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| Todd Stillerman |
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| Allison Constance |
For corporate legal departments, that reality should serve both as a warning about the growth of legal deserts and a call to action.
Corporate legal departments cannot replace the funding that supports civil legal aid. They can, however, help narrow the widening gap between the need for legal services and the lawyers available to provide them.
The Arithmetic Problem
In Eastern North Carolina, for example, one legal services office and its five lawyers cover a 21-county region. Similarly situated offices exist nationwide.
That arithmetic presents an opportunity for corporate legal departments. In North Carolina, most of the state's lawyers are concentrated in just five out of the state's 100 counties.[1]
Thousands of lawyers and legal professionals work in corporate legal departments in Charlotte, Raleigh and other metropolitan centers. In contrast, nearly half of North Carolina counties fit the simple definition of a legal desert, with less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents.
How Corporate Legal Departments Can Help
For corporate legal departments looking for meaningful ways to support access to justice, a court appearance is not required to make an impact.
Legal Deserts
This is part of a series from Law360 Pulse this week exploring lawyer shortages spreading across many parts of America.
A brief consultation, a limited-scope representation or assistance through a structured pro bono program can materially affect outcomes for clients who otherwise may navigate the legal system alone.
The answer to chronic underfunding is not to ask legal aid lawyers to work harder. Nor should volunteer lawyers be viewed as replacements for permanent legal aid staff. Civil legal aid organizations need reliable public funding, philanthropic support and sufficient full-time professional staff. Pro bono service does not relieve the government or the profession of the obligation to support that infrastructure.
However, volunteer legal professionals can create a second ring of support behind experienced legal aid lawyers. With thoughtful program design, volunteers can handle defined tasks and appropriate matters while legal aid attorneys provide training, substantive guidance and supervision. That allows legal aid staff to extend their reach and devote more of their specialized expertise to the matters that most require it.
Furthermore, with devoted partnerships and consistent volunteer engagement, more experienced volunteers can bring a higher level of service to clients and reduce the amount of staff time and supervision required, increasing the impact.
Corporate legal departments bring unique power. They can mobilize partners, uniting in-house lawyers, outside counsel, legal vendors and other professionals around a shared effort. Law firms are already doing extraordinary work in the pro bono space, but many are especially eager to participate when they can partner with a client in a shared effort to serve the community.
They can also leverage company resources such as charitable foundations, communications teams, employee volunteer programs and technology support.
The result is often more than volunteer hours. It is a broader network of people and resources helping legal aid organizations extend their reach into underserved communities.
How Remote Service Can Carry Legal Resources Across County Lines
Technology and limited-scope representation make it possible for an in-house lawyer to assist a client who lives hours away. The volunteer need not relocate or build an independent rural practice. The client can avoid traveling to a distant office, missing work, finding childcare or securing transportation simply to obtain legal advice.
Legal Aid North Carolina's Lawyer on the Line program provides one example of how this can work. Volunteers access on-demand training and advise tenants over the phone about their repair or habitability issues. Legal aid lawyers supply the expert support.
In 2025, volunteers, many from corporate legal departments and most with no prior housing law experience, assisted more than 200 tenant clients across North Carolina. Helping these clients remotely means that legal services staff's time can be focused on matters that require court appearances, and more people receive the help they need.
One person assisted by this program was a tenant in a town of 200 people in a county with seven attorneys, four of whom are in government positions. Last winter, the client received advice from a corporate commercial litigation attorney in Charlotte. The client's landlord was refusing to fix her broken heat and faulty refrigerator, leaving her to sleep in her car on cold nights and causing significant food loss.
With the help of this remote volunteer, the client was able to not only understand her rights as a tenant but also take the next steps in forcing repairs and rent abatement.
A large gap exists between the high-rise building from which the volunteer did her work and the client's situation in a small rural town, but training on communication with clients, mentorship from legal services staff and clear volunteer resources paved the way for corporate volunteers like this one to help.
Disaster Relief Demonstrates the Model's Reach
The response to Hurricane Helene provides another example of how volunteer lawyers can extend civil legal aid into communities facing extraordinary need. In September 2024, the storm devastated Western North Carolina, leaving many residents in the rural, mountainous region with legal needs far outweighing the capacity of the local legal community. Of the 39 affected counties, 12 were considered legal deserts.
