Stories of impact: how firms are making a difference through pro bono
From international human rights law, intellectual property and AI, climate justice and helping a local cancer charity – find out how our members are providing free legal services to improve access to justice internationally and make a difference in their local communities.
"They are girls not mothers" – pro bono and international human rights
In May 2019, Debevoise & Plimpton acted as co-counsel with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and filed legal petitions with the UN Human Rights Committee (Committee) on behalf of four rape survivors seeking to hold Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Ecuador in breach of their international human rights obligations.
What did the work involve?
The center is an international NGO that promotes sexual and reproductive rights, including through strategic litigation and advocacy.
Sexual and reproductive rights are protected under international law by international human rights treaties and are actionable before certain international bodies.
These cases are evidence of a regional pattern of:
- sexual and reproductive rights violations against women and girls
- the lack of judicial recourse for victims of sexual abuse, and
- the lack of education and healthcare regarding reproductive rights
The firm worked with:
- the CRR
- Planned Parenthood Global
- Mujeres Transformando el Mundo Guatemala
- Observatorio en Salud Sexual y Reproductiva Guatemala, and
- Surkuna Ecuador
They also travelled to Geneva with two of the petitioners to file the petitions in May 2019.
The petitioners met with UN representatives to discuss how their cases would be handled. Connecting the petitioners face-to-face with senior UN officials formed part of the advocacy and reparations strategy.
The goal of the litigation in the Committee was to demonstrate the negative health affects that girls suffer when sexual and reproductive rights are highly restricted.
Each nation is obliged to guarantee girls’ rights to life and health, to:
- be able to make their own decisions regarding their bodies and path in life, and
- live free of gender-based discrimination and violence
The cases are a key component of the wider “Son niñas, no madres” (“they are girls, not mothers”) movement, which sheds light on the negative impacts of restrictive abortion laws throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
The litigation in the Committee specifically addressed these ongoing systemic human rights violations happening throughout the region. But the impact of the Committee rulings and their implementation extends beyond Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to the 173 signatory states to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The petitions demanded accountability, justice, and reparation for the girls, and called for the adoption and implementation of policies to protect the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls, not only in Latin America but around the world.
What was the impact?
For the first time, four cases were presented before the committee with a combined strategy against different states to tackle a regional issue.
The cases are examples of ongoing systemic human rights abuses throughout the region, where girls are regularly subjected to sexual abuse and forced into pregnancies and motherhood against their will.
In January and May 2025, the committee issued positive rulings in the four cases against Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala (“the 2025 rulings”).
The 2025 rulings constitute an historic precedent and set new international law standards for the global protection of reproductive rights and freedoms to ensure:
- access to sexual education
- safe abortion services, and
- other protections for sexual abuse survivors
The Committee determined multiple breaches by Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala of the survivors’ human rights under the covenant.
These rulings are historic because, for the first time, the Committee recognises that forced motherhood:
- interrupts and obstructs personal, familial, educational, and professional goals
- severely restricts girls’ life projects
- infringes upon their right to a dignified life
Notably, the Committee explicitly stated that denying access to reproductive healthcare services reinforces gender stereotypes based on women’s reproductive roles and constitutes intersectional gender and age discrimination.
The 2025 Rulings call on Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to amend their legislation to ensure access to abortion and to prevent girls from facing forced pregnancies and forced motherhood.
Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala must also provide comprehensive reparations for the women, including financial compensation, support to resume their education, ensuring access to education for their children, psychological assistance, and other measures to help them rebuild their lives.
Debevoise has, since 2017, strategically advised and co-counselled with the CRR on its work before United Nations treaty monitoring bodies in respect of challenging restrictive abortion laws in Latin America.
Debevoise continues to advise the CRR on the implementation of the 2025 Rulings, legal communications and advocacy strategy.
This is part of a much wider advocacy strategy (in relation to which Debevoise also advises the CRR to work with Latin American countries to reform their laws and practices related to reproductive rights and the high levels of sexual violence against women and girls.
The CRR stated that they are “delighted to have worked with the amazing team at Debevoise and Plimpton. It is important to also note that the CRR has been a pro bono client for Debevoise and Plimpton for over 30 years, but never before a project had included so much work.
"Debevoise has worked closely with our Latin America and Caribbean office to ensure that they support all the legal part of the litigation, as well as being informed on the advocacy efforts of the possible outcomes, before the decisions were announced.
"The firm will certainly continue to work with the CRR on all the advocacy work needed in the future to ensure that the decisions will be fully implemented”.
"Wishes, wills and whatever" – supporting young people with terminal cancer
Farrer & Co worked with YPLC to create a new pro bono project supporting young people with their ‘life admin’ – end of life planning advice.What did the work involve?
The Young People’s Life Café ("YPLC") is run out of a hospital-based age specialist Teenage and Young Adult cancer unit for young people living with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Merry Gibbons, teenage and young adult psychological service lead at the Royal Surrey County Hospital and lead for the YPLC, recognised that the young people in her care were not able to receive the tailored end-of-life advice that they needed.
Merry wanted to find pro bono lawyers to help these young patients and that is how Farrer & Co were introduced to the YPLC.
At Farrer & Co, pro bono volunteers, who are specialist private client solicitors, support the YPLC by advising young people aged 18-30 with end-of-life planning advice.
We used our expertise to help young people consider their options and navigate the legal process of finalising their affairs.
We have advised young people on:
- their options for drafting wills
- letters of wishes,
- critically important decisions about refusing life sustaining treatment, and
- guardianship arrangements for their minor children
We reviewed, amended and contributed documents to a detailed and comprehensive ‘wishes, wills and whatever’ briefing pack.
