7 ways Amazon’s pro bono work impacts communities around the world

When the war started in Ukraine, more than 70 of our legal team members from across the globe joined about 70 lawyers and legal professionals from law firm DLA Piper on a pro bono project to help ease the transition for Ukrainian refugee families and individuals who have been forced to resettle elsewhere in Europe.

In just one month’s time, they completed a series of fact sheets that detail regulations and practices in the various European countries where refugee mothers have been trying to reclaim a sense of normalcy for their displaced children. The fact sheets cover a variety of topics relevant to raising a family and establishing oneself in a new country, including: housing, education, childcare, healthcare, employment, immigration, legal aid and human rights protection, and banking and taxation.

We are also developing a guide for Patients of Ukraine, a nonprofit devoted to combating illicit trade and counterfeiting of medication and medical devices in Ukraine—a scourge that has escalated as a result of the ongoing war. A companion product outlines current gaps in Ukraine’s admittedly lax regulations of medical goods.

Over the years, Amazon has formed an exceptional relationship with Mary’s Place, a nonprofit that offers emergency shelter and outreach services to families experiencing homelessness in the Seattle area. We donated space to Mary’s Place to create an eight-floor facility inside an office tower at our Seattle headquarters. With capacity for over 200 guests, it is the largest facility of its kind in the state of Washington and includes a medical clinic, daycare, and other services to support families in transition.

In the shelter, we set up a legal office in 2018 to help guests of Mary’s Place with issues like dealing with former or future landlords, providing family resources, and helping them with day-to-day problems they face. In 2023, we enhanced our Mary’s Place pro bono work by focusing on assisting women and families experiencing homelessness with matters related to immigration law, such as helping them prepare applications with the federal government for amnesty or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.

The mission of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) is to achieve equal justice for people living in poverty across Greater Los Angeles. Our lawyers and legal professionals provide a variety of services to LAFLA clients. For example, they meet with clients who cannot afford a lawyer, listen to their stories, ask the right questions, and fill out formal paperwork so clients can appear before a judge to formally request that their criminal record be expunged. We also have staffed LAFLA clinics that assist survivors of domestic violence, alumni of foster care who are seeking naturalization, and people facing evictions.

Coinciding with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Afghan nationals who either worked directly for the U.S. or openly opposed the Taliban found themselves in imminent danger. Some secured provisional safety in the U.S., having been rushed out on military evacuation flights. Others found their own way out after Kabul fell, courageously crossing the border into Pakistan, often with their families in tow and sometimes in disguise so as to escape notice. We are working directly with both groups of Afghan refugees to help them obtain permanent or temporary legal status in a country that would be willing to accept them—and start a new chapter in their lives, free of constant fear.

The illegal and invasive procedure of female genital mutilation—a traditional practice among some cultures, performed for non-medical reasons—affects about 500,000 girls and women in the U.S. Yet this serious threat to their overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being rarely is discussed. A team of 16 Amazon lawyers from across the globe is working pro bono to help break that silence, partnering with international law firm Reed Smith LLP to draft legal guides for survivors of female genital mutilation.

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) recognized the universal right to high-quality, no-cost legal representation at all stages of the criminal justice process for individuals accused of a crime but unable to afford a lawyer, and provided practical guidance to countries on how to implement that right in practice. A decade after the adoption of those principles and guidelines, however, an individual’s guarantee of access to legal aid remains wildly inconsistent depending on where that person lives.

In partnership with law firm White & Case and leading legal aid nonprofit the International Legal Foundation (ILF), we researched right-to-counsel laws in 25 countries, their enforcement mechanisms, and their overall compliance with UNGA's principles and guidelines. The survey will result in the production of a global guidance tool on the implementation of the right to legal aid, which the ILF will use to advocate for stronger legal aid at the international, regional, and national levels.

There is a growing number of Amazon Legal volunteers at our headquarters in Arlington, Virginia who are assisting local innovators interested in serving their communities. The legal clinics, designed for would-be entrepreneurs wanting to start a nonprofit or a small business, are offered through the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center. Community members come to the clinics with a wide variety of ideas and interests. An example is a would-be nonprofit entrepreneur wanting to take decommissioned Washington, D.C., Metro buses and retrofit them into mobile hygiene centers where people experiencing homelessness would have access to a clean bathroom, a hot shower, and laundry facilities.