Pro Bono Committee Aims To Recognize, Award, Train and Engage

April Giancola

Emily Moseley

April Giancola and Emily Moseley are both honored and excited to co-chair the NCBA Pro Bono Committee this year.  

April Giancola is the Director of Public Interest Advising at UNC School of Law. Since joining the career development office in April 2016 she counsels students and alumni on all aspects of job searching and career development, with a particular interest in issues relating to public interest, government and pro bono. Since earning her J.D. from New England School of Law in Boston in 2000, Giancola has worked as a trial attorney at the Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix, as the Director of Legal Services at Our Place DC in Washington, DC, and as the Volunteer and Training Coordinator at the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center. After moving to North Carolina in 2007, she was the Post-Conviction Managing Attorney for North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and served as the Chief Legal Program Officer for Disability Rights NC. She has been active in the Pro Bono Activities Committees of both the NC Bar Association and the NC Equal Access to Justice Commission. She is admitted to the bars of Arizona, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia and North Carolina.

Emily Moseley is a member at Strategic Health Law, where her work includes counseling health plans that sponsor Medicare Advantage, Medicare Prescription Drug, and Medicaid Managed Plans. After completing a two-year clerkship for the Honorable Jennifer Coffman of the United States District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Kentucky, Moseley entered private practice with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP (then Kilpatrick Stockton), in Raleigh, North Carolina where she worked on complex business disputes, as well as healthcare and regulatory matters from 2000 to 2010, when she joined Strategic Health Law. Moseley received a B.A. from Pomona College, graduating cum laude in 1995. She graduated from Vanderbilt Law School in 1998, where she was Executive Research Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. Moseley has an AVR peer rating through Martindale Hubbell, the highest rating given by that organization. She has also been named a “Woman of Justice” by Lawyers’ Weekly, in recognition for her extensive and dedicated pro bono practice.

The mission and charge of the NCBA Pro Bono Committee (“PBC”) is to recognize, award, train and engage NCBA members in pro bono to meet the unmet legal needs of underserved North Carolinians and to promote the fulfillment of Rule 6.1, the attorney’s encouraged professional responsibility to provide free legal services to persons of limited means.

This year promises to be one of growth and change as the PBC reshapes how the committee recognizes, awards, trains and engages NCBA members and the North Carolina legal community in pro bono. This work will be accomplished through four different subcommittees: (1) Pro Bono Recognition, (2) Pro Bono Awards, (3) Training/CLE, (4) Section Engagement.

(1) The Pro Bono Recognition subcommittee (formerly known as the “Pro Bono Week” subcommittee) will focus on recognizing, throughout the year, pro bono work of volunteers across the state. Members will have the opportunity to celebrate and highlight pro bono superstars within the NCBA sections who engage in pro bono work by writing articles and coming up with creative ways to acknowledge their commitment to pro bono work.

(2) The Pro Bono Awards subcommittee will focus on ensuring the pro bono awards are fulfilling, purposeful, and meaningful awards that encourage and support the pro bono work of Association members. In addition to reviewing the nominations and voting by majority to select this bar year’s pro bono award recipients, members will assess the current pro bono awards and the nomination process to identify and implement ways to increase nominations and avoid award dilution.  

(3) The Training/CLE subcommittee will plan and market a free CLE offered to train volunteers for a particular pro bono project. The work will involve selecting the topic, date, speaker(s) and program/organization/clinic partner for the CLE. This subcommittee will also explore the production of pro bono volunteer training videos that may help prepare attorneys for general pro bono involvement.

(4) The Section Engagement subcommittee (formerly known as the “Section Outreach” subcommittee) will assist section pro bono chairs in developing new pro bono projects, overcoming existing challenges, identifying opportunities for organizational collaboration, and submitting year-end project reports to PBC. The subcommittee will enhance the pro bono project approval process by establishing review criteria for section pro bono project approval.

We are delighted that all four subcommittees have already met and are fully engaged in furthering the broader mission of the PBC.  We anticipate that the PBC will have a particular focus on assisting those affected by Hurricanes Florence and Michael. Lawyers, retired attorneys, out of state attorneys, paralegals and law students interested in volunteering for this effort can visit ncbar.org/Florence for available opportunities and training materials.