Thomson Reuters Foundation

Charity Awards

Designed a central access point for pro bono legal support

Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable branch of the Reuters news and information provider, and aims to improve standards of journalism while also providing free legal advice to those who need it.

Through the running of its humanitarian website ‘AlertNet’, the Foundation established that 75 per cent of its NGO partners (both companies and social entrepreneurs) needed a lot more pro bono legal assistance than they were currently receiving. So it created ‘TrustLaw Connect’, a platform that those partners can to use to connect with each other and over 200 law firms.

TrustLaw Connect is billed as the first global marketplace for pro bono services, with more than half its projects outside of the traditional pro bono markets of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, including several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. TrustLaw Connect is leading more than ten multinational projects designed to make a tangible impact, such as in Haiti, where a review of rape legislation for US women’s human rights charity Madre has led to officials re-drafting the country’s anti-rape law this year.

Thomson Reuters Foundation had signed up 180 TrustLaw Connect members by the time it launched in July 2010, and now the ever-growing community is more than 600 strong. The Foundation is aiming for 1,000 members by the end of 2012.

Florentina Diacu
Communications assistant
Thomson Reuters Foundation
30 South Colonnade
London E14 5EP
Tel: 020 7542 7015
florentina.diacu@thomsonreuters.com
Charity no: 1082139

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