Pro Bono & Community Service Initiative

Mission

The Center for Public Interest Law Pro Bono & Community Service Initiative (PBCSI) connects law students with rewarding volunteer opportunities at local public interest organizations. Through service, students gain valuable experiences, insights, and skills, while creating stronger ties to their communities and helping to remedy social problems and injustices.

Contact

Reporting Your Pro Bono Hours

By reporting your pro bono hours, you allow DePaul to accurately track the number of volunteer hours donated by College of Law students. Tracking your hours also makes you eligible for three prestigious service awards (DePaul Certificate of Service, DePaul Certificate of Pro Bono Service and DePaul Public Service Award). These awards are presented at a yearly service reception and look great on your résumé! You may report your hours as often as you like, but all hours are due at the end of every semester. Click HERE to record your hours. Whether you volunteer your time through PBCSI or through another organization, all volunteer hours during your time as a DePaul law student can be recorded through PBCSI.

Partnering Organizations

Cabrini Green Legal Aid
Student volunteers staff the Expungement Help Desk at the Daley Center, where they provide on-site assistance to clients seeking to have their records expunged or sealed, or to petition for an executive clemency. Students also conduct intake interviews and present their cases to the CGLA staff and attorneys and participate in the acceptance decision process. Training is provided through Cabrini Green Legal Aid.

Citizen Advocacy Center
The Center is a non-profit, non-partisan community legal organization that has been dedicated to building democracy for the 21st century since 1994. CAC’s mission is to strengthen the citizenry’s capacity, resources and tools for self-governance. Volunteer assignments include analyzing cases, researching legal responses to citizen questions about local government, assisting with lawsuits and projects that promote free speech and governmental transparency.

DePaul Student Legal Services
SLS provides high quality, free or low-cost legal advice to DePaul students on a wide range of common problems, including contract disputes, misdemeanor criminal offenses and more. Law students will assist with client interviews, help students understand their rights and obligations, provide general recommendations, and make referrals to helpful resources. Volunteers may also perform research and drafting tasks.

HighSight
HighSight is a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships, tutoring, mentoring, leadership development and college readiness programs for students to attend and succeed at private high schools in Chicago. There are currently more than 130 students in 24 high schools who receive tuition assistance and academic support from HighSight. HighSight uses law student volunteers to support the students through academic mentoring. Mentors focus on test preparation, study habits and organizational skills while assisting students with their assigned homework.

Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
The New American Initiative is a coordinated multiyear campaign for citizenship. This campaign is intended to link legal permanent residents directly to the information and services they need to successfully pursue citizenship. The New Americans Initiative will coordinate a media and outreach campaign along with citizenship preparation and legal counseling. Volunteers are needed to assist with naturalization applications and application screening.

Latino Union of Chicago
The LUC deals with important social issues of the immigrant community, constantly advocating and organizing to improve the wages and working conditions of temporary workers. Volunteers are needed to teach or to assist with the Wage Theft Task Force, a collaboration aimed at creating a winning strategy of action in cases where day laborers have been denied pay for their work.

Lawyers in the Classroom
Coordinated by Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago (CRFC), the Chicago Lawyers in the Classroom program partners volunteers with elementary classes at a Chicago Public School to help students understand the U.S. Constitution and our legal system. CRFC will train law students to lead interactive lessons, such as analyzing a "No Vehicles in the Park" rule. CRFC will provide teaching materials.

Working Hands Legal Clinic
WHLC provides direct legal support to workers’ centers and day laborers; WHLC also worked to pass state legislation providing the country’s strongest protections for day laborers. WHLC is actively involved in issues affecting low-wage immigrant workers such as abuse of employment eligibility verification and Social Security no-match letters. WHLC operates on the principle that social change occurs through leadership development in the communities most affected by workplace abuses. Possible assignments include: drafting complaints, motions and conducting research; developing workplace rights curriculum and materials for training of workers’ centers leaders; facilitating trainings of workers’ centers leaders; conducting intake interviews with day laborers and identifying legal issues; and working with workers’ centers to develop worker-led strategies to attack workplace issues.

Center for Public Interest Law