{"id":28092,"date":"2016-05-03T11:30:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=28092"},"modified":"2021-04-23T17:07:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:07:14","slug":"this-woman-created-the-uber-of-legal-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/this-woman-created-the-uber-of-legal-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"This Woman Created the Uber of Legal Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Donna Peel is using sharing-economy principles and woman power to help fill a dire need for legal-aid lawyers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peel is the founder of <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-bono-network.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pro Bono Network<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, an Oak Park, Ill., nonprofit organization that provides about 40 volunteer lawyers a month to Chicago area legal aid agencies. About 90 percent of the 200 attorneys in the network are women and one-third are stay-at-home moms, all of whom do pro bono work when it fits in their schedule &#8212; kind of like a part-time Uber driver. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Pro Bono Network\u2019s mission is to be \u201ca force multiplier\u201d for legal aid by making volunteering hyper-easy, Peel says.\u00a0To do so, it&#8217;s\u00a0harnessing the same broad workplace shift away from traditional 9-to-5 office work and toward more malleable remote and part-time arrangements that its high-tech, for-profit cousins are built on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But rather than offering attorneys a little side income, Pro Bono Network is helping them fill a yawning social need: free legal assistance for low-income people. Legal aid resources are so meager, Peel says, that only about half of Chicagoans who qualify for assistance get help today. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe operate in this new gig economy,\u201d Peel says. \u201cWe take all those lawyers who are no longer in that traditional workplace model,\u201d and enable them to give their time and get valuable legal experience and skills, while helping assuage a serious legal crisis. \u201cWe\u2019re innovative, we\u2019re a disruptor\u201d when it comes to legal-aid solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A volunteering model for a gig economy<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To make it easy for lawyers to participate, Pro Bono Network serves up training and clients, while removing barriers like not having malpractice insurance and backup from another lawyer. \u201cWe follow what the attorneys are willing to do, and we will do any kind of legal aid,\u201d Peel says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Pro Bono network lawyers serve clients with needs as simple as setting up a living will, finalizing a divorce or applying for disability benefits &#8212; and with thornier problems like resolving housing and debt-collection disputes. They provide an astonishing 70 percent of services for incarcerated mothers in Cook County and 38 percent of volunteers who do order-of-protection litigation. They make a difference in situations that \u201ccan be, literally, life and death,\u201d Peel says.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of Pro Bono Network\u2019s clients &#8212; and there have been well over 1,000 of them over the last 5 years &#8212; are looking for brief advice and short-term representation, however. This is the primary need of people in the legal aid system, Peel says, and it also happens to be the sort of work that\u2019s perfect for Pro Bono Network volunteers, who typically want flexibility and to volunteer for only a few hours at a time.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A former U.S. Department of Justice attorney, Peel started Pro Bono Network in 2012 for women like herself, who wanted to keep a toe in law and maintain workplace skills while on career breaks to raise families. She enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom, but also missed her legal career, and thought doing some pro bono work might be the answer. However, when Peel tried legal aid volunteering, she discovered it was hard to get training and cases that fit it into her day. It also became costly; parking fees and babysitter hours alone quickly added up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What was missing, she saw, was a volunteer-oriented organization that did the administrative work of funneling willing volunteers through the existing legal-aid agency system &#8212; answering the phones, doing agency outreach, facilitating training and doling out cases based on who was available to help. So she founded Pro Bono Network to take an \u201cidle resource: people with the opportunity to volunteer\u201d and become the \u201ccatalyst to get them to where they\u2019re needed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Fortifying for the long-term<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peel says she has no trouble recruiting attorney volunteers, and has grown the network so far without any advertising. Her initial focus was on creating a model that was workable for stay-at-home moms taking time off from legal careers. But by making it easy to give time, Pro Bono Network has attracted many other people. Today, its volunteers are primarily working lawyers &#8212; be they part-time, full-time or sole practitioners &#8212; 10 percent are men, and retirees are finding a place too. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pro Bono Network got off the ground with the help of Chicago-area legal aid organizations, bar foundations and members of the local community, family and friends. It runs on donations and a very lean budget of only about $120,000 a year. Given attorneys easily charge $300 an hour, you could say Pro Bono Network provides millions of dollars in services to the community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s what I get excited about: how cheap we are for the effectiveness,\u201d Peel says. Now\u00a0with 5 years under her belt, she\u2019s ready to \u201ctake the enormous success of this grand experiment and start widening our circle.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis is our year of strengthening what we have financially and making sure we\u2019re here for the long run,\u201d Peel explains. \u201cOur goal is to provide a mechanism for any attorney who would like to volunteer in Illinois to be able to so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That means creating an advisory board and stepping up fundraising, she says. In March, Peel hosted her first fundraiser, a sold-out event dubbed \u201cGavels &amp; Growlers\u201d at a local microbrewery that earned $18,000. One of the organization\u2019s biggest supporters this year has been the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oakparkwomensguild.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oak Park Women\u2019s Guild<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, whose members took on the task of furnishing its spartan offices. They raised money, bought furniture and put it together, and hung artwork.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe kept saying we\u2019re too busy saving lives to find a desk,\u201d Peel quips. \u201cNow, I\u2019ve got a plant!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It just goes to show, sharing really is caring.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"transcript-box\" style=\"float:none !important;\">\r\n<div class=\"accordion-container\">\r\n\t\t<a href=\"#\" class=\"accordion-toggle\">Read Full Transcript<span class=\"toggle-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-down\"><\/i><\/span><\/a>\r\n\t\t<div class=\"accordion-accordion_content\">\r\n\t\t\t<p><p>Donna Peel \u2013 Founder \u2013 Pro-Bono Network<\/p>\n<p>Donna Peel (DP):\tI really love this work.