FinUA Legal Support Collaboration Concept

Introduction

Pro bono work has a special superpower: it brings people together across differences.

In a time when division feels more common than connection, helping immigrant clients through pro bono work creates rare moments of empathy, understanding, and meaningful relationships between people from vastly different cultural and economic backgrounds—and sometimes with very different identities. It’s also a way to bridge the gap between institutions with seemingly different goals, fostering collaboration and unity.

It, however, does not happen automatically. Creating impactful programs takes dedication, effort, resources, and careful planning. It’s about building a strong foundation and embracing a philosophy that puts clients at the heart of the work. These programs can challenge the old ways of thinking that often overlook the importance of low-income individuals and their legal needs.

When pro bono programs truly hit the mark, clients of immigrant background receive stronger legal support and better outcomes, find it easier to settle and protect themselves in a new foreign country, at the same time volunteers experience more meaningful and impactful connections through their pro bono work. It’s a win-win that leaves a lasting positive impact on both sides.

FinUA is a non-profit that started as a volunteer Project 24.02.2024 and got registered as an association 10.07.2023. At FinUA we started with our pro bono legal support in October 2023 via a web service that provided high-quality legal support from highly educated Ukrainian lawyers to people who came to Finland under temporary protection. Since then we have fulfilled more than 400 legal support requests. In addition, our platform my.finua.org has verified high quality information and emotional support to provide holistic help to Ukrainians.

What is the value of FinUA platform?

FinUA platform is the ultimate place for Ukrainians in Finland to find information and support, following a single-door principle. It is curated on daily basis by our content, legal and emotional support volunteers. Our website visit rate is around 14k visits per month. With thousands of website visits, around 3 legal support requests per day, we are the biggest online platform in Finland that provides free legal and emotional support Ukrainians. We received feedback about our legal support, which you can find here

FinUA Pro Bono Collaboration Concept for Companies

In recent years, ‘refugee rights pro bono’[1] has become a priority for many private sector law firms. In a global survey in 2022, 42% of law firms ranked immigration, refugees and asylum among their top five pro bono focus areas, up from 24% in 2014.

As many private sector legal actors are not experienced in asylum or immigration law, however, firms need to invest in new partnerships with specialist NGOs facilitate the pro bono work and connect the key players. This is where FinUA provides value for legal firms. We collaborate with companies that provide legal services and provide them with meaningful pro bono cases that are easy to pick and are completely facilitated by FinUA.

FinUA pro bono model

We developed a collaborative pro bono model based on their experience assisting Ukrainians over the past year based on our internal process for legal support. Our own findings closely overlap with the previously researched approaches.

The purpose is to provide high-quality, individualised support to help people resolve their legal queries, access their rights and navigate the legal procedures remotely in Ukraine and in Finland. The assistance covers a wide range of legal issues, with a particular focus on individuals with temporary protection status.

The model consists of the following steps

Step 1: Understand needs

FinUA has existed since the first day of full-scale invasion and we have provided thousands of informational articles and answered numerous questions from Ukrainians over the years. In addition to that, the majority of FinUA volunteers are displaced Ukrainians who have been through the journey of relocating to Finland. We analyze the requests that come to us and understand the needs both on the Finland-wide and individual client level.

Step 2: Respond to the local context

FinUA developed a platform visited by Ukrainians coming to Finland to find information and support. The platform consolidates all the key players of support for Ukraine.

Private sector lawyers and corporate legal firms often show a strong willingness to jump in and provide assistance right away. However, we’ve found that the most impactful efforts are those that are needs-driven and developed in collaboration with local partners like us. At our organization, we’ve been curating and triaging support from other NGOs by creating a model that enhances capacity and prioritizes cases effectively. By working closely with local actors, we’ve developed referral pathways for specialized cases, ensuring that these initiatives complement and support the work already being done on the ground.

Step 3: Involve lawyers with lived experience

Our team of legal volunteers consists of Ukrainian lawyers with lived experience of displacement and seek the perspectives of other displaced people in our design and delivery; this improved the efficiency and impact of the projects. Their knowledge, experience and language skills are valuable assets when giving advice to people who moved to Finland from Ukraine, as they offer practical and replicable steps to achieve the desired result. This helped build trust and ensured the assistance provided was appropriate and relevant, including when responding to more complex legal questions.

