Paladin, the leading pro bono management platform, announced its expansion to Canada today by launching the first ever province-wide pro bono portal in partnership with the Ontario Bar Association (OBA). The launch reflects a key milestone in Paladin’s international expansion, with the plan to roll-out to the rest of Canada’s provinces this fall.
Similar to portals powered by Paladin in 13 states across the U.S., the OBA portal will provide lawyers with a centralized, sortable database of real-time opportunities to serve those who might not otherwise have access to pro bono assistance. In making the portal available for free to all lawyers across the Province, the OBA looks to effectively deploy the 60,000 lawyers in the region to help individuals and charities in times of need. Pro Bono Ontario, the largest legal aid referrer in the region, will be the anchor NGO partner recruiting lawyer assistance.
Kirsti McHenry, Pro Bono Ontario’s Executive Director, believes the portal can facilitate greater lawyer engagement. “PBO believes every Ontarian deserves meaningful access to justice,” she said. “Thanks to our dedicated roster of 1,000 volunteer lawyers, we delivered direct legal services to more than 33,000 clients last year. We’re proud to participate in this important initiative to engage even more lawyers committed to achieving 100% access to justice.”
Louis Frapporti, a partner at Gowling WLG, will be joining Paladin’s Advisory Board, as well as helping establish a Canadian Advisory Board. In this capacity, he will be working to engage and partner with social enterprise, corporate and government sectors to optimize the platform for local pro bono needs and accelerate its adoption and impact in Canada. “As with every other economic sector and the legal industry generally, innovation holds the key to transformative change—as does making purpose a key element of our industry’s value proposition,” said Frapporti. “Paladin and the new partnerships it is inspiring hold enormous promise in demonstrating to the profession as a whole that ‘doing good’ can be ‘good business’.”
In addition to Frapporti’s leadership, Gowling WLG, which is one of the largest law firms in Canada, will be piloting the adoption of Paladin to help scale its world class pro bono program. Paladin’s existing law firm and corporate clients who have offices in Canada will be able to seamlessly expand their engagement to include Canadian volunteers – a natural extension of the network.
In Canada, according to the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, about half of all adults will experience a serious legal problem at least once over the course of a three year period. Furthermore, at a time of considerable economic insecurity, individual entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly those from marginalized communities, are challenged in securing access to qualified lawyers to assist in the formation and growing of their ventures.
Until now, efforts to connect pro bono lawyers with pro bono opportunities in Canada were managed mostly through online forms, emails, and spreadsheets. Through the use of Paladin’s digital platform made available on the OBA Portal, volunteer opportunities will be centralized into a growing database of need that lawyers can filter by practice area, communities to serve, type of engagement, time commitment, and the ability to work remotely. Legal services referrers will be able to post opportunities as they come in to raise visibility of their work, recruit new volunteers, and ultimately serve more clients. By creating consistency in opportunity intake, the OBA and Paladin will also be able to gather important data around needs, volunteer interests, and ultimately, pro bono connections to inform better volunteer matching.
“The pro bono community in Canada is quickly advancing, and we are honored to leverage our technology to accelerate its growth across Ontario and nationwide. We look forward to working closely with the OBA on a tech blueprint that we can scale to help even more individuals in need around the world get urgent legal assistance,” says Kristen Sonday, Paladin’s Co-Founder and CEO.
Lawyers interested in providing pro bono legal services can view cases and register interest at https://app.joinpaladin.com/!/ontario-bar-association/.
Kristen Sonday
Kristen is the Co-Founder and CEO at Paladin. As a first generation-college Princeton graduate, Kristen first witnessed how complicated our judicial system is to navigate while at the U.S. Department of Justice conducting international criminal work in Mexico and Central America. As one of the few Latinos on the team, she saw the immense value of having an advocate with you throughout the legal process, which inspired her to want to build something to increase access for those in diverse communities. After DOJ, she joined the Founding Team of YC-backed Grouper, where she learned how to build a startup from the ground up. In addition to Paladin, Kristen Co-Chairs the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council and is a partner at LongJump, investing in overlooked founders in the Chicago area.
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