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Poland Pro Bono

For 10 years now, the Polish Bird & Bird team has been supporting the PRO BONO Centre, a programme run by the Foundation of University Law Clinics.

The PRO BONO Centre helps NGOs that require legal support in their projects by coordinating cooperation between an NGO and a lawyer. It also assists public and non-public schools in conducting legal education projects.

Within the framework of cooperating with the PRO BONO Centre, we have supported, i.a.:

  • the Committee for Protection of Children's Rights in providing an opinion on a licence agreement;
  • a refugee from Belarus, a ward of the Centre for Solidarity with Belarus, in relation to granting a special disability pension, and
  • the Zbigniew Seifert Foundation in providing an opinion on an agreement with a company providing services in monetising content made available by the Foundation on its own YouTube channel (recordings of the jazz violinist competition).

We advise Polska Akcja Humanitarna (PAH)

the most prominent humanitarian aid organisation in Poland, which for over 30 years has been helping in regions affected by humanitarian crisis, natural disasters and warfare.

PAH helps the most vulnerable groups of people such as children, women and elderly persons as well as people with disabilities and those internally displaced. PAH’s activities include both long-term solutions and quick responses to crisis situations as well as educational work promoting humanitarian actions.

We assist PAH in redesigning its hiring model to better address their HR needs, taking into account the specific nature of employment during humanitarian aid missions abroad.
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, we have provided ongoing assistance for employees hired as part of the mission in Ukraine.

We work in support of refugees from Ukraine

We are involved in assisting the Wilcza Hostel for Ukraine. Together with the Saint Nicholas Foundation, we organised a charity collection for hostel operations and a remote learning room for Ukrainian children, as well as provided in-kind support for the hostel.

Our Immigration Law team supports refugees in two areas:

  • we operate a hotline to provide legal assistance to those in need by phone or email, also in Ukrainian and Russian;
  • we organised duty hours for lawyers at the Wilcza Hostel to give Immigration Law team members a venue to advise refugees;
  •  we are also available on site in Lublin to provide advice for refugees.

Also, we delivered webinars and participated in numerous conferences and information campaigns on the practicalities of assistance for refugees and employers interested in employing Ukrainian citizens.

For our commitment to helping refugees from Ukraine, Bird & Bird’s Warsaw office received an award in the 2022 Ranking of Law Firms organised by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.