Best Social Mediators: Laura Rashidi-Yazd
"Our aim is for everyone in the legal field to know that they can incorporate pro bono work into their practice; our job is to show them how easily and quickly they can get trained and connected."
June 19, 2019 at 02:00 PM
2 minute read
As policy-makers debate the pros and cons of social media, its importance to nonprofit legal organizations can be illustrated by these statistics from the Atlanta Legal Aid Society: Volunteer hours rose from 6,000 in 2015 to 28,000 hours in 2018.
The X factor? A social media push, run by Laura Rashidi-Yazd, director of the group's Pro Bono Unit. A scan of its Facebook page shows a request for a lawyer to handle a name change for someone changing gender and another request for a lawyer to handle a property tax appeal. “Today is a good day to do good,” one post says.
Social media has simplified pro bono work for members of the legal community and found ways to provide opportunities for anyone to participate.
What are your goals when you post content on social media?
The goals of the Atlanta Legal Aid Pro Bono Unit are to increase awareness of the need for volunteers to represent low income clients with their civil legal needs. We see our job as connecting willing and able volunteers to those in need in their community. Our aim is for everyone in the legal field to know that they can incorporate pro bono work into their practice; our job is to show them how easily and quickly they can get trained and connected. We also use our posts as a way to show how rewarding pro bono work can be. We frequently feature volunteer and client success stories. The work we do matters.
How do you post a lot of content without losing freshness?
There are always clients in need! This gives us plenty of opportunities to share how volunteers can quickly and easily join our cause. We share current volunteer opportunities, highlight success stories, preview upcoming trainings and focus on the good of doing good. To keep our content fresh, we mix up the design of our graphics and have branched into video and animation. There's always more we can share; we just have to use a different perspective to keep things interesting and engaging for our followers.
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