Students
Gain practical experience and introduce yourself to a nation-wide legal community.
What We Do
PBSC selects student volunteers in their 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of law school in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. Participating students can gain practical experience while working with national and local organizations involved in public interest legal work.
In addition to arranging placements for interested students, PBSC promotes a pro bono ethic on campus by inviting guest lecturers to speak on non-traditional public interest legal careers, encouraging community involvement through public advocacy, offering public legal education, and urging social and professional responsibility.
In today’s competitive employment market, participating in PBSC gives law students an edge. Not only will volunteering for PBSC make your resume stand out, more importantly, you are contributing to the Calgary community by assisting marginalized individuals and non-profit organizations.
Train Future Lawyers
Develop practical legal skills and supervised learning opportunities while working with community organizations and a national law firm.
Access to Justice
Apply what you learn in the classroom to assist low-income individuals and non-profit organizations in our community.
Network
Network with members of the public legal interest sector in Calgary including lawyers, judges, government agencies, and tribunals.
Explore
Explore a variety of career options and increase your knowledge surrounding the access to justice crisis in our community.
Why Volunteer?
PBSC has projects covering many areas of law including civil, family, criminal, human rights, immigration, indigenous, administrative, and youth law.
PBSC projects provide students with opportunities to network with professionals in the legal and public interest communities, including: lawyers, judges, national law firms, and public interest organizations.
PBSC projects vary in the necessary time commitment. A minimum of 1-3 hours/week and a maximum of 5 hours/week is expected of student volunteers.
PBSC projects are easily manageable alongside academic demands.
PBSC volunteers are provided with free legal research training by WestLaw.
Requirements
A student is required to volunteer between 3-5 hours a week on their project during the academic year. Projects usually last from late September to March (with a break in December for exams).
Once a match is made, students are required to attend three training sessions at the beginning of the academic year and sign an agreement form committing to act professionally, ethically, and maintain accountability for project work.
During the school year, students will be required to meet regularly with their project leaders and partner organizations. Student volunteers will be asked to fill out evaluation forms periodically during the year to see how placements are going and what support the PBSC office can provide.
A student who is unable to meet a deadline or attend a scheduled meeting must clearly inform the affected organization so that alternative arrangements can be made.
Beyond that, students can expect to have fun and learn practical skills that will help them in their careers as lawyers.
Online applications are open annually from the beginning of September until mid September. Complete our short online application here to indicate the top 3 projects that you are interested and why you would be a great fit for those projects.
Yes! All our PBSC projects are open to 1L students with the exception of the Queen’s Bench Amicus Project.
Typically, each year we have approximately 120-130 spaces available for student volunteers. However, due to ongoing uncertainty due to COVID-19, partner organizations are not running at full capacity. As such, we have roughly 80 placements available for the 2021/2022 year. Some of our projects, including CCDC, Amicus Queens Bench, Indigenous Youth Outreach Project and the Human Rights Project, all have the potential for an additional recruitment call depending on capacity as we return to normalcy.
Students are expected to volunteer 3-5 hours per week on their project. Some projects offer more flexible schedules allowing students to manage their time accordingly, however other projects offer scheduled shifts and require students to volunteer at a specific time weekly or bi-weekly. Overall, PBSC projects are easily manageable alongside academic demands.
We ask that students apply to work on 1 project for the fall semester. If you have available time in your schedule during the winter semester, please email us (probonos@ucalgary.ca) in January and we will check if there is a project that requires additional volunteers.
No. PBSC UCalgary does not accept new volunteers during the winter semester as all of our mandatory training sessions are only offered in September and October each year. If you are interested in volunteering, please apply through our annual online application released in early September.
After a student has been notified of their placement, there are 3 mandatory training sessions that they must attend in September and October:
PBSC Process Overview
PBSC Ethics and Professional Responsibility Training
Westlaw Research Strategies Training
Current Projects
The Hearsay Podcast
Law student volunteers on this project will create eight 30-minute legal education podcasts on current legal topics. In addition to the 30-minute podcasts, students will also have the opportunity create 5-10 minute segments. These segments can be specific legal information or a part of the edited podcast that did not fit into the 30-minute episode.
Elementary School Mock Trial
Student volunteers on this project will work closely with McCarthy Tétrault lawyers to deliver an educational program in 2-4 Calgary elementary schools. The workshops delivered will prepare elementary students to participate in an interactive civil mock trial where they will play the roles of clients, lawyers, witnesses, and jury members. The workshops will be taught to one classroom per school (approximately 25-35 students maximum per workshop). The focus of this project is to prioritize underserved schools in Calgary so that students who experience barriers to opportunity can learn about the law in an inspirational way.
Emergency Protection Orders Project
Legal Aid Alberta provides legal services and expertise to individuals and the legal community to support fairness in the justice system. It is an independent, publicly funded, not-for-profit organization that provides a broad range of services in family law and child welfare, adult and youth criminal law, immigration, and refugee law.
French Legal Research Project
In collaboration with the Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Alberta (AJEFA – French-speaking Legal Professionals Association of Alberta), the student volunteer(s) on this project will assess and create an inventory of the legal information resources available in French and English in Alberta. The student will also identify areas where there is little to no information available in French. Depending on the student’s command of French, they may also have the opportunity to work with AJEFA and the supervising lawyer to select a legal resource(s) that require French translation and produce a French legal information resource from it.
Get Involved with Us
Join 120+ student volunteers to gain legal experience and increase access to justice in our community