Media Releases

New partnership gives pro bono legal field a boost

September 7, 2010

TORONTO, ON – Pro Bono Stu­dents Cana­da (PBSC) began its 15th year of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice today with the announce­ment of an excit­ing new part­ner­ship with Car­swell, a Thom­son Reuters busi­ness. Car­swell will be the exclu­sive legal research part­ner for PBSC, pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port and spe­cial­ized train­ing for law stu­dents across the coun­try.

Nik­ki Ger­sh­bain, Nation­al Direc­tor of PBSC, said that the new part­ner­ship will make a very real con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of pro bono work in Cana­da.

“Legal research train­ing has always been avail­able to our orga­ni­za­tion from the research providers.  Now, thanks to this excit­ing and unique part­ner­ship with Car­swell, PBSC law stu­dent vol­un­teers across the coun­try will ben­e­fit from a legal research train­ing pro­gram that has been cus­tomized to focus on the kind of pub­lic inter­est and social jus­tice work that we do. This will sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the qual­i­ty of the pro bono legal ser­vices our stu­dents are able to pro­vide,” said Ger­sh­bain.

Car­swell, a lead­ing provider of legal research ser­vices, will devel­op a pro­gram that cov­ers not only its own research tools like West­law Cana­da, but oth­er legal research ser­vices and sources rel­e­vant to pub­lic inter­est and social jus­tice issues. The part­ner­ship also includes a sub­stan­tial finan­cial com­mit­ment over the next three years.

“We are proud to be a part­ner in the impor­tant work of the PBSC,” said Don Van Meer, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Car­swell. “Togeth­er with oth­er part­ners like the Law Foun­da­tion of Ontario, McCarthy Tétrault LLP and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Fac­ul­ty of Law, I believe we are mak­ing a real dif­fer­ence in improv­ing access to jus­tice for com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed orga­ni­za­tions that rely on pro bono legal ser­vices to con­tin­ue their impor­tant work.”

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About Pro Bono Stu­dents Cana­da

PBSC is a nation­al pro bono orga­ni­za­tion with a chap­ter in every law school in Cana­da.   PBSC pro­vides legal ser­vices with­out charge to orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als in need from coast to coast.  PBSC’s mis­sion is to pro­vide law stu­dents with oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op their legal skills; to have a pos­i­tive impact on the legal pro­fes­sion through the pro­mo­tion of a pro bono eth­ic; and to increase access to jus­tice in Cana­da.  PBSC’s impact on access to jus­tice in Cana­da is remark­able.  Each year, about 1,500 PBSC law stu­dent vol­un­teers – ful­ly a quar­ter of all law stu­dents in Cana­da – pro­vide approx­i­mate­ly 120,000 hours of free legal ser­vices to between 400–500 pub­lic inter­est and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, courts and tri­bunals across the coun­try.  For more infor­ma­tion, go to www.probonostudents.ca.

About Car­swell

Car­swell, a Thom­son Reuters busi­ness, is Canada’s lead­ing source of intel­li­gent infor­ma­tion solu­tions for legal, tax, finance and human resource pro­fes­sion­als. Head­quar­tered in Toron­to, Ontario, Car­swell pro­vides inte­grat­ed infor­ma­tion in a range of for­mats, includ­ing books, loose-leaf ser­vices, jour­nals, newslet­ters, CD-ROMs and online. For more infor­ma­tion, go to http://www.carswell.com.

About Thom­son Reuters

Thom­son Reuters is the world’s lead­ing source of intel­li­gent infor­ma­tion for busi­ness­es and pro­fes­sion­als.  Thom­son Reuters com­bines indus­try exper­tise with inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to lead­ing deci­sion mak­ers in the finan­cial, legal, tax and account­ing, health­care and sci­ence and media mar­kets, pow­ered by the world’s most trust­ed news orga­ni­za­tion. With head­quar­ters in New York and major oper­a­tions in Lon­don and Eagan, Min­neso­ta, Thom­son Reuters employs 55,000 peo­ple and oper­ates in over 100 coun­tries. Thom­son Reuters shares are list­ed on the Toron­to and New York Stock Exchanges. For more infor­ma­tion, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.