The UNC Law School Pro Bono Program has been selected to receive a 2010 Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award for the Wills Project, which was implemented in partnership with Legal Aid of North Carolina.

The award recognizes UNC-Chapel Hill units and organizations that have performed extraordinary public service and engaged scholarship and/or enabled such service by others.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2010 Public Service Awards Ceremony and Reception (sponsored by the Carolina Center for Public Service) will be held on Friday, April 16, 2010 from 1:30-3:00pm in the Carolina Club of the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.

In March 2010, the Wills project involved 23 UNC law students who spent a week in the New Bern/Greenville area of Eastern North Carolina drawing up wills and other legal documents as part of a pro bono project coordinated by the UNC School of Law, the Center for Civil Rights and Legal Aid of North Carolina. Day-long advance directive clinics were held in six towns (Alliance, Belhaven, Columbia, Plymouth, Trenton and Williamston) for low-income and minority clients on wills as well as on health care power of attorney documents that allow a person to designate someone else to make health care decisions if he or she becomes incapacitated. The students work was supervised by attorneys from the local Legal Aid of North Carolina offices.

Additionally in March 2010, another team of UNC law students (supervised by LANC attorneys) provided advance directive clinics in the western part of North Carolina in Boone, West Jefferson and North Wilkesboro.

A description of work of the Wills Project in the New Bern area in March was discussed in the March 15, 2010 New Bern Sun Journal article, "UNC law students connect, reconnect."

Also, the March 2009 Wills Project by UNC law students is featured in the Fall/Winter edition of Carolina Law (the magazine for the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law) in the article "Reaching out to Eastern North Carolina."

Congratulations to the UNC Law School Pro Bono Program!