Dentons is committed to making a positive impact on our communities through pro bono legal advice. To mark European Pro Bono Week 2023, we’d like to share some of the flagship projects we’ve worked on over the past year.

The Chancery Lane Project (TCLP)

TCLP is a collaborative initiative of international legal and industry professionals who are are creating practical, ready-to-use contractual clauses that can be included in law firm precedents and commercial agreements to deliver climate change solutions. Their international transpositions project brings together lawyers from around the world to transpose clauses (originally written for the law of England and Wales) into domestic law. The transposed clauses will be added to TCLP’s open source climate clauses library for their international community of lawyers and corporations to download and use in their contracts. More than 25 Dentons lawyers from Germany, France and Italy are working on the project.

Ukraine Pro Bono Collaborative (UPBC)

The Ukraine Pro Bono Collaborative (UPBC) is a joint pro bono project, in which Dentons is working with Allen & Overy, Bird & Bird, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright, White & Case, and the NGO European Lawyers in Lesvos (ELIL). Based in Warsaw, the project involves Polish and Ukrainian pro bono lawyers who are providing legal information and assistance to refugees arriving from Ukraine. Over the past year, lawyers from the UPBC have provided more than 3,000 hours of free legal advice and have assisted 5,363 people. Of those assisted, 71% were women, many of whom were seeking assistance on behalf of their children. Every day, a pro bono lawyer from one of the six firms is on duty at one of the five sites in Warsaw to assist with legal issues as they come in (the UPBC operates in a different location each day, according to a regular schedule). There is also a duty phone to assist with queries from people in other Polish cities.

This project was awarded “Pro Bono Initiative of the Year” in The Lawyer European Awards 2023.

Italian Pro Bono Collaborative for Afghan Refugees 

The Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights has teamed up with Dentons, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters and Orrick to form the Italian Pro Bono Collaboration for Afghan Refugees (CIPBRA), which provides pro bono legal advice and representation to Afghan asylum seekers seeking to settle in Italy for humanitarian reasons or to reunify with family members. Through this work, the firms have helped more than 120 Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers so far, including 70 people via family reunification and humanitarian visa casework. Of those, 37 were children.

Same sex marriage litigation in Slovakia

At the request of LGBT+ organization ILGA-Europe, Dentons’ litigation team in Slovakia has been representing a same-sex couple, of which one is Slovak and the other is Argentinian, in their application for residency since 2020. When the initial application for residency was denied, Dentons represented the couple in a litigation before the Slovak courts, referring to European Court of Human Rights case law. The team eventually secured a landmark victory for the pro bono clients, which confirmed that the Slovak immigration authorities’ rejection of the Argentinian spouse’s permanent residence application on family reunification grounds constituted discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The case sets an important precedent for the rights of same-sex couples in Slovakia.

Pro bono partnership with Eduzměna

Dentons’ Prague office has been providing the Eduzměna Endowment Fund with comprehensive pro bono legal advice since it was established in 2018. Eduzměna aims to achieve systemic changes in the education of children in the Czech Republic using the funds obtained from its donors and supporters. The fund focuses on long-term and sustainable projects that have a demonstrable impact on improving children's learning and which raise awareness of the importance of education. In addition to assisting in the establishment of the foundation back in 2018, in the past year, Dentons has provided advice on corporate governance, the rules for accepting and giving donations, contractual relations with partners, and personal data protection.

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