Comcast NBCU Legal Team Celebrates First-Ever Pro Bono Week

Comcast NBCUniversal is committed to utilizing our talent and skills to support the communities where we live and work. The first annual Comcast NBCUniversal Pro Bono Week was held during the second week of November.  In addition, throughout the month, NBCUniversal and it’s legal teams held successful community engagement events in Miami, London, Los Angeles and New York.

Miami

Telemundo partnered with United Way to distribute Thanksgiving baskets

The NBCU Telemundo Legal Department partnered with the United Way to help provide local families with Thanksgiving dinner kits. The Miami office raised enough donations to assemble over 90 decorated Thanksgiving baskets, each of which contained all of the pantry items necessary for a family to enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

True to the Thanksgiving spirit, the entire department came together to participate in the effort. From grocery shopping, to assembling the gift baskets, to loading them up on United Way’s truck, the legal team rolled up their sleeves to help families in need. The completed kits were donated to United Way, which then distributed them, along with turkeys, to low-income families throughout early care and education programs in Miami-Dade County.

Telemundo partnered with United Way to distribute Thanksgiving baskets

London

London hosted Legal Insight Workshop, giving local students a glimpse of NBCU Legal

NBCUniversal’s lawyers and staff in London held a Legal Insight Workshop at Central Saint Giles. Twenty-three students, ages 16 and 17, from Haverstock School in Camden, North London, took part in a series of workshops, each designed to highlight the accessibility of a career in law and media.

The school serves a population where 80 percent of the students come from disadvantaged socio-economic and educational backgrounds; 75 percent of students are eligible for free school meals; 30 percent of students are refugees or asylum seekers; and 62 percent of students speak English as a second language.

The Legal Insight Workshop provided volunteers with the opportunity to use their expertise to give back to the community, provided meaningful workplace experience for the students, created opportunities for students to develop marketable skills and get a different perspective on practicing law, gave students the opportunity to meet a diverse group of professionals, and raised students’ aspirations.

The students were able to practice their interview skills with our volunteer lawyers, who were primed to give insight and advice, and counteract any preconceptions that a career in law would not be possible for the students.

Students practicing their interview skills with volunteer lawyers who were primed to give insight

Los Angeles

Los Angeles Attorneys and Staff Judged Constitutional Rights Foundation Mock Trial Competition

The Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) held its annual Mock Trial competition in November.  The program – active in 26 California counties -- helps junior high and high school students acquire a working knowledge of our judicial system, develop analytical abilities and communication skills, and gain an understanding of their obligations and responsibilities as participating members of society.  Hundreds of judges and attorneys volunteered to oversee and score the mock trials.

The student attorneys did an impressive job arguing the prosecution and defense of a murder case based on circumstantial evidence.  Many of the young people involved voiced their dreams of becoming an attorney.

All of the NBCUniversal volunteers were incredibly impressed by the amount of work put in by these young people and their strong performances. 

Young people learning about lives of attorneys

NBCU Attorneys handled adoption cases as part of National Adoption Day

November 15 was National Adoption Day, a day when, in courthouses across the country, thousands of foster care adoptions are finalized, taking these children out of the foster care system and making them part of “forever,” loving families.  The event relied heavily on pro bono participation of lawyers and legal staff.

As in years past, NBCUniversal was honored to work with The Alliance for Children’s Rights, a non-profit organization that works through its various programs to protect the rights of impoverished, abused and neglected children and youth. NBCUniversal handled seven cases on behalf of foster parents who finalized the adoptions of their children that day.  

Each child left with a teddy bear, and every family left with a beaming smile. And the NBCUniversal team left feeling grateful to have been able to participate.  NBCU Legal looks forward to continued, close collaboration with this wonderful organization.

NBCU Lawyers handling adoption cases in LA

New York

New York lawyers assist entrepreneurs build business in Start Small, Think Big Clinic

NBCUniversal legal department from the New York and New Jersey offices partnered with attorneys from Debevoise & Plimpton to provide legal services at a “legal pit-stop” for low-to-moderate income entrepreneurs organized by Start Small Think Big (SSTB). SSTB is a non-profit that helps entrepreneurs build businesses in underserved areas in New York City so that they can increase their personal financial security and stimulate economic activity in their communities. Last year, SSTB helped provide entrepreneurs with over $5.5 million worth of pro bono services.

At the legal pit-stop, which took place at CAMBA Brooklyn Small Business Services in the Flatbush neighborhood, the NBCUniversal lawyers gave on-the-spot counsel on a variety of legal issues that the participating entrepreneurs raised. Topics ranged from advice about the entity types that an entrepreneur could use to organize her start-up consulting business, to trademark advice for a local novelist, to copyright counselling for the founders of a wedding-video production company.

The project gave the NBCUniversal volunteers the chance to share some of the legal knowledge with entrepreneur clients who usually cannot get that level of lawyering. 

Building businesses in Brooklyn's Start Small, Think Big Clinic