Charlotte Pro Bono Triage Receives Pro Bono Institute’s 2020 Corporate Pro Bono Award
Moore & Van Allen PLLC (MVA) is pleased to announce that Charlotte Pro Bono Triage, a groundbreaking partnership created by McGuireWoods, MVA, and Charlotte-based corporate law departments to support local legal aid organizations, is the recipient of the 2020 Corporate Pro Bono Award from the Pro Bono Institute (PBI). The national award honors innovative pro bono partnerships between law firms, in-house legal departments, and public interest organizations. The award was presented during PBI’s virtual gala on October 1.
Charlotte Triage is a partnership between corporate legal departments and law firms created to support Legal Aid of North Carolina-Charlotte and the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. It has brought together dozens of local law firm, led by McGuireWoods and MVA, and corporate legal department leaders, led by Bank of America, Duke Energy, Husqvarna Group, and Wells Fargo, to raise awareness of the unmet legal needs in the community and drive intentional pro bono volunteerism in those areas. In addition to the law firms and corporate legal departments serving as leaders, over a dozen other law firms and corporate legal departments have contributed volunteers to this project, making it a truly collaborative program across the Charlotte legal community.
“We are incredibly proud of Charlotte Triage and the service that it brings to the legally underserved in the Charlotte area,” said MVA’s Thomas L. Mitchell, chairman of firm’s Management Committee. “It is a wonderful example of how our broader legal community can come together to make a difference.”
Charlotte Triage has six primary areas of focus: housing eviction defense; increasing access to healthcare insurance coverage by providing assistance during open enrollment; criminal record expunctions; assisting victims of human trafficking; driver’s license restorations; and assistance with social security matters. Since its inception, the program has trained more than 400 volunteers and helped deliver legal services for more than 350 matters.