Pro Bono Ontario<\/a>, the largest legal aid referrer in the region, will be the anchor NGO partner recruiting lawyer assistance.<\/p>\n\u201cPBO believes every Ontarian deserves meaningful access to justice,\u201d Kirsti McHenry, Pro Bono Ontario\u2019s executive director, said in a statement announcing the launch. \u201cThanks to our dedicated roster of 1,000 volunteer lawyers, we delivered direct legal services to more than 33,000 clients last year. We\u2019re proud to participate in this important initiative to engage even more lawyers committed to achieving 100% access to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
In conjunction with Paladin\u2019s expansion into Canada,\u00a0Louis Frapporti, a partner at Gowling WLG, will join the company\u2019s advisory board and will help establish a Canadian Advisory Board. He will working to engage and partner with social enterprise, corporate and government sectors to optimize the platform for local pro bono needs and accelerate its adoption and impact in Canada, Paladin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs with every other economic sector and the legal industry generally, innovation holds the key to transformative change \u2014 as does making purpose a key element of our industry\u2019s value proposition,\u201d said Frapporti. \u201cPaladin and the new partnerships it is inspiring hold enormous promise in demonstrating to the profession as a whole that \u2018doing good\u2019 can be \u2018good business\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frapporti\u2019s firm, Gowling WLG, one of the largest law firms in Canada, will be piloting the adoption of Paladin to help scale its pro bono program. Paladin\u2019s existing law firm and corporate clients that have offices in Canada will be able to expand their engagement to include Canadian volunteers.<\/p>\n
In Canada, according to the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, about half of all adults will experience a serious legal problem at least once over the course of a three year period. Furthermore, at a time of considerable economic insecurity, individual entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly those from marginalized communities, are challenged in securing access to qualified lawyers to assist in the formation and growing of their ventures.<\/p>\n
Prior to today\u2019s launch, Paladin says, efforts to connect lawyers with pro bono opportunities in Canada were managed mostly through online forms, emails and spreadsheets. Paladin\u2019s platform will enable volunteer opportunities to be centralized into a database that lawyers can filter by practice area, communities to serve, type of engagement, time commitment, and the ability to work remotely.<\/p>\n
Legal services referrers will be able to post opportunities as they come in, recruit new volunteers, and ultimately serve more clients. By creating consistency in opportunity intake, the OBA and Paladin will also be able to gather important data around needs, volunteer interests, and ultimately, pro bono connections to inform better volunteer matching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pro bono community in Canada is quickly advancing, and we are honored to leverage our technology to accelerate its growth across Ontario and nationwide,\u201d said Kristen Sonday, Paladin\u2019s cofounder and CEO. \u201cWe look forward to working closely with the OBA on a tech blueprint that we can scale to help even more individuals in need around the world get urgent legal assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyers interested in providing pro bono legal services can view cases and register interest at https:\/\/app.joinpaladin.com\/!\/ontario-bar-association\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paladin, a company whose platform connects lawyers with opportunities to provide free legal help, today launched a province-wide pro bono portal for Ontario, developed in partnership with the Ontario Bar Association.\u00a0 While Paladin has launched pro bono portals in 13 U.S. states, this is its first outside the U.S. The company says it plans to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":118311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawsite"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Paladin-Ontario-Featured-1024x576-WZLEFG.png?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}