From Colombia to New Perimeter:
My Summer at DLA Piper
On my first day in law school a professor asked us why we decided to study law, and I answered, “because I want to make justice.” In the middle of my law career, I felt that the purpose for which I had begun law school was lost because everything turned around the use of law as a source of income. I began to think law was only created to make the rich even richer. But then I had the opportunity to work with Fundación ProBono Colombia in 2013, the only organization in Colombia that does pro bono legal work, and I fell in love with pro bono work. It brought back the concept of justice that I had lost.
New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s nonprofit affiliate established to provide global pro bono services, has been working with Fundación ProBono Colombia to help spread the concept of pro bono in Colombia and throughout the Americas. As part of this collaboration, New Perimeter lawyers taught about pro bono at my law school on topics such as legal social responsibility, the use of pro bono to address unmet legal needs and increase access to justice and the history of pro bono in the United States. When I first heard about the opportunity to work for a few weeks over the summer with New Perimeter, I thought I wouldn’t be able to because my English was not good enough; however, I couldn’t miss the chance to know how pro bono worked in one of the largest firms in the world. I applied terrified but sure that this was the best opportunity I would ever have in pro bono work. I had the fortune to be selected for what has been the best professional experience I’ve ever had.
Working with New Perimeter was my first time in Washington DC and my first experience doing pro bono work on an international level, a field I had never imagined possible. It allowed me to work on different research projects about the legal education programs that New Perimeter develops around the world, and to work on access to justice and projects around the functioning of the judiciary. Before, I thought that pro bono work was only about free legal assistance to low-income people, but this opportunity showed me a new field in public interest law. I discovered that pro bono work also includes high impact projects in several fields such as legal education, women's and children’s rights, access to justice, and strengthening a country’s legal system. I also learned that the beneficiaries of pro bono work are not only low income people, but also nonprofit organizations, law schools, judicial officials, government institutions and NGOs. This was a very important discovery for me because I realized pro bono work is an instrument to promote social change in a way I would never have discovered by myself. New Perimeter projects opened my eyes to different ways to serve the community through legal institutions.
Doing these projects and working closely with New Perimeter staff, I realized how hard it is to develop a successful pro bono program such as New Perimeter. It takes time to research the diverse legal systems in each country that they work with; it takes creativity to design solutions for the different areas that they work in; and it takes experience to develop programs able to create a real impact. But most of all it takes passion to help people and to be committed to social work. It was amazing to meet lawyers and staff like Lisa, Bert, Lorraine and Theresa, who are dedicated to this cause and work their hardest to develop pro bono projects at DLA Piper. I’m very grateful to them for being so kind with me and giving me this opportunity. I truly admire the responsible exercise of their profession and consider all of them as role models.
Throughout the summer, I attended several events hosted by Pro Bono and Public Interest organizations, where I found that many lawyers are committed to pro bono programs, and that there are many organizations in the US promoting access to justice. I met extraordinary lawyers like Jim Sandman, the President of the Legal Services Corporation in the US, who encouraged me to focus my practice on social change.
The most amazing part of this summer internship was to see first hand a reality that I thought was utopic. I saw how pro bono really works and discovered the commitment of American lawyers to improve society. Most importantly, it helped me realize that there is a long way to go in pro bono work in Colombia. I can say for sure that I want to dedicate my life and my professional practice to the improvement of pro bono culture in my country, and this experience helped me develop clear goals and gave me skills to achieve them.