Volunteer

You can mentor and train non-media attorneys to help us grow the bench of pro bono attorneys able to help journalists with their most critical legal needs.

You can get training through ProJourn and raise your hand to assist news organizations in doing crucial investigative reporting.

You can support news organizations with their business and operations-related legal needs.

You can assist bilingual journalists and news organizations who report and publish in Spanish.

You can support your firm’s legal team, including with public records matters.

Yes! As an in-house attorney, you can volunteer with us in two ways: you can either use your existing skills and support news organizations with their business and operations-related legal needs (contract review; employment; intellectual property, etc) or you can go through our media law training and help news organizations with prepublication review and FOIA requests.

Yes! Reach out to us and we will provide you with more information.

Absolutely. Please let us know us which law firm you’d like to work with and we will make it happen. You can see the list of law firms we currently work here.

Prepublication review matters usually require between 5 and 10 hours whereas public records requests matters vary between a couple of hours (for a request letter) to several months or years (if the case goes to litigation). You can let us know what time commitment you feel comfortable with and we will match with appropriate pro bono opportunities.

Attorneys will generally have an initial conversation or communication with the client to understand the story, inquire about any concerns or questions that the client or they may have. Then, they will begin reviewing the matter and include comments throughout the story. The client might need to have additional calls or email communications depending on the nature of the review.  

Yes! Some of our clients are bilingual and report and publish in both English and Spanish and might need to be put in touch with bilingual attorneys for both editorial and non-editorial legal needs. We’d love to hear from you!

The ProJourn team will personally share pro bono matters that are a good fit for law firms and their corporate clients. We do not allocate pro bono matters to law firms on a first-come first-served basis, but rather identify and reach out to the most appropriate attorneys with regards to several factors (e.g., location; legal expertise)

The law firm will run conflicts before accepting a new ProJourn matter. The ProJourn team will share all the information needed to run conflicts.

We vet applicants in light of our eligibility criteria.

We have developed training materials for attorneys who want to volunteer with ProJourn. In addition, we also organize quarterly legal workshops on open records and pre-publication review that can be attended by attorneys. The ProJourn team remains available at all times for any questions and can be contacted at projourn@rcfp.org.

Although ProJourn facilitates the matching of volunteer attorneys with journalists and freelance reporters, pro bono attorneys should always reach out first to their firm’s pro bono team.

If you are interested in participating in our program, please fill out our survey. We will then contact you to discuss the next steps. You can also put us in touch with your firm’s pro bono department if there is one.

Based on previous ProJourn matters and the feedback received by both clients and attorneys, we estimate that most pre-publication review matters take five hours of work, whereas open records requests can vary from a couple of hours (when drafting a request letter, for example) to several months (when litigation is needed). For operations-related matters, it greatly varies from a couple of hours to several weeks of work.

Law firms that volunteer with ProJourn are retained without an expectation of fees or with the opportunity to petition for fees, if applicable, from a tribunal. Law firms will identify potential costs and indicate whether clients will be paying them and how they will be billed for any costs. If needed, the ProJourn team can share a list of legal funds geared toward journalists who need assistance with their legal costs.

We know that pro bono capacity greatly varies from one week to another and are grateful for any legal assistance you might be able to provide for the journalists we support. We will send you pro bono matters regularly but don’t expect you to commit to a minimum number of cases. In-house counsel should start taking on matters once they have received their induction training and feel comfortable with the subject matters.

For public records matters, you can partner with an attorney from your partner law firm who is admitted to practice in this jurisdiction pro hac vice. For pre-publication review, you don’t need to be admitted to practice in the jurisdiction where the journalist is located unless the story’s specifics require an attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction. For a guide of important information regarding multi-jurisdictional practice issues in the pro bono context, check CPBO’s Multijurisdictional Practice: In-House Pro Bono.

ProJourn is able to provide malpractice insurance to in-house legal teams that don’t have such coverage for legal pro bono work. If you need to be covered by our NLADA liability insurance, please contact us at projourn@rcfp.org

Paralegals and non-legal staff are welcome to participate in ProJourn. Paralegals, for example, have proven to be extremely helpful with public records requests where large volumes of documents must be accounted for and organized. Please speak with your pro bono team and/or ProJourn if you are interested.

We regularly collect clients’ feedback and publish impact stories. We also keep track of key metrics such as the number of pro bono hours, their monetary value, the percentage of BIPOC journalists and newsrooms serving non-English speaking audiences supported through ProJourn, the impact of pro bono legal assistance on investigative journalism and democracy, etc. We will be happy to share this data and feedback with your firm upon request.