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The Utah State Bar Pro Bono Program was created in 1996 pursuant to the recommendation of the Bar's Delivery of Legal Services Committee. The program conducts a number of projects to
enhance pro bono work within the state of Utah. The Pro Bono Program also coordinates with other organizations to further their pro bono goals.
One of the primary focuses of the
Utah State Bar Program is of course the recruiting of volunteer attorneys. In the last five years we have met with real success in this area, tripling the number of volunteer attorneys to
more that 1,000. These attorneys are located in almost every county in the state and represent over twenty-five different practice areas.
One of the challenges faced by the Bar has
been to organize this resource into a useful form. To that end we have created a searchable database of these attorneys with additional information such as foreign languages spoken and
willingness to work with law school students.
The Bar receives requests for direct representation from many different sources including judges, crime victims advocates, Adult
Protective Services, Lawyers Helping Lawyers, the Disability Law Center, Legal Aid, and the Multicultural Legal Center. The Pro Bono Program works very closely with Utah Legal Services to
try and serve those clients that do not meet the eligibility criteria mandated by their Federal funding. In 2003 the Bar placed over 160 cases for litigation from these varied sources.
The Tuesday Night Bar is a program that has been in place for over fifteen years. Staffed by pro bono attorneys recruited by and from the Young Lawyers Section of the Bar, roughly
1,200 people a year receive free legal advice every Tuesday night at the Law and Justice Center. This program is not means tested and is open to any one who makes an appointment.
Working with law firms to establish in-house pro bono projects is another goal of the Pro Bono Project. Recently the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, a transactionally oriented business law
firm expressed an interest in taking a more active role in pro bono. Unfortunately given the firm's practice area, its attorneys had had little opportunity to do pro bono work. In
response, the Pro Bono program arranged for Sandy Dollowitz to conduct training at Dorsey & Whitney's office on Qualified Domestic Relations Orders, a common transactional divorce
issue that Legal Aid lacks the resources to handle. The firm now stands ready to handle the cases for Legal Aid.
The J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU is currently working with the
Bar's Pro Bono Program to establish a student pro bono project that will create volunteer opportunities for the law students. By bringing together BYU Law School students, Bar
representatives, judges, faculty and the Utah County offices of Utah Legal Services, this partnership will assist both the local community as well as the students. The S.J. Qiunney
College of Law's Pro Bono Initiative is a well-established law school student organization that the Bar has supported and worked with for the last three years. Together, these two
programs demonstrate the benefit that comes from a collaborative approach to pro bono.
Over the last several years, the Pro Bono Program has undertaken a number special projects to
address unique challenges as they arose. In the aftermath of the Salt Lake City tornado in 2000, attorneys were recruited and referred out to assist homeowners that had legal issues as a
result of damage caused by the storm. In 2001, as a result of the large scale mobilization of troops in Utah for the military action in Afghanistan, the Pro Bono Program recruited over
300 attorneys specifically to assist these men and women with the myriad of legal issues arising from activation. This effort was so well received and appreciated by the JAG that the
program has been made permanent, and there is now an annual military pro bono award given by the Utah JAG in recognition of a pro bono attorney who has done exceptional work on behalf of
service men and women.
Recruiting and organizing volunteer attorneys to participate in Bar sponsored educational efforts is another area of emphasis for the Pro Bono Program. In
2002, in recognition of the first anniversary of the events of September 11th, the Bar's Pro Bono Program recruited and scheduled the speaking of over 400 attorneys, making roughly 1,200
presentations, to approximately 30,000 students throughout the state of Utah. In 2003, the Program organized a similar program to mark the 200th anniversary of Marbury vs. Madison. In 2004, the program is working on another educational effort, Brown vs. Board of Education,
to mark the significance of this landmark decision on our public educational system.
Whether it is recruiting, promoting, coordinating, or organizing, the Utah State Bar's Pro Bono
Program will do what it can to enhance the remarkable efforts of Utah's volunteer attorneys.
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