Pro bono advocacy

A GOOD CAUSE TO ADVOCATE

Pro bono advocacy are one of the cornerstones of our contribution to democratizing access to justice

P ro bono work at Mattos Filho began almost 20 years ago, when partner Roberto Quiroga brought up the idea of rethinking the firm’s role in society, after following a debate on social justice at a lecture in São Paulo’s Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). Therefore, it was born the intent to work in favor of social causes.

As soon as the São Paulo Bar Association (OAB-SP) approved the first provision of pro bono advocacy in Brazil, allowing legal services to be rendered for free to NGOs, a team of partners, after visiting philanthropic organizations, began to encourage lawyers to dedicate some of their working hours to public interest causes.

 

Pro bono advocacy


The provision of free and voluntary legal services in the favor of non-profit organizations and those they assist, when the beneficiaries would be otherwise unable to afford such services.

 
 

So, 23 organizations were chosen from the fields of education, the environment, basic health and human rights, among others, to receive free legal assistance. At the time, no one could have imagined that the project would grow in the way that it did.

“It was a learning process for all of us and it took root among Brazil’s legal community. More recently, we were able to persuade the OAB [the Brazilian Bar Association] to approve pro bono services for individuals too”, Quiroga recounts.


Partner Flavia Regina de Souza Oliveira, from the Civil Society, Social Business and Human Rights Organizations practice, reminds us that the pro bono program is also a volunteer project open to all of the firm’s lawyers:


“Firms play the role of collaborating to a better society, one that is more just and fair, especially considering that we live in a country with such strident social inequality”.

REVAMPED IN 2018

The revolution in providing free legal services was consolidated in 2018, with the creation of the Mattos Filho 100% Pro Bono practice.


I n an initiative unheard of among Brazilian firms, a team was set up exclusively to provide free help to civil society organizations and private individuals in situations of economic and social vulnerability.

Offering legal services to private individuals required an internal effort to plan out how these services could function. Since then, Mattos Filho has acted in the defense of the rights of women, refugees, the LGBT+ community and at custody hearings.

“Faced with sharp asymmetry in the access to justice in Brazil, we realized that our actions should focus on cases of private individuals relating to the promotion and defense of human rights and in the strengthening of civil society organizations”, explains Bianca dos Santos Waks, the Coordinator of the Mattos Filho 100% Pro Bono practice.

It is hoped that the project will encourage other firms to dedicate part of their intellectual capital to cases in the public interest. “We want to be a force for innovation so that others can join in”, Quiroga concludes.

 

Mattos Filho pro bono work, in 2018:


+ 10,000 hours worked (+58.73%*)
139 cases (+33.65%*)
97 clients including civil society organizations and private individuals (+56.45%*)


*Compared to 2017