TrustLaw Index of Pro Bono 2026: FAQs

1. Qualifying Pro Bono: Qualifying Work done by Qualifying Fee Earners for Qualifying Clients.
2. Qualifying Fee Earners: Any legal professional who performs fee-earning work for clients.
3. Qualifying Work: Legal advice, assistance, representation and research, as well as the drafting of agreements, policy documents or legislative instruments.
4. Qualifying Clients: People with limited resources or organisations that have a social, environmental, humanitarian, cultural or community focus (as validated by the law firm), referral organisations or pro bono organisations.

For additional information on key terms, definitions, and specific scenarios, please refer to our submission guidance in English and Spanish.

Law firms around the globe are invited to contribute, irrespective of size, specialisation or how much pro bono you do. Firms are also not required to be TrustLaw members to contribute to the Index. We welcome submissions from firms at all stages of pro bono development.

No—we value every hour of pro bono and welcome submissions from firms at all stages of developing their pro bono practice. The Index seeks to support the development of pro bono around the world by highlighting success factors, providing benchmarking, and mapping trends. We consider every single hour of pro bono undertaken to be valuable and worthy of note.

You are still eligible to participate in the survey. We recognise that each law firm has different policies concerning the publication of data, therefore, not all questions in the survey are mandatory. However, we highly recommend that you complete the survey from start to finish to strengthen the evidence base for the Index. To be included in published benchmarks, you must provide fee earner headcount and pro bono hours data.

You can participate by completing our survey. We encourage you to share with your legal networks and other firms and lawyers —the more firms that contribute, and the more countries we can analyse, the greater tool the Index will be.  

For further details on the required data and where to find it, see the Index Data section below.

The submission period opens on 12 February 2026. You have until 26 March 2026 to submit your responses.

Yes, the questions are available for download in PDF format and in Excel format. We kindly ask that final responses are submitted through our online survey.

We highly recommend that you cross-check all your responses before you submit. Once you submit, you will receive an email copy of your response. You can revise any responses via a personalised link in your confirmation email.

The survey typically takes 30 to 60 minutes to complete once you have gathered all the required information. For help with required data and where to find it, see the Index Data section below.

If you encounter technical difficulties with the survey, please contact [email protected] for alternative submission options.

The findings of the 2026 TrustLaw Index of Pro Bono will be published on the Thomson Reuters Foundation website at the start of 2027.

If you have any questions or encounter technical difficulties, you can contact the team at [email protected].

Keep an eye out for drop-in sessions that will run throughout the data collection window. Drop-in session dates and registration links will be shared via email.

For details on what data to collect and where you can find it, view our pre-submission checklist. Our submission guidance also sets out key terms and definitions that will help you determine what is eligible for the survey.

Pro bono practice information (such as policy/infrastructure, priorities, incentives, etc.) as well as partner-level and budget data are used for analysis and published only in aggregated and anonymous form—it will not be publicly associated with your firm and will be kept confidential.

The Index produces global, regional and country-level benchmarks, as opposed to rankings, on pro bono engagement. As such, the average number of hours of pro bono per fee earner, and the percentage of fee earners at a firm performing ten or more hours of pro bono, are publicly associated with firms. This is the only data that is attributed to firms in the Index.

The Index uses the number of fee earners as a simple way to gauge a firm’s size, resources and capabilities. This categorisation helps us assess how a firm’s resources influence its level of pro bono engagement and how firms of different sizes allocate resources to pro bono work.

All data submitted is treated as strictly confidential in consultation with our in-house legal counsel and in line with relevant data protection laws and regulations that include the UK GDPR.

Along with our industry and trend analysis, the Index provides global, regional and country-level benchmarks on pro bono participation. This insight helps firms to better understand the scale and evolution of pro bono services, identify opportunities for growth, and set their own targets.

See the 2024 TrustLaw Index of Pro Bono for examples of how your data is reported and displayed in the Index.

No. The Index is an objective benchmarking tool designed to present factual pro bono data. It is not intended to criticise sovereigns, entities, or individuals, but rather to map the sector.