IBA launches website to bring together international pro bono practitioners

The IBA has developed a new website at www.internationalprobono.com, focused on sharing information on current practices in international pro bono legal work among practitioners across the world. The site aims to bring together the global community of professionals of every level who are involved in pro bono legal work on a local and international scale. This initiative has resulted in a remarkably user-friendly and versatile site, with multiple features to maximise communication between site users.

The site is unique in nature and includes exclusive interactive features. More versatile than information-sharing at a conference session, this strategic use of technology allows those engaged in pro bono work to spread information and share experiences 24 hours a day across the globe.

The constantly growing resource library contains work materials and presentations from IBA conference sessions, as well as collecting current pertinent materials from other practitioners and organisations engaged in this work. In this way the site provides access to new information as well as an ongoing archive for previous presentations and reports.

Other elements keep practitioners up-to-date on developments around the world. The training calendar alerts registered practitioners to events that offer information to aid their work. The news archive collects timely items in the field of international pro bono, and stores them according to date and topic for later reference as needed. Site users can easily submit items to be included in the library, calendar, and news archive, through one click of a button.

A registry of site users and a collection of links to other practitioners and organisations ensure that those who use the site can locate and contact others who are doing similar work, or who are doing innovative work on which they would like to model their efforts.

Other ways the site will encourage dialogue among users in the near future is through the use of listservs, discussion fora, and email alerts.

IBA staff are continually developing the site’s content with important links and news, facilitating discussion on international pro bono topics, integrating the site with existing pro bono efforts by other organisations, and planning future development of the site based on user feedback.

However the most efficient way for the site to increase in value is for practitioners to contribute their materials and ideas. For more information on contributing to the site, please contact Montserrat Cano, IBA Project Coordinator, at ipbadmin@int-bar.org.