Paladin, the leading pro bono management platform, and Hotshot, the learning platform for lawyers, announced a strategic partnership to bring together two important pillars of professional development: effective training and meaningful pro bono work. The companies, who share mutual clients, aim to make pro bono work more accessible by empowering lawyers with substantive, on-demand learning.
Through this collaboration, law firms and corporate legal departments that have both platforms will be able to offer their lawyers Hotshot’s on-demand learning content, including CLE tracks and customized learning tracks to pair with pro bono matters, as well as access to Paladin’s curated pro bono opportunities, through each platform. The training will help educate and empower lawyers to take on impactful pro bono work they might not feel comfortable taking on otherwise. “Combining legal training and pro bono is a powerful way to help lawyers deliver impact for those who need it most,” said Kristen Sonday, Co-Founder and CEO of Paladin. “With Hotshot’s engaging, high-quality content and Paladin’s network of vetted pro bono matters, lawyers can learn, apply skills, and make a difference seamlessly.”
Hotshot’s short, video-based courses across litigation, transactional, business, and technology topics help lawyers learn quickly and easily. Courses are available on desktop or mobile for on-demand learning, and lawyers can also earn CLE through Hotshot. Through Paladin’s curated database of pro bono opportunities across over 350 partner legal services organizations around the country, volunteers can find cases that match the skills they’re looking to build, causes they’re interested in supporting, and communities they want to serve. With 92% of civil legal needs going unmet or inadequately met in the U.S., pro bono is a critical part of solving the justice gap, and attorneys often cite their pro bono experiences as the most meaningful of their careers.
The unique partnership reflects a growing movement within the legal industry to align professional development with pro bono impact. By integrating pro bono into legal education, not only will lawyers be able to sharpen critical legal skills used to support clients and build their careers, but also practice deeper empathy, develop stronger community ties, and increase personal satisfaction. This is especially important in the GenAI era, as associates need to be upskilled quickly to do higher-value, more meaningful work earlier in their careers as GenAI tools are increasingly taking on the more routine tasks.
“We believe great legal training is practical, flexible, and experiential,” said Ian Nelson, Co-Founder of Hotshot. “Partnering with Paladin helps us bring that vision to life by enabling lawyers to put their learning into action immediately through impactful pro bono engagements.”
For more information, please contact your respective Account Executives, or reach out to [email protected].
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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