Overview

We will gladly accept independent journalists who:

• Are based in the U.S.
• Use a recognized code of ethics or create their own. Stand for accuracy, independence, fairness, transparency, and truthfulness.
• Demonstrate that the payment of standard legal fees makes it difficult to move forward with their critical work or would significantly deplete their economic resources.
• Have a proven track record (e.g., links to previous publications or awards)

We will gladly accept for-profit news organizations that:

• Are legally incorporated in the U.S. and willing to share financial information with ProJourn as part of the application and screening process.
• Are community-focused i.e., report local news.
• Use a recognized code of ethics or create their own: Stand for accuracy, independence, fairness, transparency, and truthfulness.
• Demonstrate that the payment of standard legal fees makes it difficult to move forward with mission-critical work. Show they haven’t paid significant fees for similar legal services in the past 12 months (or that their circumstances have changed so they can’t pay now).
• Are independently owned, i.e., not primarily or majority-owned by a publicly-traded company, newspaper chain, hedge fund, or private equity firm and/or political or religious institution.

We kindly ask you to fill out our Intake and Conflicts form every time you need an attorney. This form allows us to confirm that your legal request falls within the scope of our program and allows the participating pro bono law firms to run conflicts and confirm they can assist with this matter. Our Intake and Conflict form collects information for a single matter. If you need assistance with more than one matter, you will need to complete the form again for each additional one. Your completion of the Intake and Conflict form does not constitute acceptance of your matter for representation nor a promise to do so and does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and ProJourn, or between you and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, or between you and any other participating law firm or company, their employees, directors, or officers.

All law firms need to check for conflicts of interest to make sure there are no direct or positional conflicts with current clients of the firm. An example of a direct conflict would be when the adverse party on a current matter is looking to work with the firm. An example of a positional conflict would be if the law firm was asked to represent someone who is generally on the other side of the work that they do (such as a law firm being asked to represent a tenants’ rights organization when the firm generally represents landlords). All parties for a prospective pro bono matter need to be run through the firm’s internal systems for any “hits.” If there is a conflict, either direct or positional, the firm will not be able to accept the matter.

We will do our best to connect you with an attorney who can communicate with you in your native language.

If you have a matter that requires urgent legal representation or action, we encourage you to consider seeking legal assistance elsewhere as our process does not permit us to handle such requests. We strongly encourage you to contact us at the earliest drafting stage. We can, indeed, go through the above-mentioned steps while you finalize your story. However, there are other pro bono legal resources available to you in case of an urgent request, such as the Reporters Committee’s free Legal Hotline.

ProJourn assists student newsrooms on a case-by-case basis. We encourage you to fill out our Eligibility Form and we will be in touch if we have any questions. If we are unable to help you, or if your request falls outside of the scope of our mission, we will refer you to the Student Press Law Center, which works to promote, support, and defend the First Amendment and press freedom rights of high school and college journalists and their advisers.

We will assign you a team of attorneys and in-house lawyers based on your location, the legal expertise required for the case, and any other relevant factors. However, you have the right to refuse to be advised by the team that will be assigned to you. In that case, it will take us a longer time to connect with pro bono attorneys. You can also indicate that you’d like to be matched with the legal team that you previously worked with but there is no guarantee that they will be available.

There is no limit to the number of requests that you can submit with ProJourn, but we won’t be able to help you with more than three live requests at the same time. Once a matter is closed, you’ll be able to submit a new request. 

Our legal services are free of charge but you may be responsible for government fees or registration costs associated with your legal request (unless agreed otherwise with the law firm).