LWOB was conceived in January of 2000 to create a global association of lawyers comitted to Pro Bono service, both at home and abroad.
It is a nonprofit, 501c3 tax-exempt corporation, incorporated under the laws of the State of Connecticut and headquartered in the United States of America. Our programming involves lawyers from around the world, with large numbers of lawyers from USA, Canada and United Kingdom. It currently operates worldwide under a single umbrella from the US based headquarters.
LWOB relies extensively (but not exclusively) upon volunteer lawyers, students, law firms and othe professionals to accomplish its mission. At any given time up to 100-200 lawyers from around the world have been involved in one aspect of another of support of LWOB or its international programming. Our goal is to provide opportunties to strategically channel pro bono hours into rule of law programming as much as possible.
Thus, our programming is structured to faciliate an important role for pro bono service. In the industry this pro bono role is the LWOB "cost-share" component which is typically significant and exponentially larger than the funding which supports our programs' hard costs.
LWOB is also comitted to practical, concrete programming that has observable and measurable impact and results. We strive to make our programming interactive, engaging and effective.
From an interview with Christina M. Storm (founder)...
“I was 45 years old and had spent years as a trial lawyer in the fields of family law, civil litigation, and defense work in misdemeanor criminal and employment discrimination. Most of my personal financial goals had been achieved and I found myself searching for a way to give back using my legal skills.
One day, after spending literally months scouring the internet for pro bono opportunities, I began to realize that nothing close to what I’d envisioned existed for members of the legal profession. It was disappointing. It occurred to me that better than finding a single opportunity for myself would be the chance to exponentially increase my impact by creating a vehicle for hundreds of lawyers to serve. I was sure that there were many lawyers who shared my eleemosynary leanings.
When it became clear that there was no online community of lawyers with the goal of integrating the global community of lawyers into international pro bono rule of law work, I took the first step by purchasing the domain name, www.Lawyerswithoutborders.org followed by all the necessary legal steps required to launch a dual purposed organization: 1) to increase opportunities for pro bono service for lawyers from a diverse array of practice areas and 2) to develop rule of law programming that involved and depended upon the work of lawyers serving the underserved at home and abroad.
The initial reaction? Many in the international rule of law community scoffed at the idea of a woman being useful in the world’s conflict environments or a lawyer from a relatively small town in Connecticut spearheading a global project of potentially mammoth proportions. After testing the model with a personal long term pro bono challenge the Middle East during the intifadeh 2000, I was confident that the business plan was a good one. My family and friends were the first major donors to the effort and largely sustained it while I, together with a small group of committed volunteers, wrestled with how to "cross borders" and take the skills of a wide variety of lawyers from around the world and fashion them into a useful tools in developing regions, regions emerging from conflict or regions in or contemplating transition.
After progressing from 500 sq. ft of donated office space to 3,000 sq. feet with a fifteen staff, interns and volunteers in-house--we have carefully constructed an organization that has managed, framed and met the legal profession's desire to give back. LWOB has worked hard to cultivate a diverse array of pro bono legal resources, rule of law operations strategies and outside the box innovative training programs and modules.
Those who said it couldn't be done, were very simply, wrong."
