Grant Recipient Highlight – Pro Bono Indiana

The Indiana Bar Foundation annually grants funding to organizations across Indiana to ensure they keep doing great work for Hoosiers in civil legal assistance. We want to highlight those organizations by spotlighting their hard work. For October, we are highlighting Pro Bono Indiana (PBI).

Pro Bono Indiana’s mission is to increase access to civil legal aid services by marshalling the volunteer efforts of Indiana’s attorneys and paraprofessionals to provide direct representation, virtual and in-person clinical services, and legal navigation for low-income residents.

PBI provides services statewide, with eleven offices anchoring services in most metropolitan areas of the state.

PBI is a creation of the work of the Indiana Bar Foundation. The state’s pro bono system was at one time exclusively funded through IOLTA support managed by the Foundation. For the past six years, PBI has worked in partnership with the Foundation to expand the funds available for civil legal services for its own services and those of our many partner providers across the state. One of the highlights of the Foundation’s support that is unique to PBI is their operation of the Indiana Free Legal Answers platform, which the Foundation transitioned to PBI in 2019.

That platform allows several hundred volunteer attorneys to answer legal questions posted by low-income Hoosiers with civil legal needs. Initially, PBI thought about this platform as a way to engage volunteers; now they realize that with the Foundation’s support, this platform instead is our virtual presence in rural areas of the state that rarely, if ever, see a civil legal aid attorney. Every time a litigant accesses our help through a kiosk, or through the website, of through the virtual help desk on www.indianalegalhelp.org from a small rural town, they can see the value of the Foundation’s investments in PBI and our partners. Over 3,200 Hoosier were assisted through Indiana Free Legal Answers and many of them would have never gotten a chance to speak with an attorney without the Foundation’s support of PBI’s work.

PBI provides pro bono attorney placements and clinic services in most areas of civil law that effect low-income Hoosiers.  Approximately half of their efforts are directed to family law matters, with high concentrations in housing stability/eviction cases, creation of wills and powers of attorney, and second chance efforts involving driving privileges and expungements to allow litigants to gain better employment.

You can learn more about Pro Bono Indiana by heading over to their website: https://probonoindiana.org/.