On September 24, Corporate Pro Bono, the Association of Corporate Counsel San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, the Volunteer Legal Services Program of the Bar Association of San Francisco, and Fenwick & West LLP (a Signatory to the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge^®) hosted the Bay Area Onsite Pro Bono Clinic.  The clinic was the second in the Bay Area this year and attracted 32 volunteer attorneys and eight local nonprofit organizations.  The volunteer attorneys represented several corporate legal departments, including Hewlett-Packard, The Clorox Company, Oracle, United Health Care, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The Bay Area Clinic consisted of two sessions.  The first session, led by expert attorneys from Fenwick, provided training on the legal needs of nonprofit organizations.  These expert attorneys also made themselves available throughout the second session to provide expertise.

During the second session, the volunteer attorneys met with the nonprofits to provide pro bono legal help.  The nonprofit clients engage in a variety of activities serving a wide range of Bay Area residents, including promoting international literature and translation, developing affordable housing for San Franciscans, fostering community economic development, and more.  The volunteers conducted legal audits of the nonprofit clients to ensure that they operate in good legal health. Volunteers also addressed some of the clients’ more specific legal needs.  Legal counsel would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive for the nonprofits in attendance.

Fenwick attorneys Lynda Twomey, Walt Raineri, Stephen Gillespie, and Allen Kato conducted the training session for which volunteers received CLE credit.  Counsel at Fenwick & West LLP also developed comprehensive training materials for the volunteers.  These materials will prove invaluable for the volunteer attorneys who continue to provide legal advice to their nonprofit clients.

For more information about Clinic in a Box℠, or to learn about other resources CPBO has to offer, please contact Eve Runyon, director of CPBO, or visit www.cpbo.org.

Developed by Corporate Pro Bono
A global partnership project of the Pro Bono Institute and the Association of Corporate Counsel
www.cpbo.org