The first Virginia Supreme Court Pro Bono Summit in 2010 identified issues facing the state’s legal aid organizations. One of the major problems was a technology gap that made it difficult for lawyers to find pro bono cases without physically visiting legal aid offices. At the summit, John Finneran, general counsel of Capital One, committed on behalf of the company to find a solution to the problem, which was something that also had been brought to his attention by one of the attorneys in his department.
The problem was one ideally suited for an in-house legal department to tackle, Finneran says, “because we’ve got the capability to bring all of the resources to bear. We’ve got a large information technology organization within Capital One that knows how to design software and platform solutions.”
