Celebrate Pro Bono Week with the Austin Bar Association

BY CAITLIN HANEY-JOHNSTON

For over a year, the Austin Bar Association’s Pro Bono Committee has brought together pro bono stakeholders throughout the Central Texas community. The committee, led last year by Austin Kaplan, connected organizations and groups to improve the experiences of pro bono clients. As this year’s committee chair, I am committed to helping the group reach even more people. It is amazing to see how collaborations among the committee members allow each project to serve an even larger number of clients. Whether it’s by connecting existing projects with the Capital Area Paralegal Association to bring notaries to clinics, sharing physical spaces, or making organizations aware of grant opportunities, we are all stronger when we work together.

As lawyers, we are equipped with a unique set of skills. Those skills can help right wrongs, provide pathways to citizenship, and help people obtain the documents and licenses necessary to provide for their families. As the stewards of those skills, attorneys have an ethical obligation to share them with the community. And the opportunities to give back are voluminous. The Austin Bar has several projects, including the CANLAW Clinic for cancer patients, the Veterans Assistance Program, and the Self-Represented Litigant Project at the Travis County Law Library and Self-Help Center, that allow you to help a community to which you relate. Or, you could volunteer with Volunteer Legal Services or Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid to serve the neediest members of our community. You also have the option of volunteering through your substantive law section, such as the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section, which provides free family law mediations at the courthouse.

Austin lawyers volunteering at AYLA’s quarterly legal clinic, October 2018. Pro bono efforts by our legal community last year resulted in completing almost 100 critical end-of-life documents for the neighbors at Community First! Village.

If there are no existing projects that interest you, you can always start your own. In 2016, Randy Cubriel and I saw a need for estate planning in the cancer community. Through the support of the Austin Bar Association and Foundation, community partners, and dozens of volunteers, we have provided free estate-planning services to more than 130 cancer survivors and their spouses. The clinic started as an idea, and today it is a valuable asset to the cancer community.

To the hundreds of volunteer attorneys in the Austin community: Your work is truly changing lives. We invite you to join us at a Pro Bono Celebration during national Pro Bono Week on Oct. 22 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Hilgers House—the Austin Bar’s new home on Judges Hill.

The event is open to any attorney or paralegal who provided pro bono services in 2019. We will honor an outstanding attorney, paralegal, and judge who have made significant pro bono contributions throughout the year. There will also be a karaoke competition where the winner receives a golden microphone! We hope to see everyone on Oct. 22 as we celebrate the power of pro bono. If you have any questions or want to get involved in the Austin Bar’s Pro Bono Committee, please email me at caitlin@thehaneylawfirm.com. AL