Corporate Pro Bono is now accepting applications for the Corporate Pro Bono Partner Award, which recognizes innovative team approaches to pro bono work involving an in-house legal department.

Recipients of the award may comprise a two-way (i.e. one legal department with one law firm or a public interest group) or three-way (e.g. a legal department, a law firm, and a public interest group) partnership. The criteria for selection will be:

1. A legal pro bono project that has a demonstrated impact on its community/target group;
2. Substantial involvement by in-house lawyers;
3. Tangible steps toward making the partnership sustained; and
4. Innovative substantive and/or structural (e.g., delivery model) approaches to the effort.

Recipients will be selected by a subcommittee of the CPBO Advisory Board with assistance from the CPBO staff.

Past awardees have included:

• Accenture plc, Caterpillar Inc. and Merck & Co., Inc. in partnership with Baker & McKenzie and PILnet;
• Aetna Inc., in partnership with the Lawyers for Children America (LFCA), Bet Tzedek and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP;
• The Williams Companies, Inc. in partnership with Hall Estill and the Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, Inc.;
• 3M Company with Children's Law Center of Minnesota;
• Microsoft Corporation and collaborating law firms Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Heller Ehrman LLP, Holland & Knight LLP, Perkins Coie LLP, Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, and Riddell Williams P.S., and;
• Abbott Laboratories with Baker & McKenzie and Midwest Immigrant & Human Rights Center.

The award will be presented at the Pro Bono Institute Annual Dinner in New York on November 3, 2011. Winners will be receive mention in publications by Association of Corporate Counsel, Pro Bono Institute, and CPBO.

Please submit four copies of your nomination by June 3, 2011 to Eve Runyon, project director, Corporate Pro Bono c/o Pro Bono Institute, 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036. For more information about the award or the nominations process, please contact Eve Runyon, CPBO director, at 202-729-6694.