Three Cheers For Thomson Reuters Foundation

OK we admit we do give them a hard time about their lack of? discussion of pricing of WestlawNext… but at least, unlike their main competitor, they know how to create a PR coup and do something decent..very decent…that will actually help people other than those sitting in offices around the world.


Law.com reports that the Thomson-Reuters Foundation unveiled its new international pro bono project to a group of big firm lawyers and representatives from nongovernmental organizations in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday.

Dubbed TrustLaw, the effort is designed to provide a new online market for pro bono projects around the world, connecting NGOs and nonprofits in need of free legal services with law firms looking to help.

This is great news and shows what a company can do to help people with the same technology that they are using to gather revenue

Law.com write

The project’s Web site, Trustlaw.org, will launch in mid-April and function like a Match.com for pro bono work, explained Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson-Reuters Foundation. Nonprofit groups like Transparency International and Kiva.org can post descriptions of the projects they need legal help with, from analyzing the anti-corruption efforts of an NGO in Russia to tax and regulatory advice in setting up a microfinance group in Uganda. TrustLaw staff will then help translate each proposal into clear-cut legal needs that member law firms can quickly analyze to determine whether a project is something they can take on, Villa said. Firms including Latham & Watkins in the U.S. and Garrigues in Spain have already signaled their interest in the project.

The idea for the site came about more than a year ago, soon after the merger of Thomson and Reuters, Villa said. It’s an extension of the foundation’s earlier projects: AlertNet, its humanitarian news network, and its new Emergency Information Service, which was unveiled in December and put to use less than a month later, coordinating relief efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A survey of the 450 NGOs involved with AlertNet revealed that their biggest unmet need is legal assistance, Villa said. Speaking at the meeting Wednesday, Peter O’Driscoll, executive director of anti-poverty nonprofit ActionAid, said that in the 30 years he’s been working in the field, the legal framework hasn’t kept up with the explosion of new projects in the NGO sector. Groups like ActionAid, which has projects in 42 countries, need extensive legal help to make sure they don’t run afoul of foreign laws.

In addition to connecting NGOs with law firms, Villa says the site will also feature special legal research databases created by Westlaw, a Thomson-Reuters subsidiary. The first will focus on anti-corruption efforts, the second on women’s rights.

Villa, who spent her career as a journalist with Reuters and Agence France-Presse before being tapped to create TrustLaw, said she has been meeting with law firms around the world to find out what they want to see in a project like this. She discovered that pro bono work, as it is conceived in countries like the U.S. and the U.K., is a foreign concept in much of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. TrustLaw is designed in part to help spread the culture of pro bono to law firms in other parts of the world. Discussing the project on Wednesday, she explained that in? setting a global standard for vetting potential projects, the site can help show firms in places like Lebanon and Guatemala which efforts are considered worthy by their peers, and just as important, which ones won’t land them in hot water. Villa said the TrustLaw has already signed up 80 members, a mix of law firms, NGOs and umbrella organizations for social entrepreneurs.

Full story at http://www.law.com/jsp/law/international/LawArticleIntl.jsp?id=1202446453308&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&pt=LAWCOM%20Newswire&cn=NW_20100322&kw=