<\/p>\n<p>DP SOT:\tSo can you tell me about why you\u2019re here today?<br \/>\n-I\u2019m trying to get a reduced fee.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tTo give people the dignity of knowing that they have a right to the judicial process and to have an attorney help them along the way, it's extraordinarily powerful.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tDonna Peel \u2013 Founder \u2013 Pro Bono Network \u2013 Oak Park, IL \u2013 USA<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tThe Pro Bono Network brings attorneys to people who really need legal aid. There is a real legal aid crisis right now so there\u2019s always a call out for volunteer lawyers to help. Any attorney who wants to volunteer and isn't volunteering just because it's impractical, that's who we are here for. We are here to make it practical for them to volunteer.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tDonna was born and raised in Detroit, the oldest of three children.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tMy father was a CPA and my mother was a prosecutor in Wayne County. They\u2019re very involved in politics. We had a lot of debates at the dinner table, that\u2019s how I was raised.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tDonna attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tAfter graduating in 1992 she moved to Washington D.C. with her husband Drew.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tFor 6 years, she worked in the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tI reached a point in my career where I was able to pick wherever I wanted to go in the Department of Justice. The anti-trust division has a field office in Chicago so my husband and I took a look and thought that Chicago would be a fantastic place.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tTheir first son, Michael, was born in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tI never thought in a million years I would leave my career. It was very important to me. When my first child was born, for the first time I felt that I was just being torn too many places.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tDonna left her job to look after Michael, and then David. But as they grew older, she wanted to go back to work part-time.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tI volunteered downtown at a legal aid agency. And the training times all involved going after 3:00 PM. Which meant I had to get a babysitter, I had to pay not-early bird parking. It sounds silly, but it all added up to being over $200 just to get myself trained. It just seemed like this should be easier.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tIn 2011 Donna came up with the idea for Pro Bono Network.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tShe put out a call for lawyers who wanted to volunteer.<\/p>\n<p>Heena Misabji (HM) SOT:\tSo has your employer directly spoken to you about any of these issues?<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tHeena Musabji was the first to answer. Within weeks, 10 more women responded.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tIn order to really adequately represent your client, you have to know what the law is going to be, and you also have to know what the standards are for the agency under whom you're working.<\/p>\n<p>SOT:\tRight, so it\u2019s not five days from when the rent is due, it\u2019s five days from the notice.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tIt doesn't take very long to learn the basics of what you need to do if you're an experienced lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>SOT:\tSo these are the documents for . . .<br \/>\n-Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>CARD: Pro Bono Network coordinates group training sessions and offers a team of two lawyers on every case.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tOne of our biggest hurdles at the beginning was in finding the appropriate legal aid work for our attorneys. What can we do that will be using their law degree, but ends before 2:00 PM? Uh, and we found out there are a lot of different types of work. One is called \"one and dones,\" where you show up to a clinic and you help a client, but when you leave, you're done.<\/p>\n<p>DP SOT:\tWell, you ready? Okay, we have an office in the back.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tLuckily, the highest need of legal aid is brief advice and short-term representation. So the type of work we do is the most needed.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tToday we saw somebody who had a lot of credit issues.<\/p>\n<p>SOT:\tHave any of them, um, served you with any kind of lawsuit?<br \/>\n-Not yet.<br \/>\n-Okay.<br \/>\n-They\u2019ve been taking out $99 while I was in the hospital.<br \/>\n-Yeah, where is that? Is that on here?<br \/>\n-It\u2019s on there.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tFor her, now, this could be the difference between her paying her rent, paying her heating bill \u2014 these are the choices she has to make. Which one am I going to pay? And having a lawyer help walk you through that and problem-solve it can make a very big difference to her.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tPro Bono Network now works with 10 different legal aid agencies, helping seniors, the disabled, immigrants with visa problems, and incarcerated women.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tSince we started, we've had over 200 attorneys volunteer. And not all women and not all stay-at-home moms, either. But the model is for that group.<\/p>\n<p>DP SOT:\tSo do you understand what you need to get?<br \/>\n-Mm hm, that\u2019s why I was trying to get the application down.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tThe rewarding part about working with legal aid is it is such a powerful tool that a very small amount of work can do a lot of good for somebody.<\/p>\n<p>CARD:\tSupported by donations and grants, Pro Bono Network is working to expand across Illinois.<\/p>\n<p>DP:\tAnd I love for my children to feel like they are part of giving to legal aid, because they accommodate me so often. They have sometimes had discussions with me on whether or not they really want me on that field trip, or perhaps I should go to the Cook County Jail that day. It\u2019s really heart-warming; it\u2019s a very easy way to come to work everyday.<\/p>\n<p>CREDITS<\/p>\n<p>Producers \u2013 Victoria Wang & Sue Williams<br \/>\nDirector \u2013 Sue Williams<br \/>\nEditor \u2013 Cheree Dillon<br \/>\nDirector of Photography \u2013 Sam Shinn<br \/>\nProduction Assistant \u2013 Michelle Ciotta<br \/>\nAssistant Editor \u2013 Adam Finchler<br \/>\nMusic \u2013 Killer Tracks<\/p>\n<\/p>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<!--\/.accordion-accordion_content-->\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donna Peel founded the nonprofit Pro Bono Network to make volunteering easy for stay-at-home moms on hiatus from legal careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":28639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":false,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187,218,3],"tags":[19473,19452,21532,20211,19682],"class_list":["post-28092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-good-on-the-ground","category-entrepreneur-videos","tag-professional-services","tag-social-entrepreneurs","tag-legal-aid","tag-nonprofit-innovation","tag-women-empowerment"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.3 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>This Woman Created the Uber of Legal Aid<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Donna Peal founded the nonprofit Pro Bono Network to make 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