USC Rice Law’s Pro Bono Program benefits community, law students and volunteer attorneys

Many low-income South Carolina residents struggle to find or afford legal representation, and 70 percent of parties that appear in South Carolina’s civil courts do not have lawyers to represent them. Finding a lawyer can be especially difficult in South Carolina, as 18 of the state’s 46 counties have fewer than 10 private attorneys.  

As the state’s only public law school, the USC Joseph F. Rice School of Law provides much-needed legal assistance to these residents and gives law students real-world experience helping clients. Founded close to four decades ago, USC Rice’s Pro Bono Program was the nation’s first voluntary pro bono program at a U.S. law school.

With the Pro Bono Program offering more than 20 opportunities each month to do pro bono work, USC Rice Law students practice limited scope representation on a wide variety of cases while being supervised by volunteer attorneys from around the state.

Many of the volunteer attorneys are USC Rice Law alumni who provide a public service while receiving training, mentoring and malpractice insurance for the cases they supervise — eliminating barriers to pro bono participation faced by many small firm and transactional attorneys.

As a volunteer attorney, Zack Ohanesian, ’21 J.D., ’18 finance, not only volunteers to fulfill his role as Pro Bono Program Manager for the South Carolina Bar, but he also sees it as his way to give back to the community.

“These are the future members of our South Carolina Bar. If they are involved in pro bono work as students, it increases the likelihood that they will do pro bono work as attorneys in South Carolina,” Ohanesian says. “I want to develop relationships with the students that will last as they enter the first years of their practice. If we want the culture around pro bono work in South Carolina to shift, you have to work closely with our next generation of practitioners. I do feel some duty to participate with the law school at USC as a way of continuing the efforts I took on as a law student.”

When he was a third-year law student at USC Rice Law, Ohanesian won the 2021 Hugh L. Wilcox Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year Award.

Pro bono opportunities

For volunteer attorneys and law students, two main pro bono volunteer opportunities include GROW South Carolina and the Pro Bono Clinic.

GROW SC volunteer attorneys are paired with a USC Rice Law student to offer free legal information, counsel, advice and brief services to South Carolina entrepreneurs, small business owners and nonprofit leaders.

The Pro Bono Clinic’s volunteer attorneys and law students focus on litigant support for civil cases, including consumer law, debt collection, bankruptcy, public benefits, family law, probate and estate administration, estate planning, and other general civil matters. They do not address criminal court cases.

Other pro bono opportunities for law students include working with partner organizations like the Rainy Day Fund and South Carolina Bar, as advocates for their clients.

USC Rice Law pro bono students work with partner organizations — most of whom are supported by the SC Bar Foundation — that focus on providing services like mediation to litigants in SC courts, assisting homeless populations, resolving probate cases, addressing food insecurity, removing barriers for previously incarcerated individuals, and aiding in income tax issues.

”My one and only mission is to ensure that students learn what it’s like for people who can’t afford an attorney and see how they can fill that gaping hole in the legal system,” says Jefferson Coulter, USC Rice’s Director of Pro Bono, Public Interest, & Community Engagement. “When they leave the USC Rice School of Law, if they’ve volunteered with the Pro Bono Program, they can get someone divorced, do their estate plan, help someone navigate bankruptcy, advise someone on an expungement, and function in a wide variety of civil legal settings — practice makes perfect!”

The Palmetto Leader

While USC Rice Law students and volunteer attorneys meet clients where they are, sometimes they bring the law office to them.

A unique approach to pro bono offerings, USC Rice Law has the Palmetto Leader — a 40-foot bus that operates as a mobile law firm. The Palmetto Leader is fully equipped with the technology to go out to underserved parts of South Carolina and help those populations receive certain services like wills, powers-of-attorney, pro se divorces and more.

“South Carolina, like many states, has an access-to-justice problem, and it is acute in rural areas,” says USC Rice Law Dean William Hubbard. “The Palmetto Leader and our other pro bono initiatives help address the access problem, while giving our students opportunities to help real people with real needs.”

“A good way to find my people!”

The Pro Bono Program was one of the deciding factors for recent graduate Morgan Mercer, ’26, to attend USC Rice Law.

Mercer, a former elementary school teacher, sees her law career as another way to help people — the same motivation that drove her to teaching.

“I became a teacher because it felt like the clearest way to serve others and make a meaningful difference in the community,” Mercer says. “But I realized that students carry with them so many challenges that are outside my control. Expecting them to simply leave those burdens at the door is unfair to kids, and it is unfair to teachers, who are not equipped to handle those situations.”

Once she’d decided to leave teaching, Mercer began researching where she’d like to go to law school.

An article about the Palmetto Leader bus first piqued her interest in USC Rice Law. She said her decision was made once she understood the breadth of opportunities to do pro bono work while she attended law school.

Before she crossed the graduation stage, she accumulated more than 80 hours of pro bono service. Those 80 hours don’t even include her duties as the Pro Bono Board chair in her third year.

“The Pro Bono Program has been the most rewarding part of my time in law school, and it’s helped me deepen my understanding of what I learn in class,” she says. “Legal concepts can feel very abstract and often make more sense after seeing how that concept is applied in practice.”

The Pro Bono Program also helped the Georgia native feel more at home in Columbia, South Carolina.

“The program has allowed me to make strong connections with classmates and in the community and has given me a sense of belonging,” she says. “Pro bono was a good way to find my people!”

Helping when things go “sideways”

One particular pro bono case was particularly impactful for Mercer. She was tasked with helping a homeless veteran, and the experience changed her perspective on how the unhoused are viewed.

The individual had a bachelor’s degree and a background as an engineer, but when he racked up debt and things went “sideways,” Mercer says, he began accumulating criminal charges. Charges that included offenses like sleeping in his car and loitering.

She was able to work with Richland County Homeless Court to help him get his driver’s license back, apply for jobs and secure housing. Applying for jobs and housing without a driver’s license is just one of many obstacles the unhoused face in getting back on their feet.  

The process showed Mercer to have empathy and compassion because “it’s easy to make moral judgments when you hear someone has a criminal record, but they’re not a bad person. He had something traumatic happen, and it compounded into becoming something bigger,” she says. “It’s hard to correct the stereotypes you often hear about the unhoused until you see it close up.”

Acknowledging her dedication, Mercer received in April the Hugh L. Wilcox Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year Award for her contributions to the Pro Bono Program. It’s the same award SC Bar’s Ohanesian received in 2021.

Mercer plans to continue doing pro bono work when working as an attorney in the future.

“Some types of law offer more time and support to give back than others, so I plan to make it a priority, asking firms that I interview with if I will have time for pro bono,” she says.

After graduating in May 2026, Mercer will be a term clerk for Chief Judge Martin Reidinger in the Western District of North Carolina. While she hasn’t solidified her specialty yet — largely because she’s “enjoyed law school” and liked every class she took — she’s hoping she’ll gain some clarity on her area of future expertise during her clerkship.

While not all USC Rice Law students volunteer 80+ hours during their three-year tenure like Mercer, the opportunities to provide assistance for those in need in South Carolina are plentiful for Rice Law students.

“Pro bono work isn’t charity — it’s a professional obligation,” says director and attorney Coulter. “The law only has legitimacy if it serves everyone, not just those who can afford it. When attorneys take on pro bono cases, they’re not just helping individuals — they’re reinforcing the integrity of the entire legal system.”