We also ran an in-person Q&A on the ward with young people, answering their questions about digital legacies, wills, letters of wishes and advance decisions, and other end-of-life issues on their mind.
What was the impact?
We are told that the support provided gives an invaluable sense of empowerment to young people experiencing a total loss of control in every sphere of their lives.
In living with a terminal diagnosis, people can lose control over their education, their hobbies, social lives – their whole future.
This project offers them a sense of empowerment; they are in charge through important decision-making.
It also gives them the chance to take the pressure off their loved ones and take comfort that when they are gone, their grieving families will not be left wondering what their wishes were. For example, one person told us, “I’m doing this for mum”.
Feedback from Merry was: “[The patient] keeps talking about how much peace of mind it’s bought them and their relief and comfort knowing this is done."
“This is what it’s all about, so thank you so much for climbing on board as you have and bringing that expertise and professionalism, but also warmth and a human side to what’s a very difficult and frequently traumatic time for the young person."
“I can’t say enough what a difference you are making to our young people living with an incurable cancer diagnosis.”
"Our gratitude to Farrers is unbounded! This project is making a difference at a time when this patient/client group is at their most vulnerable, most frightened and most alone. Farrers' offer them a hand to hold, a path to follow and greater peace of mind at the end."
We regularly meet as an internal team to discuss improvements to the project to ensure that it is as supportive, empathetic, efficient and helpful for our young clients as possible.
Free and accessible AI - bridging technology gaps in the legal sector
Discover how Fieldfisher LLP supported the Open University to develop free and accessible AI training to bridge the knowledge gaps in the legal sector and improve access to justice.
Now pro bono senior associate at Fieldfisher LLP, Catriona Filmer’s prior experience working in a law centre and in-house at disability rights charities meant that she was acutely aware of the artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge gap that practices in the access to justice sector face compared to the commercial legal sector.
Generative AI has the potential to extend the reach of free legal advice and break down barriers to justice.
However, many legal advice organisations lack the infrastructure and resources needed to engage with it effectively and safely.
Alongside other firms, Fieldfisher collaborated with the Open University, giving pro bono legal advice to help them develop a series of practical training courses on how to responsibly and ethically use generative AI tools in legal contexts.
What did the work involve?
Fieldfisher has deep expertise in technology and data law and a commitment to leveraging technology to improve access to justice.
Catriona and the firm’s chief technology officer participated in a workshop with the university to scope out relevant content for the training.
The firm’s tech and data and intellectual property (IP) teams provided their expertise on IP and privacy rights to help shape training materials for the initiative.
All the input given aimed to be practical, accurate and accessible, ensuring that members of the public, managers of free advice organisations and legal professionals alike could fully understand the risks and opportunities of adopting new technology.
What was the impact?
By informing free and accessible AI training resources, Fieldfisher helped address the knowledge gap and level the playing field for small firms and organisations that lack the same resources that large commercial law firms have at their disposal.
As Dr Francine Ryan of the Open University puts it, “This work will help educate and empower a wide audience including the public, legal advice organisations, small and medium firms, students and academics”, empowering them to integrate AI solutions into their legal practices and navigate the evolving legal landscape.
Fieldfisher will continue working with the Open University and is currently discussing the next iteration of the project.
"A powerful precedent for whale personhood" – working for environmental protection
Discover how Simmons & Simmons LLP is working with the Moananui Sanctuary in an innovative, cross-jurisdictional project to protect whales and develop a new legal framework to recognise their legal personhood.
Whale populations and their habitats in the Pacific Ocean have been hit hard by whaling, ship strikes, unsustainable fishing practices, pollution and climate change.
Moananui Sanctuary (MS) launched a project with two key objectives:
- to promote the legal personhood of whales, through mechanisms to make sure their legal rights are recognised and protected
- to create a sustainable finance mechanism for ocean protection
Simmons & Simmons has lent ongoing pro bono support to MS’s work, seeing how the innovative, wide-reaching potential of MS’s mission aligned with their own commitment to Climate Action (UN sustainable development goal 13).
What did the work involve?
Regarding the legal personhood of whales, the Simmons & Simmons pro bono lawyers drafted the Te Mana o Te Tohorā (Whale) Legal Personhood Bill, with Ocean Vision Legal, a US firm, and others.
Outdated legal frameworks see whales as resources, and this draft bill aimed to be a template legal framework that would set a new global benchmark for environmental protection.
To inform the framework, the firm hosted workshops with various industry experts, scientists and environmental advocates to understand:
- the initiative
- scientific data in conservation strategies, and
- sustainable finance mechanisms
Most frameworks for legal personhood tend to apply to static natural landmarks like mountains and rivers.
The challenge here was with migratory whales, so collaboration across jurisdictions would be needed to support the legislation.
A vital part of the draft bill was the firm and MS’s partnership with indigenous communities in several Pacific Islands.
It was important to make sure a holistic legal framework reflected the traditional conservation practices of local communities.
What was the impact?
Through Simmons & Simmons’ ongoing support of MS, the draft bill is a groundbreaking piece of legislation that would allow the well-being and rights of whales to be directly defended in legal proceedings.
This could take great strides towards restoring whale populations and habitats, having a wider positive impact on global climate change.
The draft legislation also forms an important part of the ongoing global Rights of Nature movement.
This couldn’t have been achieved without pro bono support.
Mere Takoko, chief executive officer of MS, noted: “As a non-profit organization, we would not have been able to afford the level of expertise and support that Simmons & Simmons provided.
“The impact of this work is profound. The Te Mana o Te Tohorā legislation has the potential to create a powerful precedent for whale personhood globally, strengthening legal protections for these vital creatures and contributing to the health of our oceans.”