Step 4: Create platforms for knowledge sharing to improve the efficiency of future responses

When the request appears in our internal legal support dashboard, all the legal support volunteers can see the request.

The request as automatically assessed for urgency score (1-3) and topics (like family, immigration, divorce, visa etc.) and the system assigns the score and the topic.

The volunteers get a notification about the new incoming request and those who want to take it on assign it to themselves.

In addition, they can assign other specialists from our volunteer pool, such as child protection, Kela, emotional support, Finnish medical system, reception center rules, etc. We suggest clients to contact our network partner organisation, who specialize in their issues, such as mental health problems, debts, addiction, etc.

Step 6: Build relationships with NGOs, refugee-led organisations and other actors from the refugee response sector to expand the pool of potential pro bono partners

We are keen on establishing good collaborations with NGOs and other partners to support Ukrainian population. Some of the cases require Finnish legal professional to help. This is where cooperation with legal companies is crucial.

In order to help our clients achieve their legal goals, it is essential to have informational support from a Partner, who has the knowledge of Finnish laws and regulations.

Step 7: Erase the barriers to collaboration

FinUA pro bono model fully facilitates the the work with the Partners. In order to remove the usual impediments to collaboration, such as language barrier, we provide you with the following collaboration model:

• No interaction between FinUA's clients and the Partner is required. FinUA collects the requests from the clients through the website and delivers them to the Partner via agreed communication channels.
• FinUA provides a case description to the Partner in English (FinUA prepares the detailed information about the request which is necessary for the Partner to find the expert to handle the matter and to identify the course of actions. Personal client's information is not included so there is no need to implement GDPR)
• FinUA does not share with the client the name of the Partner, unless in exceptional cases this is required and only with the consent of the pro bono client thus ensuring full anonymity
• The Partner provides FinUA the response for the request in a written form via agreed communication channels. The Partner delivers possible solutions for the case in a form of a summary which includes the links to the sources of information: laws and regulations, the websites of the authorities or organisations etc
• Anticipated time for the summary preparation is two weeks (FinUA delivers the finalised responses to the clients in a period of two weeks after the request is placed through the FinUA website. This timeline may differ depending on the urgency and difficulty of the case)
• FinUA provides the final response to the client based on the information provided by the Partner without references to the collaboration party. FinUA will not mention information about the partnership without Partner's consent.
• FinUA will retain and dispose the Partner's summaries in future work (FinUA uses the information, delivered by the Partner in regards of a particular case, as long as there are similar requests from the clients)
• FinUA measures the impact of the collaboration and shares it with the Partner (FinUA uses internal AI to track the requests which are solved based on collaboration with the Partner and to identify the topics of the requests)
• FinUA is flexible in terms of collaboration (The Partner may offer their view of the collaboration which fit their internal policies)
• FinUA needs one contact person within the Partner`s organisation to ensure smooth communication
• FinUA expects each partner to handle at least 2 request per month. The length and complexity of requests can very.
• The Partner picks the case in line with their expertise, workload and preferences.

What are the most common themes?

The main challenges people address to FinUA Legal support team:

• immigration (temporary protection, working visa, family reunion, DVV)
• family (marriage registration, divorce, child allowance, custody, property division)
• taxation (Finland and Ukraine, tax residency, income reporting)
• entrepreneurship (establishing business in Finland)
• housing (rent, neighborly relations)
• legalization of the documents (apostille for educational and official documents)
• personal documents (passport, birth, death and marriage certificates)

Topics which are not covered and require Partner's involvement

Employment law matters (types of employment contracts, types of leaves: paid and unpaid, how can an employee defend their rights, unemployment funds etc ), consumer rights protection, family matters.

There are requests which require acting on behalf of the clients at the police or in court (criminal and civil cases). This involves interaction with a client. FinUA is ready to discuss the ways of collaboration which secure Partner's rights and reputation.

How to join

We are focused on partnering with legal firms and creating impact together. To start working with us, send us an email to margo@finua.org

Sources

1 - https://www.fmreview.org/ukraine/kalinichenko-simperingham-worthington/

2 - https://www.probonocentre.org.au/aus-pro-bono-manual/part-1/chap-1-7/