Lawyers for Literacy

Lawyers for Literacy is a public service program that matches legal professionals with local schoolchildren to improve students’ reading skills and spark their interest in books, civics and history.

Lawyers for Literacy volunteers spend at least 30 minutes a week reading to small groups of students over a month’s time. A volunteer records the books that the student will read during the month, either with the volunteer or alone, in a passport booklet supplied by the North Carolina Bar Foundation and gifted to the student at the end of the program. The North Carolina Bar Foundation also provides primary books on topics related to civics or history, and each student receives his or her own book to keep, along with a program certificate.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, our volunteers created storytime videos for teachers and families to download so that elementary students could continue to have access to the high-quality civic education content and mentoring that the Lawyers for Literacy program regularly provides.