Law Firm Pro Bono Program

EDLC’s original and largest program is enlisting top American and European lawyers and law firms to provide pro bono assistance to protect the human rights of individuals and communities in developing countries who are fighting against harm to their environment.

How it works

EDLC most often works with large American law firms, with hundreds of highly trained and experienced lawyers. Typically, a legal team from within the firm is assembled to work on a particular case. The team is headed by one or more partners, and the team members bring a variety of skills and areas of expertise to bear.

In other cases, lawyers from different firms and even different continents may form the legal team. Individual lawyers and small firms have also successfully taken on specialized projects, or worked as team members in multi-firm collaborations. The goal in each case is to find the right match of expertise, capacity, location, and language skills.

The details of how and why the law firm pro bono program works are discussed at length in the Frequently Asked Questions section. The scores of lawyers who have worked with EDLC on dozens of environmental defender cases have achieved outstanding results. Many of these success stories are fully described in the Cases section.

Types of Cases

EDLC’s cases involve important issues, often with global implications. Many of the cases employ highly innovative legal strategies that represent legal "firsts." The clients are frequently world famous, and not only are the lawyers among the best in the world, but their firms' commitments of resources on a pro bono basis are unprecedented.

EDLC cases most often involve:

• helping individual environmental defenders who are charged in politically motivated criminal prosecutions.
• negotiating on behalf of groups facing harm from projects that affect their land, way of life, and environment.
• fighting against impunity for violations of the human rights of environmental defenders.
• pursuing indigenous peoples’ traditional land claims.
• defending against defamation cases brought to silence critics of projects and practices that threaten the environment and local communities.
• preparing briefs on legal issues relating to human rights and the environment for use in cases in courts and before international human rights bodies.
• drafting laws to increase citizen participation in matters relating to the environment.
• providing institutional legal assistance to organizations that work with environmental defenders or promote environmental human rights.

We are very grateful to EDLC for the opportunity to help solve the problems of twenty-three Mayan villages displaced by the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala. It is unquestionable that for many of the members of our team, this has been the most important matter of our lifetimes.

- Partners Enrique Gomez-Pinzon and Elizabeth Bevington, Holland & Knight law firm