Paladin enables legal services organizations to create, share, and manage pro bono opportunities in one centralized place.
The new opportunity form is broken down into three sections:
Top Tips! Before you get started, keep in mind these key insights to help maximize engagement.
Keep opportunities current. Consistently entering and updating your opportunities will increase the visibility of your work and ensure that when someone does volunteer, they have a good experience. If someone volunteers for a matter that turns out to be unavailable, they will be less likely to volunteer in the future.
Include detailed titles and opportunity descriptions. With clarity and transparency on what the matter will involve, volunteers are better able to understand their suitability to take on the matter - and are more likely to express interest.
Reach relevant volunteers by using tags. You can target attorneys specifically interested and experienced in particular subject matters by using the “Practice Area” and “Community Served” tags. These correlate to the preferences available to volunteers when setting up their Paladin profiles, helping to “match” great attorneys with available pro bono matters.
Use the "get public URL" or public opportunity page feature to circulate opportunities created in Paladin with your existing network of volunteers. This will reduce duplicative work by providing you with one centralized place to manage all opportunities.
Creating Opportunities in Paladin
Basic Information and Matter Details
Select “+ New Opportunity” to open the “Create a New Pro Bono Opportunity” form.
Enter a descriptive, concise and clear name for the opportunity. We do not recommend including personal identifying information in the opportunity title or description. Check out this opportunity title worksheet!
Outline the opportunity in further detail within the “Matter Description” field. You can use the hyperlink function to integrate materials from your website, online sign-up forms, and any other web-based materials you would like to provide to potential volunteers. Plus, you can edit your opportunity descriptions by bolding, italicizing and adding details within bullet points.
To add documents, simply drag and drop the files into the opportunity form or click on "click to select files". Potential volunteers will be able to download your documents when they view your opportunity. You can upload documents in pdf, .doc and .docx formats.
Select the type of opportunity.
💡Glossary of Terms
Brief Service
Legal service that is self-limited; ie, a clinic.
Lawyer consults with the client and gives advice/assists with a specific task, such as filling out a form. No attorney-client relationship beyond the clinic/phone call/etc.
Community Training
Lawyer provides a legal presentation to members of the public.
Limited Scope Representation
Lawyer advises/represents the client on a specific, predetermined element of their legal matter. ie, helping the client get a divorce, but not assisting on child support or custody.
Policy & Governance
Public policy/laws and regulations.
Transactional
Not litigation; often relates to contracts.
Volunteer Training & CLE
Training for volunteers.
If in the "Event" opportunity form, add an event or event series, if applicable. (For more information on managing events in Paladin, click here.)
Select the "Continue" button.
Categorization
Categorize the opportunity by "Practice Area" and "Causes and Communities Served". You must select at least one, and up to four in each category. Attorneys can browse, sort and filter by these tags on their internal firm database (or, where relevant, through Statewide Portals). Ensuring you tag opportunities correctly increases visibility leading to higher engagement.
Training & Experience Details.... are important! Although optional, this information helps potential volunteers self select -- meaning well-suited attorneys are more likely to engage. Enter any training provided or required, language requirements, as well as any specific skills a volunteer needs or might develop. Potential volunteers and pro bono teams are especially interested in understanding the level of time commitment involved - in fact, attorneys are 2.5 times more likely to engage with opportunities that include estimated time-commitment information.
You will now be able to either save your opportunity as a draft, or continue to the next page to share your opportunity out with your connections. Continuing to the next page will automatically save your opportunity as a draft.
Sharing Details
Opportunities will remain available for volunteers until they either expire or are manually set to “not recruiting”. To ensure opportunities remain current and available when a volunteer expresses interest, you must set an expiration date for each opportunity. You will receive a notification prior to an opportunity expiring and will have the option to extend the opportunity expiration date. The opportunity will automatically default to the expiration date one month from the creation date. You may select a date up to 6 months in the future.
Sharing Opportunities
The last field on the form is where you will select to which of your existing partners and their respective “teams” (typically, the relevant office locations) you would like to share the opportunity, in addition to the option to add the opportunity to your public opportunity listing page. Only users on the selected teams will be able to view your opportunity.
Click "create" and the opportunity will immediately be available to those teams. It will remain available until it either expires (if you have entered an expiration date) or you manually stop recruiting – effectively removing the listing from circulation wherever it has been published. You can do this at any point.
Unsharing Opportunities
To unshare an opportunity with a law firm or corporate partner on Paladin, select the checkbox next to the opportunity you would like to share. (Opportunities can only be unshared one at a time.)
Once the sharing tool is opened, you will have the ability to unselect which law firms and corporate partners you would like to unshare the opportunity. *NOTE: Sharing an opportunity with a Public Portal is an activity that cannot be undone. If you would like an opportunity removed that has been shared with a Public Portal, please reach out to [email protected].