, CPBO may now present two awards: (1) to a partnership that includes a legal department of 50 or more lawyers; and (2) to a partnership that includes a legal department of 49 or less lawyers.

Last year, CPBO presented the Pro Bono Partner Award to American International Group, Inc.** and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) for their innovative partnership to provide pro bono legal services to Afghan refugees whose lives are in danger due to their work with the U.S. government. A full list of previous awardees can be found here.

For more information about the award, please contact CPBO Director Eve Runyon or click here.

**denotes a Corporate Pro Bono Challenge^® signatory