Fortunately, volunteer lawyers eagerly answered the call to provide remote assistance. Corporate in-house attorneys were particularly helpful in drafting appeals for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance, as the federal law matters did not require volunteers to be licensed in a particular state.
Thus, out-of-state corporate partners expanded the pool of available pro bono volunteers significantly.
A team of in-house attorneys working in tech sales helped one client navigate a FEMA appeal for roof repair and provided advice on water issues. She had been without running water for over six months, and the volunteers helped her to understand her rights, options for available assistance and the proper channels for next steps.
Specialization Should Prompt Support, Not Paralysis
One reason some corporate legal departments hesitate to engage in access-to-justice work is specialization. An in-house lawyer who spends every day negotiating commercial lending transactions, advising on securities regulations or handling intellectual property issues may understandably question whether they have anything useful to offer a tenant facing eviction, a disaster survivor or a person seeking assistance with public benefits.
That hesitation is understandable. A lawyer's duty of competence does not disappear when the representation is provided without charge.
But concern about competence should begin a conversation with an experienced legal aid provider, not end it. Good pro bono programs do not ask volunteers to improvise or become poverty law specialists overnight. They provide defined assignments, focused training, forms, scripts, checklists, expert backup and clear escalation points.
A properly trained and supported volunteer need not possess the specialized expertise of a seasoned legal aid attorney to make a meaningful difference. The question is whether that volunteer can provide competent assistance to a person who otherwise might face a landlord, creditor, disaster recovery bureaucracy or court proceeding entirely alone.
Corporate Departments Should Build Partnerships, Not Events
Corporate legal departments interested in helping should start by listening. The first question should not be, "What volunteer event would our employees enjoy?" It should be, "Where do your clients need additional legal capacity, and how can we provide it without creating more work than we relieve?"
A useful partnership requires attention to both client need and a legal aid organization's infrastructure. Every volunteer matter requires intake, conflict checks, assignment, training, supervision, quality control and closure. A one-day clinic may be valuable, but continuity and recurring participation can create substantially greater capacity.
Corporate legal departments can take several practical steps, including the following:
- Identify a legal aid partner serving rural or otherwise underserved communities;
- Ask that organization which client needs are appropriate for remote or limited-scope assistance;
- Commit to a recurring project rather than a single volunteer event;
- Recruit a core group of lawyers and legal professionals who can develop familiarity with the work;
- Appoint an internal coordinator who will remain accountable for participation and communication;
- Invite outside law firms to contribute volunteers, training and subject matter expertise;
- Provide financial support for intake, technology, volunteer coordination, supervision and program administration; and
- Measure success by the legal assistance delivered to clients, not simply the number of volunteers recruited.
A Second Ring of Support
Legal deserts are defined by a scarcity of lawyers where lawyers are most needed. Corporate legal departments have the ability to mobilize lawyers and legal professionals from places where legal talent is concentrated to places where it is scarce. But they can contribute more than attorneys. They can mobilize people, resources and partnerships.
Through partnerships with outside counsel, legal vendors, community organizations and corporate leadership, legal departments can assemble networks of support that amplify the impact of every volunteer hour.
With training, technology and strong legal aid partnerships, those networks can help build a second ring of support around the attorneys standing on the front lines of the access-to-justice crisis.
At a moment when traditional civil legal aid funding is under direct threat, corporate legal departments have an opportunity to help close the gap between legal need and legal resources. Creating that second ring of support is not a complete answer to the problem of legal deserts. It is, however, a practical, scalable and immediately available response.
Todd Stillerman is a senior associate general counsel and co-chairs the Legal Department's Pro Bono Steering Committee at Wells Fargo. He serves on the Board of Directors of Legal Aid of North Carolina.
Allison Constance is director of pro bono programs for Legal Aid of North Carolina.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employer, its clients, or Portfolio Media Inc., or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
[1] https://nciolta.org/a-larger-conversation-on-legal-deserts/.
[2] https://lsc-live.app.box.com/s/9mhek9c17vdb3x72cmkrbxkv7i74821e.
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