Imagine that you have just been berated, beaten, and bloodied by your partner. Maybe it’s the first time. Maybe it’s the 51st time. It happened in front of your three children. You once conveyed some of what has been happening to friends and family, but they looked at you like you had to be exaggerating.

I started working at AVLF about three years ago. Five days into my employment, I was standing on the 16th floor of King & Spalding, watching in bewilderment as two people deftly constructed a 10-foot stiletto shoe out of hundreds of red balloons.

More often than I wish were true, people think of “pro bono legal services” as simply giving a poor person a free lawyer. But pro bono publico (usually shortened to pro bono) does not mean “free,” it means “for the public good.”